Larry Closs's Blog, page 3
August 30, 2012
Beatitude: “Thoroughly enjoyable”
Beatitude’s Harry, Jay and Zahra rub shoulders with Patti Smith, Tom Waits and Richie Ramone on Beatdom, the all-things-Beat literary journal. In a new review of Beatitude, Beatdom’s founder and editor David S. Wills (author of The Dog Farm) writes that he had been meaning to read the novel for a while and when he finally did he “read through it in a thoroughly enjoyable evening.” Wills describes Beatitude as “complex and artfully woven,” noting that narrator Harry reminded him of William S....
August 3, 2012
Love Story
Love, love and love! In the Greenwich Village Barnes & Noble, Beatitude is featured in the Staff Recommendations end-of-aisle display with a sign applauding the novel’s distinctive appeal as well as the, ahem, author:
“A love story in all definitions—true love, brotherly love, unrequited love, how love differs between two lovers, and a labor of love from a talented writer.”
To top it off, Beatitude is sitting right next to A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O’Connor, one o...
July 26, 2012
Beatitude at Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble,Union Square,New York.
Yes.
Thanks!
July 21, 2012
36 Weeks at #1!
Beatitude has been the best-selling novel on the Rebel Satori Press website for 36 weeks! Many thanks to everyone who’s made that possible!
June 28, 2012
Beatitude, the Beats and the Truth
Tom PalumboJack Kerouac
New York City-based journalist and critical theorist Edward Truth penned a beautifully perceptive piece titled “Bringing Back the Beats with ‘Beatitude’” for Lambda Literary, in which he proposes that Beatitude not only cuts to the heart of the Beat Generation’s ongoing popularity but carves out its own unique sensibility:
“Stylish, descriptive and emotionally raw,Beatitudeis a calling card for both Larry Closs, the author, and Larry Closs, the man—intrinsically removed,...
June 23, 2012
Window-Shopping at Barnes & Noble
In honor of Pride Month, the Barnes & Noble in New York’s Greenwich Village (396 Avenue of the Americas at 8th Street)has a window dedicated to notable LGBT books-of-interest and I’m happy to say that Beatitude is among them, sharing the space with My Two Moms by Zach Wahls, In One Person by John Irving, Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany, Ivan and Misha by Michael Alenyikov andWhy Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson.
A huge thanks to B&N’s Kyle-Steven Porter for including Beatit...
June 18, 2012
“Love, obsession, jealousy and the experiences that make us human”
Book-lover Allizabeth Collins has been reviewing and writing about books since 2001! She just reviewed Beatitude on her long-running blog, The Paperback Pursuer:
“What would happen if you found yoursoulmatein someone you could never have? The interactions between Harry and Jay describe the depth of this conundrum from the beginnings of an innocent friendship to the eventual depression following unrequited love. I was pulled into the reality of their lives as soon as I “met” them, their charact...
June 15, 2012
Beatitude at the 2012 IPPY Awards
The IPPY Awards were a blast! Held at Providence NYC on June 4, the annual Independent Publisher Book Awards played to a packed house of authors and agents, publishers and publicists—a few from Australia!—gathered to celebrate the best in indie publishing. It was an exhilarating, electric evening. I barely remember accepting the Gold Medal for Best LGBT Fiction for Beatitude, but, thankfully (John!), there are photos documenting the whole affair. Here are a few.
[View with PicLens]
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June 12, 2012
“Well-written and appealing”
“[A] well-written and appealing debut novel… Many poets, including Eileen Myles, Bob Rosenthal and Sparrow make appearances, but it is Allen Ginsberg who figures most prominently. A fictional interview at his East 12th Street home feels very realistic and imbues the sometimes irascible Ginsberg with avuncular wisdom… Closs, who has done a great deal of research on the subject, seamlessly weaves Beat history and literature into his novel—just enough for the cognoscenti, but not so much as to o...
June 9, 2012
Postcard from Ferlinghetti: The Flip Side
Photograph by Gordon Ball. Copyright Gordon Ball.Since my previous post about receiving a postcard from City Lights Bookstore founder, poet and painter Lawrence Ferlinghetti in response to sending him a copy of Beatitude, several people have asked, “What was on the other side of the postcard?” The flip side featured this iconic and brilliant photograph of several cadets reading Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poemsat the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), taken by Gordon Ball in 1991.
Ball, an...
