Pulling Taffy

by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Fiction. Gay / Lesbian Studies. Moving from mid-nineties Boston, to post-grunge Seattle, to Giuliani's New York, Sycamore's debut novel is about searching for home and not necessarily finding it. D. Travers Scott calls PULLING TAFFY "a sharp and sparkling picaresque of queens and k-holes, grandmothers and tricks, friends and freaks. If David Lynch and David Wojnarowicz created a rebuttal to Will and Grace, it could very well be this book. Sycamore's keen eye reveals the everygay as not merely absurd but grotesque. Like good drugs, Sycamore's writing leaves me craving more." Likewise Edmund White writes, "I admire the candor and the reticence in this beautiful, anguished, funny novel. I have seen the future, and it is PUILLING TAFFY."

Genres: Queer, Fiction, LGBT

224 pages, Paperback

First published April 26, 2005

About the author

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the award-winning author of The Freezer Door, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, one of Oprah Magazine’s Best LGBTQ Books of 2020, and a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Winner of a Lambda Literary Award and an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book, she’s the author of three novels and three nonfiction titles, and the editor of six nonfiction anthologies, most recently Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis. Sycamore lives in Seattle, and her new book, Touching the Art, will be released on November 7, 2023.

Reviews

[Brandon Desiderio · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s something so fundamentally awesome about Mattilda’s craft. Currently I’m reading ‘So Many Ways to Sleep Badly,’ so her stream-of-consciousness prose is pretty well imprinted on my mind right now. There are exceptional turns of phrase and liberatory universal truths peppered throughout Pulling Taffy that can be tough to swallow for some (just like come), but makes for a really mind-blowing reading. Mattilda is to the queer liberation what many unfortunately see Anderson Cooper or other neoliberal, highly assimilated, cult-of-masculinity gay men as in relation to the tragically misaligned objectives of the “Gay Shame” (Mattilda’s magnificent phrasing) movement—namely, assimilationist marriage rights, property rights, labor rights, etc.; all negative rights, ultimately, under our exploitative and oppressive society, for straights and queers alike. Pulling Taffy is, at times, heart-rending to a fault, and if read uncritically can glorify what harm has been enacted upon the queers this world has killed systematically, but it’s in this liminal space where beauty arises: where the sex worker is a laborer with dignity and shame like us all (and no differently), and where the club queen isn’t so easily discarded as superficial or self-destructive, but rather illuminative of what love is, how love is, and where desire liberates is in this messy equation. Kinda rambling now, and might not make too much sense, but Pulling Taffy is beauty and truth unbound and unapologetic.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Size Queen's memories--

[Eli McN · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one broke me.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of my three last purchases from Lambda Rising in DC before they closed. I was intrigued by the back cover description of the book as a new generation David Wojnarowicz/David Lynch rebuttal to Will and Grace, so in I dove. In a purposely messy style (that's a parody of stream of consciousness? Clarissa Dalloway looking for a place to frak?) and we can assume a mash-up of fiction and autobiography, Sycamore tracks an 'I' who might be her/him self having sex, doing drugs, and living in Seattle, New York, and San Francisco. I think I honestly expected the surreal poetics of Wojnarowicz, and was surprised when I got something much more plain spoken and unadorned. I did like the banal presentation of sex, with the little one/two line gem codas of the experiences, that depicted the ordinary nature of the act (sex isn't poetry, sex is skin, sweat, and fluids) but still deeming it a necessity of life and connection. An eye opening look at a queer 'anti- assimilationist,' and if good fiction gives us a world view we've never seen before, Matilda nailed it for me.

[Sarah Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. That was intense.

The writing here was awkward to me at first, but after awhile it kind of sucks you in, and you get to the point where YOU ARE THERE doing and feeling all these things. Seriously, I felt like I was on a coke binge while reading parts of this. (Figuratively, of course.) It was also probably the gayest book I've read all year, and I mean that in the most complimentary sense of the word.

I would also like to point out that I live in a town where one can find a book filled with gay sex AT THE LIBRARY. How awesome is that?

[lia · Rating 3 out of 5]

okay, so I wanted to like this book, as I love Mattilda. It's a semi-autobiographical work of fiction about a queer sex worker living in the us, and their drug abuse, rape, childhood sexual abuse and day to day life. It was way too much for me right now, and perhaps I'll be able to re-read it sometime. As it is, I stopped about 1/3 of the way in. If you're in the right place for it, I would reccomend.

[Adam Hodgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't explain how much I loved this book, I feel like it was written for me to read. Matilda is a great author and this is simply one of the best books I've ever read. Can't wait for the new novel to come out.

[Shaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

honestly, i read this book because i know this guy and was genuinely interested in what he would write about due to what i knew of his life. it's an interesting look into the life of...for lack of a better word, a whore.

[Charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really loved this book. It's stream of conciousness, really sloppy, but a great read.

[dj · Rating 5 out of 5]

mattilda is the absolute best. loved this book!