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Later: My Life at the Edge of the World
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A stunning portrait of community, identity, and sexuality by the critically acclaimed author of The Narrow Door
When Paul Lisicky arrived in Provincetown in the early 1990s, he was leaving behind a history of family trauma to live in a place outside of time, known for its values of inclusion, acceptance, and art. In this idyllic haven, Lisicky searches for love and ...more
When Paul Lisicky arrived in Provincetown in the early 1990s, he was leaving behind a history of family trauma to live in a place outside of time, known for its values of inclusion, acceptance, and art. In this idyllic haven, Lisicky searches for love and ...more
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Every word of Paul Lisicky's "Later" will draw you in, begging you to picture it, to reflect on it, and to read it again and again.
Lisicky arrived in Provincetown, RI in 1991 during the heart of the AIDS crisis. A town on the cape known for its queer community was being ravaged by a disease - and a politics - that was killing the community of people the called it home. Through this Lisicky finds his voice as a writer, falls in love, and considers the fears of being infected around every corner. ...more
Lisicky arrived in Provincetown, RI in 1991 during the heart of the AIDS crisis. A town on the cape known for its queer community was being ravaged by a disease - and a politics - that was killing the community of people the called it home. Through this Lisicky finds his voice as a writer, falls in love, and considers the fears of being infected around every corner. ...more
With Later, Paul Lisicky offers an insightful and incisive account of his time in Provincetown in the early 1990s: first arriving as a young writer on a fellowship with the Fine Arts Work Center seeking the time and space to write while also searching for a sense of belonging, and love, as a gay man. Later pivots seamlessly between elegiac and nostalgic remembrance, at once an ode for a precise time and place as well as a clear-eyed archival of the idiosyncrasies and contradictions that
...more
Nominally this is a book about Provincetown in the early 90s, but I took it as a kind of rebirth amidst death and the potential for death amongst the gay community at that time. In its short segments, you slowly become enveloped in memories that add up to an artists self-actualization. It is also quite funny at parts too this is not a Proustian narcotized reverie. At times it almost becomes prose poetry, and I didnt always have the grounding I wanted from the narrative, but I felt quite moved
...more
My review for the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
http://www.startribune.com/review-lat...
A place of great remoteness and refuge, Provincetown a coastal village at the tip of Cape Cod, Mass. captivates the eyes and minds of its visitors and residents. In his memoir, Later: My Life at the Edge of the World, Paul Lisicky attests to its fascination by opening with not one but six epigraphs about the location from Henry David Thoreau, Mary Heaton Vorse, Denis Johnson, Eileen Myles, Andrea Lawlor and ...more
http://www.startribune.com/review-lat...
A place of great remoteness and refuge, Provincetown a coastal village at the tip of Cape Cod, Mass. captivates the eyes and minds of its visitors and residents. In his memoir, Later: My Life at the Edge of the World, Paul Lisicky attests to its fascination by opening with not one but six epigraphs about the location from Henry David Thoreau, Mary Heaton Vorse, Denis Johnson, Eileen Myles, Andrea Lawlor and ...more
A powerful memoir that reads like a series of prose poems stitched together into a gorgeous quilt. Lisicky's book does an incredible job of evoking a complex and harrowing era of life in Provincetown in the early 1990s. The book's rave reviews are all well deserved. Poets and Writers sums it up very well in the following description: "At once intimate and expansive, Later is a vital exploration of queer life past, present, and future."
The writing is gorgeous throughout. Here is just one of many ...more
The writing is gorgeous throughout. Here is just one of many ...more
This is one of the best memoirs I've ever read
Mar 17, 2020
Martha Toll
added it
Here's my review for NPR Books https://www.npr.org/2020/03/17/813631...
Bracingly honest, gorgeous, tragic, and at times funny: a man finding his inner self, living in a place he loves in a time of love, life and death. I finished it breathless. 5 stars. #books #books2020 #bookstagram #reading #readersofnstagram
Stunning book! So many sentences were highlighted. Poets are truly the best writer.s. Highly recommend.
This has a good voice. Its well done, though I like the sentence/paragraph level best. I get lost a little on the larger scope from that and have to make myself focus again, but thats probably just me.
...more
A beautifully written, literary memoir about Lisicky's early years in Provincetown from 1991-1994. I was immediately captivated by the opening scene, in which he is saying goodbye to his mother, and on the brink of a new life. He realizes, "She is afraid of my living among my kind, especially now that so many young men are dying of AIDS. She is expecting me to die of AIDS."
AIDS is the character all other characters maneuver around, containing as it does the fullness of both sex and death within ...more
AIDS is the character all other characters maneuver around, containing as it does the fullness of both sex and death within ...more
Paul Lisicky takes us on quite a journey through the world of queer life in Provincetown in the time of AIDS. He writes with deep emotion, deep honesty and a poetic sensibility as he explores his own lusty sexuality and need for belonging. The fragmentary nature of his writing made it difficult for me to really engage with this story as well as I would have liked.
Pray for them in thistle fields,
We will point out five-dimensional skies,
mourn their deaths by AIDS,
an allegorical device, all and nothing more.
#poem
Chris Roberts, Patron saint to the Providence People
We will point out five-dimensional skies,
mourn their deaths by AIDS,
an allegorical device, all and nothing more.
#poem
Chris Roberts, Patron saint to the Providence People
Such a moving meditation on a place and time. Im grateful to have gone to Provincetown for the first time last summer, so it was easy to feel myself there again.
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PAUL LISICKY is the author of The Narrow Door, Unbuilt Projects, The Burning House, Famous Builder, and Lawnboy. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Conjunctions, Fence, The Iowa Review, The Offing, Ploughshares, Tin House, and many other anthologies and magazines. A graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, hes the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National
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