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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 connecti ...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 connecti ...more
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Paperback, 240 pages
Published
March 17th 2020
by Graywolf Press
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so very mesmerizing and devastating. in swift prose Lisicky recollects the time he and his literary friends spent in Provincetown in the early ‘90s, across a series of diaristic fragments recording his daily activities, the best of which border on prose poetry. he takes on a lot here—his alienation from his family + his longing for queer community in the midst of an epidemic, the rise and fall of his relationship with a dancer, the character of Provincetown’s social life, the trauma of watching
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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, MA 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 calling it home. Entering into a tumultuous center, Lisicky finds his voice as a writer, falls in love, and considers the fears of being infected ...more
Lisicky arrived in Provincetown, MA 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 calling it home. Entering into a tumultuous center, Lisicky finds his voice as a writer, falls in love, and considers the fears of being infected ...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

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 artist’s 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 didn’t always have the grounding I wanted from the narrative, but I felt quite move
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*Later*, Paul Lisicky’s latest memoir about [Province]Town in the early 1990s, reads like a photo album set to language. Each chapter is broken into fragmented reminiscences, each slowly brought into relief, paragraph by paragraph, like a polaroid in the dark.
Lisicky’s companionable and poetic voice was one I easily identified with, a mix of the observer with the longing for connection to a world, particularly other queer men, around him. His hunger for intimacy gave the book its pulse and rhyth ...more
Lisicky’s companionable and poetic voice was one I easily identified with, a mix of the observer with the longing for connection to a world, particularly other queer men, around him. His hunger for intimacy gave the book its pulse and rhyth ...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 constitu
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Apr 20, 2020
Crystal
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
read-in-2020,
lgbtqia,
non-fiction,
pub-2020,
memoir,
death-grief,
zformat-ebook,
zp-2020-e
This lyrical meditation felt timely, considering it's a book about finding refuge in a plague, and was released (and read) while the world goes through one. Obviously the public, medical, and government response was completely underwhelming if not outright malicious for the AIDs crisis in comparison to our situation now. Later
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In his memoir, "Later: My Life At the Edge of the World," Paul Lisicky brings us to Provincetown, which he refers to as the Town, in the 90s. A gay man leaving home, again, to start a seven month Fellowship at the prestigious Fine Arts Work Center Stanley Kunitz founded. He is approved for a second Fellowship and the Town becomes his home base. The style of the book is in prosaic sections that are titled and quilted together to form a tapestry.
He captures his mother's isolated world and her emot ...more
He captures his mother's isolated world and her emot ...more

“In my mind every death will always be an AIDS death; everyone will always die before their time, whether they’re twenty-one or ninety-one. Nobody will ever get enough affection; everyone will be abandoned emotionally by the people they’d counted on, who get hardened by procedures, the insurance industry, the medical establishment, the funeral industry at the end. And for all that’s against their terrible journey, the dead burn brighter to me than they do when they’re alive.”

After reading the sentences about anger and Paul’s relationship with his father, I knew I was in the hands of a master. “He wanted his skin to rub off into us so we would not forget the cost of everything he did to give us the life we had. The martyring. And if that isn’t anger in the purest, most frozen form, then I can’t read the world.”
This memoir revolving around Provincetown in the early nineties is full of choice writing. With our current Corona Virus, it’s hauntingly refreshing to remembe ...more
This memoir revolving around Provincetown in the early nineties is full of choice writing. With our current Corona Virus, it’s hauntingly refreshing to remembe ...more

I enjoyed the majority of the book.
Anytime that Lisicky discusses the lives of gay men and gay culture? I'm on board (hence the whole "I enjoyed the majority of the book" statement)
However, Lisicky fell into a trap that I don't like, which is when a writer talks about the self-righteous importance of writing. ...more
Anytime that Lisicky discusses the lives of gay men and gay culture? I'm on board (hence the whole "I enjoyed the majority of the book" statement)
However, Lisicky fell into a trap that I don't like, which is when a writer talks about the self-righteous importance of writing. ...more

I am not going to rate this book just because I didn't connect with it. It's a beautifully written book of memory, but I felt as if I were kept at arm's length -- as is the author was coldly observing himself. My feelings may have more to do with me than the book.
...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 was a birthday gift, so I really wanted to like it. I made myself finish the book, hoping somehow that I'd like it in the end. Some of the writing is powerful, and I appreciate it as a historical document, but that's all. Guess you can't connect with everyone, and I'm just not connecting with this author.
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This is one of the best memoirs I've ever read
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Why don't I get these books? There There, The Disappearing Earth, Overstory, Later - the constant switching makes it hard to follow. At least with TT and TDE I could connect to the characters.
I lived the story of Later with my friends and loved ones in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. I wanted to love this book - Paula is me. But I just kept getting caught up and moving away. Bummed and dissapointed. ...more
I lived the story of Later with my friends and loved ones in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. I wanted to love this book - Paula is me. But I just kept getting caught up and moving away. Bummed and dissapointed. ...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

I finished it, circled back and started reading it again. I got partway through and realized I’d been devouring it at a breakneck speed.
The chapters are broken into smaller collections of paragraphs, snippets that at times read like diary entries.
A document of Provincetown from 1991-94, it describes life in all its complexity amid the AIDS epidemic and, now amid a worldwide COVID-19 quarantine, is surprisingly relevant and timely.
The chapters are broken into smaller collections of paragraphs, snippets that at times read like diary entries.
A document of Provincetown from 1991-94, it describes life in all its complexity amid the AIDS epidemic and, now amid a worldwide COVID-19 quarantine, is surprisingly relevant and timely.

Paul Lisicky arrived in Provincetown, MA in 1991 as a fellow in the Fine Arts Work Center during the height of the AIDS crisis. Part coming of age story, identity story, and meditation on the meaning of life during a time filled with so much death, it seemed an appropriate book for these pandemic days. Lisicky writes taunt, yet lyric, prose, baring the essence of this time and place with a sharp lens. One of the particularly masterful aspects of this memoir is how Town is more than a setting, it
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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.

Mar 17, 2020
Martha Anne Toll
added it
Here's my review for NPR Books https://www.npr.org/2020/03/17/813631...
And here https://themillions.com/2020/12/a-yea... ...more
And here https://themillions.com/2020/12/a-yea... ...more

Such a moving meditation on a place and time. I’m 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, he’s the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National
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“I don’t want to be superior to anyone for being afraid. We already have a culture built on that.”
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