From Library Journal
A leading light in the gay literary world, Picano won last year's Ferro-Grumley Award for the best gay novel for Like People in History (LJ 6/15/95). Here the versatile author turns his novelist's eye on his own life in what is officially dubbed the third volume of his memoirs?though in some citations the previous two "memoirs" turn up as fiction. He divides this work into two "books," like neatly matched, summery novellas. The first takes place in late 1969 and 1970, as his writing career evolves; the second moves ahead four years as his first novels are published. There is the standard name-dropping (Bette Midler, Rose Kennedy, and Arnold Schwarzenegger) and the usual settings. The post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS New York gay scene of Greenwich Village bars and Fire Island summer sublets is not completely realized here. But Picano brings honesty and intimacy to the story with such details as a shadowy triad love affair, a cancer scare, and the conflict between writing and publishing. His glints of flashing wit and subtle hints of dark decadence transcend cliches. Recommended for academic and gay studies collections and for large public libraries.?Richard Violette, Social Law Lib., Boston, Mass.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Picano's memoirs already have quite a following among gay culture mavens. Given the success of his novel
Like People in History (1995), this third volume of recollections may prove even more popular than its predecessors. It begins in Manhattan during the semicloseted 1960s and proceeds through flaming Fire Island in the pre-AIDS 1970s. Although his literary and artistic allusions still smack a little of pretension (who but Picano, for example, would metaphorically link the infamous paths through Fire Island's pines and paths in a Proust novel?), Picano is well able to make his growth as a writer, his struggles to establish relationships, and his Greenwich Village tales into arresting autobiography. He may never have Armistead Maupin's literary flair, but Picano is definitely gifted enough to ensure this book's popularity with lesbian and gay readers everywhere.
Charles Harmon
