The Book of Lies [Paperback]

Felice Picano (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2000

Bright, ambitious, and handsome, Ross Ohrenstedt is a high flier in the fashionable field of queer studies. He has just taken a prestigious university position in Los Angeles and has been appointed to oversee the collection of papers and works of a leading light of the gay literary salon known as the Purple Circle. Ross stumbles across a "lost" work by an unknown author and his quest to identify the mystery writer and achieve the glory of scholastic tenure unveils increasingly bizarre and unbalanced facts about a group of writers who in the 1970s and 1980s broke new ground in the creation of a gay literary sensibility. But the dark truth contained within The Book of Lies is even more startling. With biting wit and a lush sense of place and character, Felice Picano's daring novel is at once a stylish mystery, a comical roman à clef, and a wicked send-up of the new Ivory Tower.

"Leave it to Felice Picano to add a walloping dose of melodrama and intrigue to a tale already redrawing genre boundaries...What Picano does is take an academic mystery (subject matter that might have proved tedious or solipsistic in lesser hands) and morphs it into something new--a page-turning, often campy, occasionally serious critique of academia and historical truth, literary celebrity, and the imminent future of America."-Philadelphia Tribune

Felice Picano is the author of 19 books including the best-selling novels Like People In History, Looking Glass Lives, The Lure and Eyes as well as the literary memoirs Ambidextrous, Men Who Loved Me, and A House On the Ocean, A House On the Bay. He is also the author with Dr. Charles Silverstein of The New Joy of Gay Sex. A native of New York, Felice Picano now lives in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Playful, ambitious, and minutely plotted, Felice Picano's follow-up to his crossover success, Like People in History, will appeal to his increasing readership in much the same way as a box of Belgian chocolates, a self-indulgent but harmless extravagance. Ross Ohrenstedt, a resourceful and well-read young academic teaching a single summer literature course at UCLA, manages to get permission to examine and catalog the papers of Damon Von Slyke, a member of the infamous Purple Circle of gay writers active in the 1960s and 1970s (and roughly modeled on Picano's own literary group, the Violet Quill Club, which includes Andrew Holleran and Edmund White). Piecing together the various drafts of Von Slyke's many books, and trying to identify the handwriting in the margins, Ross eventually stumbles on a fascinating manuscript by an unknown writer--a man virtually erased from literary history--who seems to have been intimately connected to all the members of the Purple Circle. Picano's baroque eye for detail and his invariably rich and luscious male characters (most of whom speak in complete, highly articulate sentences that would put Gore Vidal to shame) set the sometimes silly, but no less enjoyable, tone for this well-paced academic mystery. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly

Things are not what they seem in Picano's (Like People in History) novel of academic intrigue. In the early 21st century, Ross Ohrenstedt is an ambitious assistant professor at UCLA, researching the work of the legendary literary salon the Purple Circle (closely resembling the Violet Quill, a group Picano was involved in that included Edmund White, among others) for his doctoral thesis. While cataloguing the work of a Circle member, Ohrenstedt uncovers a mysterious manuscript that promises to be an academic breakthrough, and begins an increasingly obsessive quest to validate its source. New uncredited documents appear, and Ohrenstedt begins piecing together the life of their suspected author, the previously unrecognized Len SpurgeonAan enigmatic character with seemingly far-reaching influence over the Purple Circle members and their work. Self-consciously evoking Henry James, this tragicomedy of polite society is impressive in its thoroughly imagined detail, although sometimes gratuitous in its lavish descriptions of settings. With individual chapters focusing on various Purple Circle members, Picano is successful in his gossipy recreation of the group of gay literary innovators. In depicting the near future, his amusing assumptions demonstrate a keen tab on trends and the possible new technologies ahead. The surprises at the end keep the reader's head spinning. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 423 pages
• Publisher: Alyson Books (September 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555835929
• ISBN-13: 978-1555835927
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,757,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Tangled Web, February 1, 2000

By 

A reader (Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Book of Lies (Hardcover)

This ambitious novel by Picano turns out to be overly so and the result is a tangled web. The question is: Will the reader persevere to the end and thus be able to disentangle it? It can be done, but the going is tough at times and the "payoff" is questionable, though Picano pulls off one major surprise at the end, and some minor ones along the way. Even for those who have most assiduously read the work of the authors of the Violet Quill, this is not an easy --nor short-- novel. It's hard enough to keep the authors (more of whom are dead than alive) straight (I really didn't mean a pun), not to mention their partners/boyfriends and/or literary executors. Although the point is by no means to identify them all with real-life counterparts (though 3 are easily enough identified for those who know about the authors and their works, and a good guess can be made about at least one other), most of the authors never really stand out and it's hard to care about some of them. Overall, this novel probably does give a good general picture of the personal and writing life these men led, but something -maybe a sense of "aliveness"-- seems missing. There are a few juicy tidbits, real or imagined, along the way, but don't read the novel for this reason. Much more interesting is the young man, Ross Ohrenstedt, who's writing his Ph.D. dissertation on these authors, and the students he teaches, but those readers not in academia may not appreciate some of the details, and those in academia will probably find that Picano doesn't have a 100% accurate take on the inner workings of academia. There's also a bit of mystery regarding an unidentified ms, along the general lines of Henry James' THE ASPERN PAPERS, which may pull in a few readers interested in this very particular type of mystery about literature, though even here I found the "payoff" again dubious. I've admired many of Picano's novels and this effort is admirable, but as much as I wanted to love this novel, I had to conclude he's written a half-dozen better ones. This novel can be passably satisfying, but only for the most fanatic readers of Picano and the others that comprised the Violet Quill.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good - But Not His Best, November 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Book of Lies (Hardcover)

For readers of the Violet Quill, this book will hold your interest. Although you may be distracted by trying to figure out who all the characters may or may not be. There is a heavy dose of academic/publishing world insider trivia that seems a bit unnecessary. Otherwise, it's an interesting read. Still, I pine for the nostalgia of The Men Who Loved Me.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Men with Words, November 20, 2001

By 

Eric Anderson (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of Lies (Paperback)

Ross Ohrenstedt is a literary scholar whose interest in the Purple Circle (fictionalization of Picano's Violet Quill Club) borders on obsession. He methodically searches out the widowers of the group's members and the few members who remain alive in search of a mysterious man who was rumored to be associated with the group. Amidst his literary finds we are given glimpses of his personal life, aspirations as a scholar and his ambiguous sexuality. This is a book of mysteries layered upon mysteries and the reader ultimately has to draw his own conclusions about what actually happened within this group. The lush prose and biting dialogue lead to a triumphant climax where the ground beneath your feet is obliterated.

The mysteries of this book are only a costume for the real problems it is working to unravel. It is a quest to understand the male identity and how we negotiate sexual relations. Its most pressing issue probes the meaning of a self-defined gay literature which the group claims didn't exist before they established it. The need for a category of gay literature extends to sociological issues, but the primary focus of this novel is to explore the impact of this literature upon the general population. By unearthing the multifaceted expressions of homosexuality it celebrates both love and the problems which inspire the need for a defined gay "community". Ross's primary search is for scholarly achievement, but his desire is to find an understanding of himself which can encompass a fluid sexuality. This is an involving tale and a deep meditation on gay writing itself.