Only the Good Parts [Paperback]

Daniel R. Curzon (Author), Daniel Curzon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1998

A gay college professor named Marc Brandt arranges to have a child with a lesbian couple, anonymously. What follows are both clever and cruel deceptions, the paternal vs. the maternal, the very latest of the modern, and the oldest of the human.

Editorial Reviews

Review

      I liked Only The Good Parts very much. It has ideas, style, and bite. Once I got into it, I couldn't put it down.  --  John Lauritsen,
author of The Early Homosexual Rights Movement
                        
 

--blurbs provided to author



    Few attempts at fiction in the form of letters work so well. 
 --Jerry Rosco, author of a biography of Glenway Wescott 

 

--blurb provided to author

Only the Good Parts is written following the rather old-fashioned technique of presenting letters between the characters. What modernizes this rather formal, dispassionate and emotionally distancing gimmick is that Curzon's characters are sending each other faxes and emails and notes slipped under doors. There is an immediacy to the communications which makes them surprisingly compelling. . . . It's a good book. Interesting. Provocative. For all sorts of reasons. -- Toby Johnson, White Crane Journal, Fall, 1998

I enjoyed the book. One of the best contemporary uses of a centuries-old form. Few attempts at fiction in the form of letters work so well. Some novelists use the related form of writing whole chapters from the point of view of one character only, and yet they don't make the individuals distinct. In Only the Good Parts, the voice (and personality) of each character is sharp and clear. -- Jerry Rosco, author of forthcoming biography of Glenway Wescott

I liked Only The Good Parts very much. It has ideas, style, and bite. Once I got into it, I couldn't put it down. So different from the typical, recent gay fiction I've had to trudge through for my gay men's reading group -- inept, maudlin stuff, which nevertheless finds major publishers, gets reviewed all over, and goes into paperback editions after the hardbound. -- John Lauritsen, author of The Early Homosexual Rights Movement, and A Freethinker's Primer of Male Love --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Author

This novel is based, to some extent, on my own experiences as a gay father, but it is not
a memoir.
--written to clarify the book on Amazon --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 440 pages
• Publisher: Xlibris; 1 edition (March 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738800201
• ISBN-13: 978-0738800202
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,312,345 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

BIOGRAPHY for DANIEL CURZON

e-mail: [e-mail]

CAREER BLURBS:
"Daniel Curzon is central and essential to the history of our community's culture." -- Doric Wilson, playwright

"Daniel Curzon is indeed an important, influential, enlightening, and entertaining author." -- Robert Patrick, author of Kennedy's Children,
Temple Slave, and Film Moi __________________________________________________________________
In fiction, Daniel Curzon has published in The Kenyon Review, Descant, Christopher Street, The Oregon Review, Pannus Index, and many other magazines. His stories have been anthologized in Mae West Is Dead (Faber and Faber), Man of My Dreams (Chronicle Books), Aphrodisiac (Coward-McCann), and several other collections.
His newest manuscript is a novel in e-mails about Jane Austen coming back to life in modern times and facing the problems of today: SAVING JANE AUSTEN.
His books include Something You Do in the Dark (G.P. Putnam and Lancer Books), The World Can Break Your Heart (Knights Press), Curzon in Love (Knights Press), Only the Good Parts and Not Necessarily Nice: Stories. Among the Carnivores (Ashley), Human Warmth and Other Stories(Grey Fox Press.

Daniel Curzon has also written plays on a variety of subjects:
His My Unknown Son was produced in New York at the Circle Rep Lab (1987) and later in an Equity production at the Kaufman Theater off-Broadway (1988).
Two of his pieces were included in Homosexual Acts, produced off-Broadway at Theater Off Square, New York (1991). My Unknown Son was given its West Coast premier in Los Angeles in the summer of 1997.

He was awarded the prestigious 1999 National New Play Contest Award for Godot Arrives by the Southwest Theatre Association. Also produced in New Delhi, August, 2009.

Winner one-act contest for "The Hit" at the Attic Theater of Hollywood (1997) and for "Sour Grapes" at the Actors Theater of Santa Cruz (1997)
First Prize, 1998, the One-Act Marathon of the Attic Theatre, Hollywood..

Winner of Second Prize, out of four hundred entries, for one-act "A Fool's Audition," Great Platte River Playwrights Festival, U of Nebraska -- Kearney, summer, 2001. Produced 2001. This one-act also won Honorable Mention in the 2001 Kernodle New Play Competition (U of Arkansas).

He has written a Shakespearean sequel (Henry II; Part III, a Maugham/Coward-like down-for-the weekend comedy (When Bertha Was a Pretty Name), plus several musicals with composer Dan Turner (Cinderella II (about what happens to Cinderella and her prince after they live happily ever after) and No Mince Pies (about Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans with parallels to our own times).

Daniel Curzon (Daniel R. Brown) was born in Litchfield, Illinois and grew up in Detroit. He holds a M.A. in English from Kent State and a Ph.D. in English from Wayne State U. He has taught at several colleges and universities, including Wayne State, the University of Maryland (Far East Div.), California State -- Fresno, and City College of San Francisco.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I Believe That People Are Basically Decent.", November 16, 2010

By 

H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Only the Good Parts (Paperback)

The most amazing and saddest thing about this really fine novel is that apparently few people know about it. That is a real tragedy since ONLY THE GOOD PARTS has everything going for it. The complex characters are completely fleshed out; and unlike so many novels published today, this one has a plot that grabs you and won't let go of you. (Mr. Curzon is always one step ahead of the reader.) Additionally the subject matter has not been done to death either and the author is not afraid of wading into deep water.

Mr. Curzon has created some really awful characters, both male and female; but there are others, flawed as they may be, whom you really care about and root for: Marc, for instance.He is a gay man in his 40's, a little thick in the waist with grey cropping up in his beard. A professor in less than a first rate college, he is quite a decent person. "I believe that people are basically decent, if given a chance, so I think most gay-bashing would stop if the bashers got to know gays as they are. (Aren't we essentially nice?) If every closeted gay/lesbian came out, the world would soon realize how many splendid gays they already know." That quotation could almost have been spoken by Harvey Milk. Marc's lover, Gordon, however, has precious little going for him. We probably would not be very upset if he stepped in front of a San Francisco street car. Marc decides to become a sperm donor for Sandra, a Lesbian separatist, described by another character as making "Atilla the Hun seem like Mr. Rogers," whose partner is the troubled but sympathetic Kayo.

While it is difficult to say much about this four-hundred-plus-page novel that practically turns its pages for you without giving the plot away, Mr. Curzon tackles homophobia, the horror of being falsely accused of child molestation (the Salem witch-trials come to mind), family values--can two people of the same sex raise an emotionally healhy child or not, or at least as healthy as one reared by heterosexual parents?-- parental love and the absurdity of fanaticism over causes. "Why does every good social movement descend into a travesty of itself?

Mr. Curzon uses a device as old as the Eighteenth Century novel PAMELA, that of letters, along with, of course, modern day e-mails and an occasional journal entry, to tell his story which has the feel of the best of Nineteenth Century novels. While the author is probably best known for his satiric comedies which often appeal to the intellect, he demonstrates, however, in THE GOOD PARTS, which is not lacking in braininess-- Marc, as you would expect from an English professor, often peppers his letters with literary quotations, refers to Henry James ("the secretly homosexual") and is doing research on Hugh Walpole- that he can write beautifully about the most tender and emotional of subjects: a lonely man dying of HIV, relationships that become stale and the overwhelming, all consuming love of a parent for his child. Finally surely the ending will move even the most jaded of readers.

I have read a half dozen of Mr. Curzon's works of fiction since the early 1980's. ONLY THE GOOD PARTS is by far the best one yet as this writer is at the top of his craft here. Speaking of sixes, I can think of that many novelists who write about the gay experience and apparently sell more books than he-- at least I see their novels all over bookstores--who do not write nearly as well as he.

5.0 out of 5 stars Dan Curzon hits it out of the park with "Only the Good Parts", November 29, 2010

By 

Sterling46 - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Only the Good Parts (Paperback)

I was familiar with Dan Curzon's writing, beginning way back with "Something You Do in the Dark". He has improved with age and "Only the Good Parts" is among his most engaging work. I just finished the Steig Larsson trilogy, ready to sink my teeth into another another page turner and hit the jackpot with this book,a rare amalgam of comedy,tragedy,intrigue and pure excitement. It picks up momentum as it goes along until it's roaring along with such intensity you cannot put it down. Mr. Curzon outdoes himself drawing his characters sharply with icy clarity and wit using only written correspondance between the characters as the vehicle to move the plot. "Marc" is the (sweet and somewhat ineffectual)sperm donor for a Lesbian couple. As time goes on, his wish to establish a relationship with his son increases. Seemingly insurmountable hurdles stand in his way at every turn, not the least of which is his mostly absent long time partner. The plot is an exciting race to the finish. This is an entertaining novel, a story told in a refreshing, unique style that in the end, demands that the reader take a look at himself and the quality of personal life progression. A must read to my thinking.

3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Unique plot and unique device, February 9, 1999

By 

Gip Plaster (near Fort Worth, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Only the Good Parts (Paperback)

Excerpt from a review at GayScribe.com: The unique subject matter -- a gay man having a baby with a lesbian couple -- is only one of things that makes the book unique. Curzon wrote the book as a series of letters, emails and faxes between the main characters rather than in the more traditional narrative style. While this style seems in some places to be a device that is rather cumbersome to maintain -- like when characters must write journal entries to help us understand emotions they are not revealing to others -- in other places, it seems to work fairly well. Unique in every way.