1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heartthrob Town From a Poet's Perspective, February 1, 2007
This review is from: Postcards from Heartthrob Town: A Gay Man's Travel Tales (Paperback)
Girard Wozek's stories run the emotional gambit. Written with such precise detail it's as if the reader is standing beside the narrator. First and foremost Wozek is a poet. This is obvious from his musical use of language and distinctive images. He has a sensitivity to the emotional complexity in all of us.
This book should not be limited to a gay audience. Rather it is for anyone fascinated by the human condition.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lit travel guide to places off the beaten track, January 11, 2007
This review is from: Postcards from Heartthrob Town: A Gay Man's Travel Tales (Paperback)
Gerard Wozek's vagrant characters in "Postcards from Heartthrob Town" are looking for something beyond the lure of common tourist sites and trendy vacation spas. Some of them are lonely wanderers, aimless loiterers who amble about a city without much of a rationale except to casually absorb the pulse of an overseas vacation town or take up brief residence in some European city in order to blend in with the sightseers and locals. Others seek out more risqué encounters with either their traveling companions or those who are haphazardly met along the course of a trip.
Each of the nineteen stories contained within this unique collection of travel writing offers an affecting sketch of a passionate traveler bound up in the desire to move out of the familiar and commonplace in order to merge with something more enticing, amorous and exotic: a covert kiss in the scummy latrines of the Paris Metro, a pilgrimage to a radical faerie retreat in the mountains of Tennessee, a tryst with a stranger at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, a total breakdown in a hallucinatory marketplace in the city of Tangier.
Wozek's compilation dissects the inner promptings of a gay excursionist and tries to get at what propels a traveler to cross over his restrictive borders in the first place. In the centerpiece short story, "Postcards from Heartthrob Town," the adolescent hero has dreams of the perfect Florida beach town, complete with suntanned "Teen Beat" pop stars from the seventies who inhabit this fantasy destination, among them, Bobby Sherman, Davy Jones and John Travolta. The young explorer invents a relationship with these "heartthrobs" who send him make-believe postcards inviting him to secretly meet--underscoring the book's theme that the impetus to venture out beyond safe boundaries is always motivated by imagination and the shifting nuances of romantic desire.
The story "My Polka Kings" is told from the vantage of a spurned lover who recounts his travel memoirs while touring the country of Poland. The narrative, written as a series of aerogrammes jotted to an ex-lover, offers a melancholy portrait of a solo traveler--a man who desires connection with his environs but who is compelled to recount the exploits of a lonely travelogue that is cluttered with memories from other times and places.
This absorbing collection of stories offers a number of historical and geographical insights into colorful vacation locales, mostly sites scattered throughout Europe, while at the same time, creates a tension and interest for the reader by grounding its characters in relationships that weave in and out of a intense connection with each other. Be warned, a few of the stories delve into moments of fairly explicit male on male sexual exploration, (note the bare swimmer's chest featured on the cover) but the bulk of these road tales build on meaningful character portraits and the provocation for wandering to someplace out of the ordinary.
One can't help comparing these fragments of personal diaries and queer travelogues to some of the earlier writings of Edmund White, particularly in "The Flaneur" or even the hypnotic, poetic journaling of beat poet Jack Kerouac. While some of the stories contained within "Postcards" feel experimental, incomplete, or at best, a prelude to what could be much longer pieces, ("Reuben Ran" and "Paris Angels" to name just two) there is something completely satisfying when viewing this collection as a whole. Embraced in its entirety, Wozek's travel-inflected narratives comprise the voice of a storyteller and poet who is skilled at chronicling the chaotic patterns of foreign cities and distant, compelling landscapes, as well as the driving motivations and yearnings of a wild vagabond. These are definitely keepsake "postcards" that one will consider fondly and read over again for pleasure.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Poet's Pulse, May 4, 2008
This review is from: Postcards from Heartthrob Town: A Gay Man's Travel Tales (Paperback)
This is one of the best collections of short stories I've ever read. I love these little erotic gems from Gerard Wozek, who is clearly a poet, above all. Combine this with his well-honed and intuitive storytelling and you get literature that's thoughtful and engaging, deep-felt and intimate. I highly recommend this book!
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