Sweet Embracable You [Paperback]

Jack Fritscher (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 230 pages
• Publisher: Palm Drive Pub; 1st edition (December 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890834351
• ISBN-13: 978-1890834357
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,690,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jack Fritscher emerging from the gay past exists, both now and in the future, as a pioneer participant in gay culture and as a critic chronicling analytical witness to that history. He is the double-jointed author of literary fiction as well as of erotic fiction, including 4 novels, 5 fiction anthologies, 3 nonfiction books, and 2 produced plays. He is also the director and videographer of 170 feature videos. A Gemini, born June 20, 1939, he has balanced twin careers in literature and erotica--often recombinantly.

MID-CENTURY GAY WRITERS
A gay pioneer from the 1960s, he wrote the 1968 novel, "I Am Curious (Leather)," began before Stonewall his research on "Popular Witchcraft," befriended the legendary and elderly gay author Sam Steward (Phil Andros) in 1969, and became the founding San Francisco editor shaping the legendary "Drummer" magazine (1975) which published his features, fiction, and photographs for 25 years in more than 62 issues. Those writings and photographs, annotated with historical commentary by the author, are available free online at this site.

In 1953 at age 14, he came out into the closeted gay world by writing a "gladiator novel" while attending the Vatican's ultra-exclusive Catholic seminary, the Pontifical College Josephinum, where the bullies were not the jocks but the opera-and-liturgy queens. His short fiction was first published in 1958 in the Catholic press.

Also adolescents at this time, his American gay peers were John Rechy; William Carney; Rita Mae Brown; and Dorothy Allison; as well as Andrew Holleran, Felice Picano, and Edmund White who founded their Violet Quill in late 1980.

These mid-century careers made possible the next generation: the fin de siecle writers who appeared after HIV in 1982. They rose during the late-80s invention of history's first viable small lesbigay book publishers whose anthologies took the place of the once-flourishing gay magazines which by the millennium had collapsed because of internet competition.

DIVERSITY, PERVERSITY. THEOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY
As a diverse wild card among his 20th-century contemporaries, Fritscher is the only Catholic writer, and the only actual holder of an earned PhD in literature. In addition, he is the only writer who also composes and creates as a photographer and videographer. In 1966, he wrote the world's first PhD dissertation on Tennessee Williams titled "Love and Death in Tennessee Williams: His Philosophy and Theology." Themes and rituals of Catholicism thread through his fiction and nonfiction from the incarnational "Some Dance to Remember" to the passion and death of "Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera." His formal training in philosophy, theology, literature, and criticism is the architecture of his sweeping historical work on witchcraft, the drama of Tennessee Williams, the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe, and the popular culture of homosexuality. His photography is a succession of heroic and suffering images from the "Roman Martyrology of the Saints."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not afraid of Virginia Woolf in more than one story, August 26, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Sweet Embracable You (Paperback)

Recently I read that Virginia Woolf wrote a letter from a mental nursing home stating, "I feel my brains, like a pear to see if it's ripe: it will be exquisite by September." Now I understand the photograph of the pear with the bite out of it on the cover of this clever book of short fiction. The homage to Virginia Woolf in the story "Mrs Dalloway Went That-Away" opens even farther the door on the Bloomsbury closet. And brings Woolf into the contemporary scene. The screenplay about the Grand Duchess Anastasia reads very nicely on the page. Over-all an enjoyable evening's read.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A diverse and representative compilation, February 7, 2001

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sweet Embracable You (Paperback)

Sweet Embraceable You is a diverse and representative compilation of eight totally engaging short stories by experienced and gifted storyteller and writer Jack Fritscher. These original and highly entertaining stories include Mrs. Dalloway Went That-A-Way; The Unseen Hand In The Lavender Light; The Story Knife; Missing Persons; Silent Mothers, Silent Sons; Duchess: Berlin 1928; Kweenasheba; and the title story, Sweet Embraceable You. Enthusiastically recommended recreational reading!

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Movie Buff loves these entertaining filmic stories, April 14, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Sweet Embracable You (Paperback)

What a surprise to find the "Mrs. Dalloway" Legend of Virginia Woolf spinning out of Michael Cunningham's novel "The Hours" into not only the film versions of Vanessa Redgrave's "Mrs. Dalloway" and Nicole Kidman's "The Hours" but also into Jack Fritscher's extraordinary fusion of a short story, "Mrs. Dalloway Went That-A-Way." For movie fans and literary sleuths like me, the tricks all these writers use is a joy. "Mrs. Dalloway Went That-A-Way" is a great story in this collection of really entertaining short fiction.(This must be the first short story about "Civil Union" in Vermont.) The stories are called "coffee house stories," and the subtitle is a point well made. Well done.