The Wild Man [Paperback]

Patricia Nell Warren (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2001

Antonio, a handsome and disillusioned bullfighter, secretly longs to release the wild bulls back to primordial freedom. Juan, a lusty, gentle peasant youth, has a gift for healing and burning passion to become the world's finest veterinarian. Together, these unlikely companions nurture an ancient tract of Spanish land while pursuing their fervent, radical dreams. When they discover their forbidden feelings, a brutal clash erupts with family, church, and the terrifying regime of Spain in the 60's. Only two people share their perilous secret- Antonio's fearless twin sister and the beautiful fiancée his family demands he marry. This new love story from the most popular author of gay fiction is a searing, stunning chronicle of turbulent Spain of the recent past, with a powerful message of the present.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Warren, best known for The Front Runner, the ground-breaking novel about a gay athlete, has created another gay sports figure in her first work in four years. With his overweening machismo, the complex hero, a closeted matador at the end of Franco's rule in Spain, is never entirely sympathetic but always fascinating. He is aware of the political and social changes of the 1960s but must face the conflict between the demands of his aristocratic family and the traditions of his sport, on the one hand, and his growing love for an idealistic young peasant on the other. Warren's overly romantic style sometimes threatens to turn this into a romance novel. The depiction of gay life under a right-wing dictatorship and the start of the ecological movement in Spain are often more absorbing than the love stories. In spite of stylistic flaws, Warren tells an absorbing story, and his characters transcend stereotypes in a setting that will be exotic to most American readers. For gay fiction and larger popular fiction collections. Daniel Starr, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

While being introduced to Los Angeles gay nightlife, Warren says in a preface, she encountered a tantalizingly familiar face, that of a Castilian gentleman whose graying curls indicated middle age. The barman said he came in once a week and sometimes bought dinner for one of the young hustlers who hung around the place. He always left alone. Having been a journalist in Spain, she struck up an acquaintance with him and learned he was Antonio Secured, a once-famous bullfighter she had seen in the ring on many occasions. Over time, he told her of his life under Franco and of his secret love affair with Juan, a man whose telepathic relations with animals made him unique. He and Juan had to bear the pain and fear involved in necessary secrecy and also the anguish of watching the dictator destroy their country. Warren has Antonio spin his tales of days past in other places and other worlds as he once spun his cape before the bulls, with grace and elegance. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 317 pages
• Publisher: Wildcat Press; First Edition edition (April 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1889135054
• ISBN-13: 978-1889135052
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,232,469 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

PATRICIA NELL WARREN

AUTHOR, PUBLISHER AND ACTIVIST

BIOGRAPHY


Patricia Nell Warren has written and published professionally since 1954, at age 18. In 54 years, her subjects have ranged from women and Goddess Earth to human rights, from gay life and mixed-blood people in American history to wildlife, the environment and current events.

Now 73 years old, she was born in 1936 and raised on a Montana ranch. She worked as a Reader's Digest book editor for 15 years, on both the magazine staff and the Condensed Book Club.

Today Warren lives in Los Angeles, where she co-owns an independent book-publishing and media company, Wildcat International, in partnership with media specialist/writer Tyler St. Mark.

Fiction

Since 1971 Warren has published eight novels -- several with mainstream publishers (Morrow, Bantam, Ballantine, Dial Press, Penguin) and several under her own independent imprint, Wildcat Press. The Front Runner, Harlan's Race and Billy's Boy are a landmark series that follows an evolving family through 20 years of gay life. Her most recent gay-themed novel is The Wild Man, a bestseller that came out in 2001.

She also published two mainstream novels, The Last Centennial (1971) and One Is the Sun (1991), as well as four books of Ukrainian poetry.

Warren's best-known fiction work, The Front Runner, was first published by William Morrow in 1974, and became the most popular gay love story of all time. The book has sold an estimated 10 million copies worldwide and been translated into ten languages, the most recent being Italian.

Film rights of The Front Runner have been in development for some years, and recently received a great deal attention as one of "Hollywood's unmade gay films" during Brokeback Mountain's run-up for the Academy Awards.

Currently Warren is working on a new novel titled Wrong Side of the Tracks.

Nonfiction

Warren's newest title is her first nonfiction book. It's titled The Lavender Locker Room, an anthology of nonfiction articles about gay pioneers in sports history, that appeared on Outsports.com. Published in 2006, it was an Amazon history topseller, won the Independent Publisher Gold Medal in the gay-lesbian category, and was a finalist in the Benjamin Franklin Awards.

Warren's articles and op-eds have appeared in a variety of mainstream publications, including Atlantic Monthly, Los Angeles Times, Reader's Digest, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Modern Maturity, Persimmon Hill, New York Press, Des Moines Register, Mythosphere, Corporate Africa. She has also published in various leading gay publications.

For A & U Magazine she writes a monthly column on the politics of AIDS and public health. Online, she blogs at The Bilerico Project, the most popular and politically vociferous glbt blog on the Web, as well as the Huffington Post.

She is also writing further sports profiles for Outsports.com and Lavender Locker Room II.

Film Development

As a result of interest in movies based on her novels, Warren has moved into active development herself as an executive producer, in partnership with Greg Zanfardino of Moniker Entertainment.

At present, she has several docudrama projects on her slate, including an Australian group's novel search for the wreck site of Amelia Earhart's aircraft in Papua New Guinea.

Activism and Politics

Warren's political activism started during the 1960s, with efforts -- while still a Reader's Digest editor -- to have American media recognize the individuality of Ukrainians and other ethnic groups in the USSR.

In the 1970s Warren was the plaintiffs' spokesperson for Susan Smith v. Reader's Digest, a landmark lawsuit that resulted in a class-action victory for women. As a former amateur athlete, Warren helped lead a group of women distance runners who forced the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union, the then governing body of amateur sports in the U.S.) to change discriminatory rules in the mid-70s.

More recently, in the free-speech realm, Warren has been a named plaintiff in both federal lawsuits over Internet censorship -- namely ACLU v. Reno (which went to the U.S. Supreme Court and resulted in a victory for the plaintiffs) and the more recent ACLU lawsuit over the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which was also struck down as unconstitutional.

Her most recent political step was her first time out as a candidate in 2007. She ran for city council in West Hollywood, CA, on a platform that included a goal of WeHo being the first in the country to offer universal single-payer healthcare to its residents. She lost to an incumbent, but ran a creditable campaign and got 23 percent of the vote.

As recognition for her activism and contribution to public, Warren has won a number of awards, including New York City's Public Advocate Award and the Barry Goldwater Award.


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More information on Warren can be found at : www.wildcatpress.com and www.patricianellwarren.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Warren masterpiece of gay literature, March 2, 2005

By 

Johnny (New York, New York United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wild Man (Paperback)

Set in late 1960s Spain that is struggling under the yoke of Francisco Franco's oppressive dictatorship, Patricia Nell Warren has woven a story of relationships, repression, and the human spirit's yearning to overcome. Author of The Front Runner, the novel that is generally considered THE breakout gay novel that has paved the way for all that have followed, Warren has exceeded herself in many ways with The Wild Man.

Spain, in all her rustic beauty, deep traditions, and centuries-old history of violent repressions perpetrated by the Catholic Church, the throne, and governments that often backed and supported it, the political background of The Wild Man is a vital part of this story. Warren, having lived and worked in Spain during the period that's depicted in The Wild Man, has imbued the story with nuances only a real understanding of the climate and history of Spain can render.

Antonio Escudero is The Wild Man. A fading bullfighter in the traditional style, battling an old injury and his own inner conflict, at thirty years old, he is edging towards retirement. Fueled by his crumbling conviction about the meaning of his art, he carries another burden. Living in a country known for its long history OF violent racial and ethnic cleansing of Moors, Jews, intellectuals, dissidents and homosexuals, Antonio is a maricón. He is a homosexual. He has dealt with his needs, "the Big Hunger," by seeking physical pleasures while abroad, and hiding his reluctance to marry in the accepted bachelorhood of the torero. With his confidence shaken from the old injury, with his yearning for a relationship rather than a tryst, and with the pressures to wed placed on him by his family, Antonio is at a crossroads.

As Antonio limps from the ring after a fight at Santander on Spain's north coast, a working-class man wearing bloodstained coveralls leans out and offers a drink to Antonio. He is one of the butchers employed to dress the bulls that are killed in the ring. Antonio accepts the drink and moves on. After the fight, as Antonio and his entourage are leaving the arena and getting into their car, a man reappears in the crush of people scrambling for a piece of the toreros. It's the man who offered Antonio the drink. As the crowd presses in, Antonio's feet slip, he loses his footing and the young man, Juan, grabs him. Hidden in the mob of screaming people, Antonio feels Juan press his hips against him, and the unmistakable hardness in his pants. As Antonio jumps into his car, he pulls Juan in after him so that he won't be arrested by `the Grays,' Franco's police, there to squelch the mob's enthusiasm for the fights that could, at any time, erupt into a political riot. Antonio thanks Juan and offers him money. Juan proudly refuses. Juan is driven to a safe place, dropped off, and vanishes into the night. Thus, do Juan and Antonio first meet.

Over the course of the next days and weeks, Antonio's obsession with the man he saw, overwhelms him. Under the pressures from within and those from without, he risks his twin sister Josefina's trust. Called José, she and Antonio have always been close, and are both viewed unfavorably by their family. Each in their own way, they rebelled against the old traditions. They are an upper-class family, and Antonio's choice to become a torero was not well received. José did the unthinkable when she moved, unmarried and alone to Madrid, and got a job as a journalist, reporting on the Bullfights. When Antonio breaks down and shares the secret of his homosexuality and his obsession with a stranger he saw briefly in Santander, José shares a secret of her own. She, too, is a maricona. She, however, is not without a secret love in her life. Her long-time lover is Antonio's soon-to-be fiancé, Serafita, a friend of his sister's long before she ever met Antonio.

The story follows Juan and Antonio as they fumble through misunderstandings and false starts. Throughout all are Juan's deep pride and his angry refusal to be bought by Antonio's wealth and status. Antonio and Juan share a love of their native land, of the flora and fauna, and this provides them a mutual meeting ground, and indeed, a way to secretly fulfill their desire. Paralleling, and closely tied to their story, is José's and Sera's. In time, the four come to an agreement, a pact: two marriages of convenience. Before this can be brought to fruition, events unfold that threaten not only their shared dream to live as they need, but their lives as well. In Franco's Spain, torture and death for maricones is a real possibility. Underlying the main plot and intertwined throughout is a subplot of an Old Spanish relic of archeological value. This becomes a vital element in the events as they unfold.

The Wild Man is first and foremost a beautifully written story of love. The characters are fully drawn, fully realized, and well crafted. Warren paints Spain with brushstrokes both honest and loving, portraying a place that is both physically beautiful and at times, brutally cruel. The subtleties of the political currents and old Spanish traditions, set against the human spirit's striving for fulfillment, is moving and tragic, horrific and hopeful, yet ultimately a story of promise and optimism. Indeed, with long strides, Spain today has overtaken the United States in tolerance and basic human rights for gays.

The Wild Man is an absolute work of art, a true masterpiece of gay fiction, or rather, simply, of fiction, set in heady and intoxicating Spain, whose passions are revealed at times, not only in what she proudly displays, but also in what she once tried to hide.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Legend Returns, July 13, 2001

By 

J. - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wild Man (Paperback)

Patricia Nell Warren wrote the definitive gay novel obver 20 years ago with her landmark novel THE FRONT RUNNER. With The Wild Man, Warren again gets into the heads of gay men ever with a tale of love, desire, and the longing we all share to find the love of our life and make it work.

The title stems from the love interest, the story is told form the point of view of the central character, a bull fighter in Spain in the 1960s.

What makes this story so special is that Warren started it in the 1960s when she lived in Spain. It is only now that she felt she was ready to fully tell the story.

It reads like a piece of finely researched biography, travelling through almost four decades of growth, pain, love and harmony!

This is a must read for any one who loves gay fiction!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Legendary Author' Best Novel, June 12, 2001

By 

John R. Selig (Dallas, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wild Man (Paperback)

Patricia Nell Warren is a legendary icon in gay literature. Her landmark novel "The Front Runner" has captivated over 10 million readers in two generation since its publication in 1974. It has been published in ten languages.

Warren's newest novel, "The Wild Man" is argueably her greatest novel. The saga is set in fascist Spain in the late 1960s during the reign of Franco. The book is captivating. Once your read the first twelve pages you are hooked. The story revolves around a gay bullfighter, Antonio Escuedero, poised on the verge of retirement. A chance encounter with a peasant, Juan Diano Rodriguez, who has a unique ability to raise animals, leads to an unthinkable love story in an oppressive environment. The story is deepend through the relationship of Antonio and his twin sister, Jose, who is a lesbian with a hidden love life of her own.

Warren has often come under for writing about men. "The Wild Man" is proof that she writes drmaticly about women as she does about men. Once again, however, she is able to get into the emotions and psyche of gay men in a way that is unique in glbt literature.

Though set in Fascist Spain, Warren points out in the Notes and Acknowledgement section that follows the novel, that the increasing power of the religious right spells needed concern. Liberties fought for valiently can be easily lost if not carefully guarded.

"The Wild Man" is an excellent book. It is a quick read, a glimpse into a distant time and culture and a great deal of fun....