Outline of My Lover
Published on 16. July 2020
Book
Paperback/Softback
112 pages
978-1-64362-023-7 (ISBN)
Description
The twentieth anniversary edition of an early autofiction classic.
On the fringes of the music scene in a Southern college town, a lonely young student driven to flee a troubled adolescence pursues and forms a life-altering relationship with an acclaimed artist-musician. Their understanding develops in a pattern of sex and reticence, soon impacting both their paths and greatly shifting expectations. Written "as if telling the truth was a matter of survival" (Andrew O'Hagan), it is a queer bildungsroman.
On the fringes of the music scene in a Southern college town, a lonely young student driven to flee a troubled adolescence pursues and forms a life-altering relationship with an acclaimed artist-musician. Their understanding develops in a pattern of sex and reticence, soon impacting both their paths and greatly shifting expectations. Written "as if telling the truth was a matter of survival" (Andrew O'Hagan), it is a queer bildungsroman.
Reviews / Votes
"This slim novel, the story of an obsessive love between a young man and the older musician who keeps himself at a distance, is a pitch-perfect summer read: it's intense, sexy, gratifying even while it's breaking your heart."-Corinne Segal, Literary Hub
"I'd internalized something from Outline of My Lover, less a lesson than a sensibility, or maybe a hunger. From a permission it had become a goad: write well, or why write anything?"
-Hugh Ryan, Literary Hub
"There is a reverence in Douglas Martin's writing composed of equal parts language and love. Outline of My Lover strips away the dross, leaving you with the pure mood of youth."
-Dale Peck
"Douglas Martin takes you through the heat of family, the electricity of want, and the watch-what-you-wish-for gift of an elusive, famous, lover. This novel feeds you."
-Michelle Tea
"Outline of My Lover was the first book I read when I moved to Brooklyn. For me, it isn't just a 'queer story' or a 'queer narrative' or 'queer characters.' It queered structure. It queered syntax and vocabulary. It queered tense. It gave me permission to question and fuck with and break from the literary structures that were built to keep my voice and my experience and my life and my thought process on the margins. The story told me: Tell your own. Even, and especially if, it occurs strangely to you. Told me: Map your strangeness in words. Told me: Keep going. Keep going. Keep. Going."
-Tommy Pico
"Spare and elegant, Martin's book is a worthy companion piece to Duras' The Lover. It is his elegy on passion and loss."
-Darcey Steinke
"Douglas Martin has a very beautiful voice. It is a thing of grace."
-Dennis Cooper
"This book is full of hard-won, fraught, unsparing emotional truth. It is a love story between a raw and damaged boy-narrator and a famously mysterious rock star. But more than that, it is a piece of stylish and ferociously sharp prose. I love its fierce concentration and levels of obsession."
-Colm Toibin
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 194 mm
Width: 137 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
174 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-64362-023-7 (9781643620237)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Born in Virginia and raised in Georgia, Douglas A. Martin moved to New York at 25 and now resides in Brooklyn. Douglas's writing spans fiction and nonfiction, traversing poetry and prose. Martin's works have been translated into Italian, Japanese, and Portuguese. Past books include: Once You Go Back (Lambda Award nomination in the Gay Memoir/Biography category), Branwell (Ferro-Grumley Award finalist), a book of stories, and volumes of poetry. An early autofiction, Outline of My Lover, was named an International Book of the Year in The Times Literary Supplement and adapted in part by the Forsythe Company for their ballet and live film "Kammer/Kammer." Publications with Nightboat Books include a book-length essay and lyric study, Acker, and the triptych of novellas, Your Body Figured.