Jameson Currier
	Desire, Lust, Passion, Sex Green Candy Press, 2004 302 pages. ISBN: 1-931160-25-2. $14.95 Short stories included: Lessons Snow What Is Enough? First Shave Alibis Fearless A Date with Dracula, a Trick with Tarzan What You Learn Impromptu Elvis Is Alive and Working on Eighth Avenue Expatriates What You Find Flash Gordon at the Exclusive Dating Service for Men A Kiss Grown-ups The Man of My Dreams Desire, Lust, Passion, Sex What Counts Most Buddies The acquiring editor was Kevin Bentley. Read a story: http://www.velvetmafia.com/01/currier.php The first collection of short fiction in more than a decade from the author of Where the Rainbow Ends and Dancing on the Moon, Desire, Lust, Passion, Sex brings together nineteen stories by Jameson Currier—including six never-before-published works as well as the author’s widely praised short fiction previously published in literary journals, Web sites, and award-winning anthologies such as Best Gay Erotica, Best American Erotica, and Men on Men. In this new collection, the author meticulously details the search for love, romance, and partnership between gay men, and his characteristically spare prose brings into sharp relief the sometimes maddening traits that constitute a person’s romantic ideal and shows how the quest for a meaningful relationship can transform—or derail—the course of our lives. “Jameson Currier is a literary rara avis, a topflight American short story writer who treads where he pleases, and doesn’t acknowledge genre boundaries. At its best, his work—particularly his erotica—is filtered through an exquisite poetic sensibility, and a prism of humanity that lifts the story above and away from anything as pedestrian as a genre, and into the realm of fine literature.” —Michael Rowe, author of Looking for Brothers and Other Men’s Sons “In his new collection, Jameson Currier reasserts himself as one of our preeminent masters of the short narrative form. Currier plays with points of view: first-person and third person, to be sure, but also the rarely used (and even more rarely used well) second-person point of view. In these lapidary tales, he computes the inscrutable calculus of desire with uncanny accuracy. In fact, there is such precision in both the foreground and background details of each tale that this collection is nothing less than HDST—High Definition Story Telling. The effect is often unnerving. This is not a microscope that Currier presents to you, dear reader; it is a mirror. And objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” —Thomas L. Long, editor-in-chief,Harrington Gay Men's Fiction Quarterly “Jameson Currier is a master of everyday eros—that is, he perfectly captures in strong, handsome prose, the complete range of erotic moments shared between real men in real time in the real world, a feat in writing as refreshing and rare as it is arousing. And Desire, Lust, Passion, Sex is the proof.” —Ian Philips, author of Satyriasis and See Dick Deconstruct Where the Rainbow Ends Overlook Press, 2000 352 pages. ISBN: 1-58567-084-7. $14.95 Read an excerpt: http://members.aol.com/JimCurrier/xmas79.html “Beautifully written and profoundly moving.” —Greg Herren, Lambda Book Report “Currier is adept at drawing a fine line between the erotic and the tragic, and at telling stories that 'although personal, are also the stories of our community.'” Where the Rainbow Ends feels like the fictionalized history of a generation of gay men.” —Erik Burns, The New York Times Book Review “Currier tells a moving tale in which, in the face of devastating losses, Robbie and his 'stitched-together' family, now in Los Angeles, are able to emerge from grief strengthened by the stories they carry. Currier has created a powerful monument honoring a generation of gay men lost to AIDS and their wounded resilient survivors.” —Publishers Weekly Where the Rainbow Ends Overlook Press, 1998 352 pages. ISBN: 0-87951-892-8. $24.95 The acquiring editor was Hermann Lademann. Visit the author’s original home page: http://members.aol.com/jimcurrier/currier.html Inspired by the Book of Job, Where The Rainbow Ends is the story of a gay man’s search for faith and understanding. Raised by a stern, religious father in a small Southern town, Robbie Taylor settles into New York City as an optimistic, romantic, young gay man with a circle of new friends with whom he navigates the idyllic sexual revelry of the 1970s. At the heart of Robbie’s new life are his lovers and friends who become his surrogate family: Vince, a playwright who shepherds Robbie into gay culture and activism; Jeff, a too-handsome actor with a enigmatic spiritual quest; Denise, a lesbian artist who yearns to understand motherhood; and Nathan, who becomes Robbie’s lover in the 1980s just as the AIDS epidemic becomes the epicenter of their world. As Robbie’s losses surmount and his faith is tested, he leaves Manhattan in the 1990s for Los Angeles where he suffers more adversity before finding redemption as an activist and father and once again allowing love to enter his life. Jameson Currier was awarded the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation grant for fiction for this novel, which was cited for its historical breadth and depiction of the gay and lesbian communities during the AIDS crisis. The novel was also nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Male Fiction, 1998. Dancing on the Moon: Short Stories About AIDS Penguin, 1994 188 pages. ISBN: 0-14-017272-6. $9.95 Short stories included: Introduction (paperback edition only) What They Carried Civil Disobedience Winter Coats Reunions Dancing on the Moon Montebello View Weekends What You Talk About The Absolute Worst Who The Boys Are Jade Ghosts Dancing on the Moon: Short Stories About AIDS Viking, 1993 188 pages. ISBN: 0-670-84656-2. $20.00 The acquiring editor was Edward Iwanicki. Read a story: http://members.aol.com/JimCurrier/reunions.html “Jameson Currier’s kind of fiction can recreate reality more accurately than a cinema verité account of our daily lives.” —Abraham Verghese, The Washington Post “The most sustained and affecting American AIDS fiction of 1993 was Jameson Currier’s collection Dancing on the Moon. At the heart of most of these 'simple' realistic stories are acts of ‘passionate’ caretaking that demonstrate how the lives of gay men under AIDS, their friends, and families ‘keep interweaving’ and that unembarrasedly convey ‘the unbearable sorrow which had punctured their souls.’” —Joseph Cady on “AIDS Literature” in Gay and Lesbian Literary History, edited by Claude J. Summers, Owl Books, 1995 “Some people may refrain from reading Dancing on the Moon out of a discomfort with AIDS. That would be a shame. As the band plays on, AIDS spirals deeper into our lives. To ask fiction to ignore what it has always done best: mirror the times in which we live, and the ways in which we survive, Dancing on the Moon reaches to fulfill that obligation with an effort of the first order. For that reason, and for the sheer good talent of Jameson Currier, this collection deserves a wide readership.” —Robert Drake, Baltimore Alternative In the title story from Dancing on the Moon, a young man, thinking of all his friends who have died from AIDS and those who are ill, says: “No one out there has a clue as to what our lives are like. All this is as strange to them as dancing on the moon.” The speaker, marveling at the gulf that separates those affected by AIDS from a world that thinks itself immune, is just one of the characters in this book of twelve stories about the impact of AIDS, particularly as it has reverberated through the lives of gay men. The author writes not only about those who are living with AIDS and those who have died from it but also about the friends, families, and lovers who nurse and care for the sick and remember them afterward. His characters range from rebellious Southern teenagers to an elderly Jewish woman whose grandson has died, to an infant with AIDS adopted by an AIDS widower and his new lover. “What They Carried” concerns the things friends bring and give to another friend over the course of his struggle with the disease. “Reunions” finds two men sharing a bizarre cab ride in the last days of their illnesses. In “The Absolute Worst,” a woman reunites two former lovers from her college years. A woman submerges herself in the new life of her dead brother’s lover in order to come to terms with her own losses in “Weekends.” In “Ghosts” a man seeks out a dying acquaintance in an unconscious attempt to justify his own lover’s suicide. In all the stories, men and women search for order and reason during a health crisis that knows no rationale.