|
|
Pulling Taffy
Praise for Pulling Taffy
"Pulling Taffy is queer lit, but you don't have to like queer lit to enjoy it. It's memoir giving a blow job to erotica, which in turn is taking it up the ass from a tone poem. If you believe all gay books must have a soft-focus, black-and-white photo of a half-naked bodybuilder on the cover, then you need this book to remind you what queer liberation is all about."
"Pulling Taffy, the debut novel by Matt Bernstein Sycamore exists in the gray space that is between autobiography, creative non-fiction and fiction. Reading more like a journal at some points and poetry in others, Pulling Taffy emerges with only one absolute: that a new voice is sounding off on the subject of appetite."
"The way Matt narrates his life is what makes this book a stand-out: it’s not the story that’s so spectacular, but the way that it’s told. Matt’s got this perpetual sense of perspective, an awareness of absurdity, whether it’s the world’s or his own."
"Sycamore's debut, Pulling Taffy, has a voice so raw yet so vivid that it's nothing less than cinematic."
"You'll never say, 'Oh my God' out loud so many times…it'll cause you to call up friends and read entire chapters to them!"
"Matt Bernstein Sycamore's Pulling Taffy is guaranteed to absorb, offend, titillate and tickle readers."
"As a work of literature—and Pulling Taffy is terrific literature—this book transverses a series of expected genres. It's a cross between Kerouac's On the Road and John Rechy's City of Night, except that it isn't as repetitious as the former or as sentimental as the latter. Sycamore has a unique voice—reminiscent of Frank O'Hara's 'and-then-I-did-this-and-then-I-did-that' school of poetry—that hints at drugged-out-drag patois but is firmly located in an urban vernacular that is familiar to everyone, but still surprising in its lilt and cadences."
"Pulling Taffy is a remarkably charming novel by a writer who has created a memorable character. Hopefully, he will soon take us beyond urban survival and paint a stage of other complex characters to up the ante. I will be anxiously awaiting Sycamore's second novel."
"Sycamore's prose achieves a neon state that can be emotional, scathing and arousing at the same time."
"Matt is a hustler with a ready hard-on, a quirky sense of humor, and a
preference for cash up front. He's also a cute club kid with a yen for hard
drugs, hard liquor, and hard partying. And he's an avowed vegetarian and
committed political activist, devoted to the memory of dead friends and much
loved by both his grandmothers. Plus he's intimately familiar with the
raunchy backrooms of sex clubs in Seattle, Boston, New York, and San
Francisco. All in all, Matt the character, much like Sycamore the author, is
an uncommonly layered young fag, a charming party mix of cheeky perception
and cheerful decadence. Pulling Taffy is a flamboyant hybrid of picaresque
fiction and candid autobiography—one bright, brash queer boy's own fierce
story. The stitched-together snippets of Sycamore¹s briskly erotic,
peripatetic life blur the line ably between fact and fantasy; the tale told,
with nervy brio, is—like the taffy of the title—fresh and chewy."
"The sexual odyssey of handsome hustler Matt starts in mid-'90s Boston, and takes us everywhere from San Francisco to New York to Provincetown, where the sex-hungry protagonist challenges every notion of gay assimilation. Matt has hot mansex everywhere, in public and private, in back rooms and bareback, playing roles to fit fetishes of every gay scene. Be warned: astoundingly lifelife, gritty, raw sex comes to life in these pages--described in vivid diary-like entries as Matt unapologetically lives the dark, underside of gay life. Surprisingly, although filled with episodes of unabashed sex, Matt's story also revels in incredibly intimate and emotionally powerful moments between individual gay men."
"Matt Bernstein Sycamore's fiction debut is a sharp and sparkling picaresque of queens and k-holes, grandmothers and tricks, friends and freaks. If David Lynch and David Wojnarowicz created a rebuttal to Will and Grace, it could very well be this book. Sycamore's keen eye reveals the everygay as not merely absurd but grotesque. Like good drugs, Sycamore's writing leaves me craving more."
"When my senses were first spanked by Matt Bernstein Sycamore's shamelessly frank, hilariously deadpan, flamboyantly raunchy writing, I felt as though I were being woken from a literary slumber. His voice is fresh in both senses of the word: new and impudent."
"Each chapter of Pulling Taffy reads like a stack of Nan Goldin color photos come to life. The exuberant rhythm of Matt Bernstein Sycamore's over-the-top honesty sent me into an erotic trance."
"With a reporter's eye and the ear of a spy, Matt Bernstein Sycamore writes, in Pulling Taffy, everything we would never have guessed about being young, available, and high as a kite in a handful of cities at the turn of our mercantile century. He and his book are beyond good and evil, he's Nietzsche Junior."
"I admire the candor and the reticence in this beautiful, anguished, funny novel. I have seen the future and it is Pulling Taffy."
"These accounts of an American hustler's urban misadventures will shock many
experienced prostitutes. The narrator's meatless diet of spirulina,
wheat-free dinners, melatonin, Stoli Vanilla and cocaine provides a
startling commentary on the contradictions of the past decade."
"In essence, Matt Bernstein Sycamore's debut novel, Pulling Taffy, is a story about nothing--in the way Seinfeld was about nothing. And like Seinfeld, Pulling Taffy is a recounting of the unusual episodes that somehow both keep life interesting and give it meaning. Bordering on autobiography (the author shares a name and previous occupation with his narrator), the book reads like the journal of Mattilda, a.k.a. Matt, a sex worker who speeds through his existence in a series of cities, each one supposedly an escape from the last. But what Mattilda/Matt encounters at every location are the same situations, the same internal struggles with sex, drugs, and satisfaction. What you learn in reading Pulling Taffy is that you bring your baggage everywhere you go, and the most promising thing about the future is perhaps losing it farthest from where you began."
"Pulling Taffy, the first novel by Mattilda, a.k.a. Matthew Bernstein Sycamore, dwells firmly in Michelle Tea territory--that is, teetering on the cusp of literature between fiction and autobiography. It's a growing-up story about a girl/boy who refuses to grow up, if "growing up" means assimilating, either in the straight world or the "alternative" gay culture. Moving from mid-'90s Boston to post-grunge Seattle to Giuliani's New York, "Pulling Taffy" is a funny and powerful political commentary, a great read by a dangerous, unrepentant, unlikely iconoclast."
"Pulling Taffy (Suspect Thoughts Press) by Matt Bernstein Sycamore is a fast-paced semi-autobiographical novel about a gay male hustler and his many adventures, erotic and otherwise, in Seattle, Boston and New York. Bathrooms, backrooms, and cruising areas where gay men get it on feature prominently, but there is also more to the story, told in short segments which jump from childhood to adulthood, friends to lovers, family to musings on all sorts of topics, from assimilation to foreplay, cocksucking to Ed Koch. The fast-paced style and lack of quotation marks lend it an urgency that will have you quickly turning the pages to follow Matt/Mattilda on his erotic adventures."
"Matt Bernstein Sycamore is the editor of the essay anthology Tricks and Treats, by far the best writing ever collected by and about sex workers and their clients. His first novel, Pulling Taffy, also deals the theme of sex work. Reading more like a memoir than a novel, it blurs the boundaries between autobiography, fiction, and fantasy. Its pages are absolutely bursting with brazen sexuality and emotional honesty--I've no doubt a fair amount of both based in real-life. The prose--like his escapades with sex, drugs, and clubs--is bold and unapologetic. Not following a standard narrative, Pulling Taffy's short chapters are mini adventures unto themselves, like a collection of interconnected stories that take the reader on a journey though many cities: Boston, Seattle, and New York, and a huge cast of friends, lovers, and tricks. Pulling Taffy satisfies not only as a compulsively raunchy erotic read, but also as a wonderfully fresh new voice in fiction not afraid to write about life as it truly is."
fiction/gay studies/sexuality
|
|
|||
