Outline of My Lover : A Novel - Softcover

Douglas A Martin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330489607 ISBN 13: 9780330489607

Publisher: Pan MacMillan, 1877

Synopsis

In the sleepy town of Athens, Georgia, a young man goes off to a college miseducation and is drawn into a world of rich vicarious living. The unspoken relationship between this adolescent and his rock star boyfriend fast becomes a tale of world tours and plush continental hotel rooms. When the relationship falters, real life fills in the outline of the boys expectations.

About this title

From the Publisher

"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

"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

From the Author

"I am, or was, an avid journal keeper. It's begun fading as I work more specifically on book ideas. But Outline was started from scratch, each day getting up and having a blank page in front of me and my first thoughts, rushing to get them down in that limbo, before the world starting coming back in. It's very much a book about what the reader brings to it, whatever emotional or cultural baggage, how you put it down or carry it through to the end, if you let yourself be lead by the text or are provoked by it and interact with it. It still affects me to read it. I do want to be moved by my own work, never cold and calculated, and to me that's the challenge as a writer, how to shape something that's still living for you, without killing it, letting it breathe but breathe in the best form. I needed to be able to pick up the pieces. Yes, I'm intentionally referencing the real world, because I don't believe anything is created in a vacuum, and if it is, who does it expect to speak to? It was important that it be set in a Southern place trying to forget at the end of the day it's still just a small Southern town, with a few bands to recommend it. When you take away those bands, or the names of those bands, what do you have? Living in the South is traditionally all about not saying what you're not supposed to say. I also thought it would only be a matter of time before someone tried to come out and 'crack' my book, say this is what and who it's really about. I just wanted to get it out of the way up front. There's something else I'm really talking about here, and let's just get to a little deeper place than straight caricature. The boy sees how people start looking at him just because he's with the man, and he knows deep down he's nobody different. He's just himself. You're viewing yourself being viewed. That's partly what makes the book fiction, the idea of narrative control." -DM, 6/22/00

Edition details

• Publisher: Pan MacMillan
• Publication date: 1877
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0330489607
• ISBN 13: 9780330489607
• Binding: Paperback