A House on the Ocean, a House on the Bay - Softcover

Picano, Felice

4

72 ratings by Goodreads

9781560234401: A House on the Ocean, a House on the Bay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1560234407 ISBN 13: 9781560234401

Publisher: Harrington Park Pr, 2003

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A House on the Ocean, A House on the Bay spans the heyday of Picano's life in the Pines and Manhattan during the 1960s and 1970s. He chronicles his love affairs and the tortuous intricacies of a longtime love triangle, his hilarious misadventures as a bookstore employee (arranging a book party hosted by Jackie Onassis, lunchtime rendezvous in secret tunnels below Grand Central Station, getting framed for embezzlement!), and the thrills and agonies involved in the writing and publishing of his first novels, including Smart as the Devil and Eyes. Picano also regales us with stories about the legendary "Class of 1975, " the "Gay 2,000" - hip, political, talented, beautiful young men who formed and molded gay culture as it exists today. AIDS eventually spread through the Pines like wildfire and about 98 percent of the "Gay 2,000" are now dead, but Felice Picano has lived through it all, and he gives voice to those times with humor, candor, and wistfulness.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

In this third installment of his memoirs, novelist Picano (Like People in History, 1995, etc.) revisits his life amid the fabulous gay crowd in Manhattan and Fire Island during the libertine '70s. Picano begins by describing his life in Manhattan before his first novel was published in 1975, when he was 31. As his success grew, he began gradually to spend more time on Fire Island in the summers and came to feel at home among the other artsy types who frequented the discos and beaches--and who cruised the island's al fresco gay ``meat market.'' Often Picano is incisive about his creative and romantic struggles, and he vividly captures the ebullient mood of gay New York in its pre-AIDS heyday. But scattered through the book are distastefully self- aggrandizing passages in which he asserts his personal and professional merits. For instance, he airily pontificates about the elements of his own childhood he put into one of his characters, ``the truly superior child who operates outside all norms, all conventions: for want of a better word, the genius. . . . I'd revealed a superior talent as a child.'' Picano notes the sales figures of his novels Smart as the Devil (1975) and Eyes (1976) and, as if he's desperate not to be thought a hack, explains how complex and rewarding these books are. Without redeeming irony, he goes on at length about how supremely attractive and desirable he and his two closest friends were considered by the Fire Island smart set. Perhaps most off-putting is Picano's evident conviction that the endless drugged-up days of sex and dancing and more sex during the late '70s added up to some kind of golden age of gay culture. Those who share this conviction are likely to be Picano's most receptive readers. (Author tour) -- Copyright �1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal:

A leading light in the gay literary world, Picano won last year's Ferro-Grumley Award for the best gay novel for Like People in History (LJ 6/15/95). Here the versatile author turns his novelist's eye on his own life in what is officially dubbed the third volume of his memoirs?though in some citations the previous two "memoirs" turn up as fiction. He divides this work into two "books," like neatly matched, summery novellas. The first takes place in late 1969 and 1970, as his writing career evolves; the second moves ahead four years as his first novels are published. There is the standard name-dropping (Bette Midler, Rose Kennedy, and Arnold Schwarzenegger) and the usual settings. The post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS New York gay scene of Greenwich Village bars and Fire Island summer sublets is not completely realized here. But Picano brings honesty and intimacy to the story with such details as a shadowy triad love affair, a cancer scare, and the conflict between writing and publishing. His glints of flashing wit and subtle hints of dark decadence transcend cliches. Recommended for academic and gay studies collections and for large public libraries.?Richard Violette, Social Law Lib., Boston, Mass.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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