Plastic Jesus

Martin, Billy (Brite, Poppy Z.)

ISBN 10: 1892284731 / ISBN 13: 9781892284730

Published by Subterranean Press, Burton, MI, 2000

About this Item

First trade edition, hardcover, signed by the author as Brite on the title page, the book has a slight lean to the binding, and mild wear to the spine ends. Otherwise, this is a solid, tight, clean Very Good+ copy in an unclipped Near Fine dust jacket, which has a small bump to the upper back corner, and is wrapped in Mylar.

Seller Inventory # 107203

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Plastic Jesus
• Publisher: Subterranean Press, Burton, MI
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1892284731
• ISBN 13: 9781892284730
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Trade.
• Condition: Very Good+
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Horror

About this title

Synopsis

The 1960's brought Seth and Payton all they'd fantasized about--perfect friendships, a successful four-man band, and most importantly, each other. Together they embarked on a tour that brought them stimulating highs and shattering lows, and they prospered and suffered in one another's arms. The two men carried each other and carried a group that created both a history and a future for rock. But at some point their music blurred with the news of their love and the world was faced with the choice to embrace its heroes or revert back to its deep-rooted prejudices.

Reviews

Brite trades the modern gothic gloom that has chilled most of her fiction to date (Lost Souls; Exquisite Corpse; etc.) for sunny '60s nostalgia in this warm but slight roman ? clef celebrating the Beatles. In her version, the fab four are the Kydds, Liverpool is Leyborough and Lennon and McCartney are, respectively, Seth Grealy and Peyton Masters, creative soulmates whose music takes the world by storm. The twist that turns this homage into one of Brite's trademark explorations of sexual identity is her depiction of Grealy and Masters's working relationship blossoming into a gay romance. The boys' love for one another is an inevitable outgrowth of the feelings they express in songAbut it becomes a point of public controversy that breaks the band apart and sets up Seth for his murder by homophobic assassin Ray Brinker. Though Brite is sensitive in her portrayal of Grealy and Masters's relationship, she is almost too reverent in her fidelity to Beatlemania. The brief tale moves too rapidly and reflexively through well-known historical highlightsAthe band's adoption by manager Brian Epstein (incarnated here as gay record store owner Harold Loomis), their experiments in music and drugs, their vilification by the religious rightAfor events to have any resonance with the central love story. It ends with a wistful wish-fulfillment fantasy too improbable to support its professed moral that "love is worth dying for." In an afterword, Brite reveals she had originally plotted this tale as a full-length novel. Greater length might have yielded greater substance than this fannish tribute.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.