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Gay/Lesbian/Feminist Bookstores Around the Country
The Mostly Unfabulous Homepage of Ethan Green
Briefly Told
Lives
By C. Bard Cole
In Briefly Told Lives, C. Bard Cole
presents a wild panorama that sweeps from the urban gay ghetto to working-class
suburbia to the counterculture of punks and sex workers – a shockingly
original view of lives lived on the edge of both straight society and
the gay "mainstream." A broad tapestry in which conventional
dividing lines begin to lose their fixed meaning, these stories tell of
characters who spin their own master narratives, revealing lives rich
in meaning and bought dearly through pain and compromise.
Intense and rewarding, C. Bard Cole's debut collection exposes the complexities and contradictions of personal identity in a world devoid of grand truths and shared values. Briefly Told Lives is brash and insightful, bringing a very different, hidden world into the literary limelight.
C. Bard Cole is one of the leading literary figures to emerge from the queer punk movement of the 1990s. His fiction and cartoons have appeared in Holy Titclamps, Riotboy, Dirty, Boy Trouble, and queer zines, as well as in self-published chapbooks like Tattooed Love Boys and Fag Sex in High School. His stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, including Men on Men 7 and Flesh and the Word 4. Born in Baltimore County, Maryland, he attended Sarah Lawrence College and Parsons School of Design. He lives in the East Village in New York City.
Advance Praise for Briefly Told Lives
"C. Bard Cole’s Briefly Told Lives is fresh, sweet, lucid, raucous, and amazingly free of the corner-cutting, soft-pedaling, pseudo-literary tropes that constitute most of contemporary fiction. The way these stories face the fucked-up music of love, sex, loss, and social injustice, and maintain their curiosity and style, is a really new, rare pleasure."— Dennis Cooper, author of Frisk and Period
"No one writes more compellingly about sex than C. Bard Cole. He is a master of confused longings, clear-eyed chronicler of ambiguous desire, purveyor of desperate acts of love. He charts the course of badly lived lives with great economy and wit. If this book doesn’t stir you, then maybe you should consult your doctor. If this book doesn’t make your heart ache, then the situation’s probably hopeless."– Paul Russell, author The Coming Storm and Boys of Life
"C. Bard Cole’s provocative and entertaining prose makes Briefly Told Lives an exhilarating collection. Gritty and genuine – a terrific debut."— Katharine Weber, author of The Music Lesson
"One of the most exciting debuts I’ve had the pleasure of reading, by a young author whose eye for squalor and tenderness are equally authentic. The characters and voice were so compelling that I literally didn’t want Briefly Told Lives to end."– Poppy Z. Brite, author of Exquisite Corpse and Lost Souls
Read an interview with C. Bard Cole at thestranger.com. You can also visit the author’s personal Web site.
| Table of Contents:
On a Railroad Bridge,
Throwing Stones Selected Lives in Brief The Mother Additional Selected Lives in Brief
Foo Dog More Selected Lives in Brief
That’s How Straight Boys Dance |
Copyright ©
2000 St. Martin's Press.
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