Ken Shakin
Autor/a de Love Sucks
Obres de Ken Shakin
Obres associades
Etiquetat
Coneixement comú
- Nom normalitzat
- Shakin, Ken
- Data de naixement
- 1959
- Nacionalitat
- USA
- Lloc de naixement
- New York, New York, USA
- Educació
- Juilliard School of Music
- Biografia breu
- Ken Shakin has been called the most negative man in fiction. In 1997 "Love Sucks" appeared to critical and commercial success, followed in 1999 by "Real Men Ride Horses". Shakin's talent for insulting people and animals has won him international recognition, including numerous drinks poured over his head and a lawsuit filed against him by the German State for the alleged meaning of a single sentence. Before taking up the pen, the New York native armed himself with a piano, graduating from the prestigious Juilliard School to pursue the life of a degenerate. After a career in music and drug dealing, he left the island once and for all and has been roaming the planet ever since.
Membres
Ressenyes
If you've ever read any of Ken Shakin's anthologies of short stories, you'll know that it's difficult to read them in one go. One thing that can be taken as a guarantee in his work, he packs a lot of meaning and imagery into every phrase, every sentence. Words often have two meanings and nothing is ever straight. (Pun intended)
Not for the squeamish or the faint at heart. His books are collections of vignettes on characters he has met, heard about or stories he's been told. All larger than life and all memorable. The most common phrase I utter when I read something of his is "Oh, dear" then I cackle.
If you're looking for blow by blow sex, forget it. Yes, there's plenty of penises, but it's the people that are memorable not the mechanics.
First up is "Real Men Ride Horses" how's this for a quote:
In fact it's hard to choose what part to quote, there are so many little phrases and paragraphs that summon up all sorts of images.
There's the Diva Queen in "Revenge of the Ghetto Diva"
There's the church organist who lusts after the young Vietnamese boy. The gay kid who lusts after his straight brother.
All stories told with Ken's inimitable world-weary style. He doesn't judge, he describes, almost daring the reader to take a moral stand and feel superior or otherwise. Such as in "Bingo" the tale of a gay Bingo Caller who runs the Church of the Latter Day Bingo in the middle of nowhere.
The best way to read these is when you've had a dose of unreal m/m romance and need a reminder of what the world is like or at least was like. Attitudes within the gay community and out change over time, but basically the underling motif of desperation and alienation still remain. Unfortunately.
If there is one that stood out for me, it was "Medicine Man".
With its vivid picture of trailer parks and prejudices as much on the part of the narrator as others. Little snippets of reflections on life as the author goes to talk to a gay medicine man living in a rusted up RV.
Ken’s not there to buy the weed the guy grows in half his trailer he’s there to talk about being gay in his position. The medicine man tells him:
"Medicine Man" is an interesting tale that deals with (amongst other things) looking back on a drug filled younger days with the author admitting:
Then the Medicine Man starts telling him about botes – not man nor woman
I highly recommend this book. Take it like a dose of salts. To clean out the system after an overdose of romance.… (més)
Not for the squeamish or the faint at heart. His books are collections of vignettes on characters he has met, heard about or stories he's been told. All larger than life and all memorable. The most common phrase I utter when I read something of his is "Oh, dear" then I cackle.
If you're looking for blow by blow sex, forget it. Yes, there's plenty of penises, but it's the people that are memorable not the mechanics.
First up is "Real Men Ride Horses" how's this for a quote:
The little feller likes horses. He goes straight up to the man, smiles and says plain as day: “I like your horse.”
That breaks the ice. Johnny might be a pushy little slut, but then all the power to him.
In fact it's hard to choose what part to quote, there are so many little phrases and paragraphs that summon up all sorts of images.
There's the Diva Queen in "Revenge of the Ghetto Diva"
A social ladder from top to bottom with studs and jocks on the top and geeks and nerds on the bottom and faggots in the mud......
“To suck dick, honey.” Here’s one tongue that’s not afraid to do its thing. He sticks that rattler out and it’s long enough to strangle me....
Only a true diva would have the balls to try for the football team, which in diva terms means getting them in bed.
There's the church organist who lusts after the young Vietnamese boy. The gay kid who lusts after his straight brother.
All stories told with Ken's inimitable world-weary style. He doesn't judge, he describes, almost daring the reader to take a moral stand and feel superior or otherwise. Such as in "Bingo" the tale of a gay Bingo Caller who runs the Church of the Latter Day Bingo in the middle of nowhere.
For the anonymous man at the turn of the millennium, sex is his religion. Man is his god and come the Holy Spirit. Satan is the virus.Getting it is a spiritual thing. Drugs sanctify the act. Sex satisfies those essential urges to be one with the anonymous other and surrender to an almighty power. In a world where the Pope takes a vow of poverty and bingo halls are non-profit charities, the only higher truth is an orgasm. It turns you on or it doesn’t. A matter of life and death.
The best way to read these is when you've had a dose of unreal m/m romance and need a reminder of what the world is like or at least was like. Attitudes within the gay community and out change over time, but basically the underling motif of desperation and alienation still remain. Unfortunately.
If there is one that stood out for me, it was "Medicine Man".
With its vivid picture of trailer parks and prejudices as much on the part of the narrator as others. Little snippets of reflections on life as the author goes to talk to a gay medicine man living in a rusted up RV.
The age is something between young and resurrected....
We don’t shake hands. He seems as personable as a man could be not knowing you and not caring the slightest. A handshake would be insincere....
Ken’s not there to buy the weed the guy grows in half his trailer he’s there to talk about being gay in his position. The medicine man tells him:
“Soon as they know about you, your friends become your enemies. Even good guys can’t stick up for you. Suddenly you’re some kind of child molester, a danger to the nice people and their families, and that gives them the right, praise the Lord, to break in one night and kick your ass into the desert. Beat the living fuck out of you and stick you in your car like it was your coffin, dump it on the roadside like it was your own fucking fault. Don’t matter if you’re still not dead. They torch the car anyway so the cops can write it off as an accident.”
My paranoia exactly.
"Medicine Man" is an interesting tale that deals with (amongst other things) looking back on a drug filled younger days with the author admitting:
“How much of my youth did I smoke it to try to get back to the lost innocence of my childhood. To that lonely place inside. And all I got was stoned.
To be exposed to the elements than wilt inside your head. Whenever I see people who are still at it after all these years, they look too old for it. Lone heads still carrying the torch. Alone in it, without their gang of merry men. Smoking with Medicine Man brings it all back. The feeling, even though I’m sitting in this trailer in the middle of nowhere, a far cry from the concrete desert of my youth. The feeling is the same. A sense of waiting for something to happen, continuously exuberant about the expectation. As long as you take the medicine.
Then the Medicine Man starts telling him about botes – not man nor woman
The tribe was diverse. A strange bird walked the plain. Certain men who dressed as women and worked with women and were even taken as alternate wives by men. They seemed to act like squaws. Yet they were bigger and stronger than many braves. Long legs made for swiftness in the desert. They could run through the night. They were seen carrying off fallen heroes from the battlefield, to nurse them back to health. They were known for their skills in fellatio....
Medicine Man tells me there was another kind of sodomite in the tribe, one not so easy to recognize. Th e Indians called them blood brothers. Two young men adopting each other in friendship. Two braves in battle, bonded together, their souls and bodies united in more than just blood. The missionaries soon began to realize that these were love affairs. The men hunted and fought together. They drank and ate and smoked together. And they slept together. Their bond was more fierce than any that could be forged with the multiple wives they left behind....
So much for cowboys and Indians. This is the stuff they left out of the movies. And the text books too.
I highly recommend this book. Take it like a dose of salts. To clean out the system after an overdose of romance.… (més)
The Cure for Sodomy sucks you into the story from the first chapter and doesn’t let you go until the last word. It’s one of the oldest stories of the world, the story of a life. Actually is the story of two lives, but it’s not like that classical novel where the young learns from the old, since both men are old, only that one is older than the other, and both men are on the descending phase of their life, only that one is ahead of the other. And no, even if I was hoping for an end where there was hope for at least one of the two, no, it’s not like that. And so why people should read this novel? Since it’s your story, our story, the story of the next person you will meet on the street, the neverending story in the eyes of the bum you avoid on the street. What is the moral of this story? That maybe you have to let that bum tells his story, before he dies and no one remember he was. That maybe that man has to allow him to listen, to understand that, even if he doesn’t see it yet, his life is not ended, he has still plenty to live. Maybe he will not be happy, but he will be there to experience the change in the world, and to be able to pass it to another man. He will be a storyteller, and that bum will die in body but not in soul.
This is basically the story of a very handsome man, a stud, who was born when being gay was a crime. Despite everything they did to him, from electric shocks to AIDS, he is still here, and he is still dancing, even if now he is dancing alone. He had the courage to love, two men for real, and a lot of men for fun, and he saw the changing in the world. When he was young being gay was a crime, not that he is old the crime is to be old and poor. Apparently this man was never right in the world, and so why he has not ended his life long ago? Because despite everything it happened to him, the longing to see yet another dawn was always too strong, the hope that the morning after would have been better. Does is matter that perhaps it was not like that? In the end, he lived, and he lived a lot, way more than many other men who denied who they were. And he loved, he loved a lot, and all his men, Jack and Tim, are still alive in his memory, while the narrator, with all his friends and former lover, has no one he wants to remember.
The Cury of Sodomy is history in form of narration, spanning from the pre WWII world, to the McCarthyism, to the ’70, passing not unscathed through the ’80 and the AIDS plague, to today. More than 70 years of being gay with all that it means. It’s not a pretty story, it smells and it’s sad, but in the end I think, that bum has lived for ALL those years, and he has LIVED, not survived.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1603814329/?tag=elimyrevandra-20… (més)
This is basically the story of a very handsome man, a stud, who was born when being gay was a crime. Despite everything they did to him, from electric shocks to AIDS, he is still here, and he is still dancing, even if now he is dancing alone. He had the courage to love, two men for real, and a lot of men for fun, and he saw the changing in the world. When he was young being gay was a crime, not that he is old the crime is to be old and poor. Apparently this man was never right in the world, and so why he has not ended his life long ago? Because despite everything it happened to him, the longing to see yet another dawn was always too strong, the hope that the morning after would have been better. Does is matter that perhaps it was not like that? In the end, he lived, and he lived a lot, way more than many other men who denied who they were. And he loved, he loved a lot, and all his men, Jack and Tim, are still alive in his memory, while the narrator, with all his friends and former lover, has no one he wants to remember.
The Cury of Sodomy is history in form of narration, spanning from the pre WWII world, to the McCarthyism, to the ’70, passing not unscathed through the ’80 and the AIDS plague, to today. More than 70 years of being gay with all that it means. It’s not a pretty story, it smells and it’s sad, but in the end I think, that bum has lived for ALL those years, and he has LIVED, not survived.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1603814329/?tag=elimyrevandra-20… (més)
Ressenya escrita per a Crítics Matiners de LibraryThing .I was hopeful in the first 10 pages, then couldn't make it past 50. I've tried several times to re-read, and it's just not going to happen. In all my years of reading, this is only the 4th book I've ever not finished. But I'd rather stop, then waste too much time on something just to say I finished it.
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Autors associats
Estadístiques
- Obres
- 8
- També de
- 1
- Membres
- 71
- Popularitat
- #245,552
- Valoració
- 2.2
- Ressenyes
- 12
- ISBN
- 12
What I liked about "Love Sucks" is the reality of the stories. "Man and his Toys" for example, a funny yet sad description of Harry and his sex aids. Ken Shakin doesn't pull his punches. The resulting images may not be pretty, but they're probably realistic.
I'm glad Lethe Press has re-issued the story written back in 1997 and it is also available as an ebook through All Romance Ebooks.
Whether or not the gay scene of New York has changed in the thirteen years since the book was written is immaterial.
The stories are about human nature as much as anything, the innate selfishness (much as we like to think otherwise), the resulting isolation, the dissatisfaction. These aspects are usually always present, they just manifest themselves differently in each generation.
It's definitely not gay romance, more gay reality.
Here's a good sample of what you can expect from "I Can't Get Enough":
I ask him if he has a name. He mumbles something. He barely
talks. Sex will be the language we speak. What the UN calls
cultural exchange. I offer to buy him a drink. No response,
so I buy him a beer. He drinks it. This is not the guy you
ask about his work, either to suggest that standing in a bar
is performance art or getting sucked off a career goal. You
certainly don’t ask him to come home with you to fuck. You
have to be subtle.… (més)