About this item
Highlights
- In eleven linked stories, prize-winning novelist John Weir brings his wit and compassion to the question of how a gay white guy from New Jersey lived through fifty years of the twin crises of global AIDS and toxic masculinity in America.
- Author(s): John Weir
- 224 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Short Stories (single author)
Description
About the Book
In eleven linked stories, prize-winning novelist John Weir brings his wit and compassion to the question of how a gay white guy from New Jersey lived through fifty years of the twin crises of global AIDS and toxic masculinity in America.
Book Synopsis
In eleven linked stories, prize-winning novelist John Weir brings his wit and compassion to the question of how a gay white guy from New Jersey lived through fifty years of the twin crises of global AIDS and toxic masculinity in America.
Review Quotes
"Your Nostalgia is Killing Me is a witty short story collection. Eleven linked first-person short stories tell the story of a protagonist whose early adolescent experiences of homophobia in a small town and whose adult loss of his best friend to AIDS during the height of the epidemic write the script for his life, propelling him in and out of relationships with friends, loved ones, and lovers who expect too much or too little. Taking place at acting classes, cinemas, funerals, high school graduation ceremonies, plays, public protest demonstrations, retirement homes, and sex parlors, these eleven linked stories pull at the thin line between erasure and exposure, all the while skillfully highlighting the performative nature of death, grief, illness, love, masculinity, and sexuality against the backdrop of late twentieth-century US culture."
-Dr. Amina Gautier"Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me refocuses the lens of memory. Most reboots and reimaginings may evoke retro fashions and music, but the true voices of the times come from those, like Weir, who survived the not-so-distant past."--Foreword Reviews
"This raw, unflinching work has a lot to offer."--Publisher's Weekly
"Sharp, elegaic, angry, funny stories with a searing loneliness often just underneath the surface."--Kirkus
"These eleven short stories are fast-paced with plenty of quick dialogue, pop culture, and political moments. Weir's collection is a history lesson, a survival story, and a study on how to occupy the space between."--Five South
"Your Nostalgia is Killing Me is entertaining and heartbreaking by turns, always a gripping read."--North of Oxford
"The linked stories span a 40-year period, illustrating the power of nostalgia to alternately bring us to tears and make us laugh with a familiarity that is sure to resonate with readers from all walks of life." --Bay Area Reporter and Grab Magazine
"Weir is the Whitman of the Age of Aids, bequeathing us litanies in cascading trebles."--novelist Kate Rounds
"Weir writes beautifully, and his wit, his keenly detailed observations, and his telling insights will resonate -- at the very least for gay men of the generation we share. His ruminations about that untamed epidemic our world continues to face -- unreconstructed masculinity -- could hardly be more timely."--Gay City News
"Weir writes beautifully, elegantly." --NY Journal of Books
"With insight, eloquence, and wit, Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me refocuses the lens of memory. Most reboots and reimaginings may evoke retro fashions and music, but the true voices of the times come from those, like Weir, who survived the not-so-distant past." --Foreword Reviews
"Your Nostalgia is Killing Me is a witty short story collection. Eleven linked first-person short stories tell the story of a protagonist whose early adolescent experiences of homophobia in a small town and whose adult loss of his best friend to AIDS during the height of the epidemic write the script for his life, propelling him in and out of relationships with friends, loved ones, and lovers who expect too much or too little. Taking place at acting classes, cinemas, funerals, high school graduation ceremonies, plays, public protest demonstrations, retirement homes, and sex parlors, these eleven linked stories pull at the thin line between erasure and exposure, all the while skillfully highlighting the performative nature of death, grief, illness, love, masculinity, and sexuality against the backdrop of late twentieth-century US culture."
--Dr. Amina Gautier