Description: Walace Weiss, a famous fantasy novelist struggling with drug addiction, sets himself on a twofold quest: to finish his first book in more than a decade and, like the immortal elves of his stories, to try to remember what, in his long life, he should not have forgotten.
While many have come to view Walace as a bad influence on children, literature, and himself, his impact sweeps across worlds both fantastic and real, resulting in the establishment of a new kingdom in his neglected McMansion, Summerheim. The result is a mock-epic in rehabilitation, starring such friends and enemies as Cal, Walace's dealer and private jester; Dragon, a porn star turned guidance counselor; Epiphany, a lunch lady and stripper in recovery; her son, Tuffy, planning everyone's funerals at age nine; Jackal, newly sober and in touch with his emotions for the first time; and Wolf, Walace's socially withdrawn twin brother and reluctant doppelgänger. Brian Bouldrey piles on the laughs and absurdity alongside dollops of humanity and sobriety. With brilliant recklessness, he praises and pokes fun at genres, conventions, fandoms, and critics, offering a Deadpool-like exploration of an upside-down world filled with epic quests, epic mistakes, and epic characters.Brief description: Brian Bouldrey is a senior lecturer of English at Northwestern University. The recipient of a Lambda Literary Award, among other honors, he is the author of, most recently, Good in Bed: A Life in Queer Sex, Politics, and Religion, and the editor of Inspired Journeys: Travel Writers in Search of the Muse. He has published three previous novels, including The Boom Economy.
Review Quotes: "The deceptively titled The Good Pornographer morphs from being a comedy about campus life and the cliches of fantasy writing into being a deeply moving novel about people wounded by addiction and the limits of love. Bouldrey is a genius, all right, not only of desire, but also its heartbreaking aftermath."--Rebecca Brown, author of You Tell the Stories You Need to Believe