Temple Slave

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 464 pages
• Published by: Richard Kasak Book; 1st Richard Kasak Book ed edition May 1994
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1563331918
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1563331916
• Book Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1.5 inches
• Weighs: 12.8 ounces

From Publishers Weekly
The author of the play Kennedy's Children and long a presence in New York theatre, Patrick's autobiographical first novel delves into the outlaw history of Off-Off Broadway and the simultaneous dawning of gay liberation. Ground zero is a cafe in New York City's Greenwich Village called Espresso Buono, where, in the early '60s, writers, actors and directors are nurtured in almost fatherly fashion by the cafe's owner, Joe Buono. The narrator, Bob Patrick, acts as the cafe's court stenographer, recording each moment as it unfolds. The events, whether they happened precisely as Patrick indicates or not, ring true, and his characters are humorously, even fatally, human. They are by turns arrogant and humorous, and confronted alternately by promises of a sexual paradise and by visions of an abyss. Part and parcel of Temple Slave is its gay pedigree and courage to reconstruct the erotic nature of those times. The sheer quantity of the recollections make the book lengthy, but it is still compelling. From the conformist '50s to the first shrill yowls of the AIDS era, Temple Slave fills the gap between Jeb and Dash and And the Band Played On and characterizes the time as heady, nihilistic, experimental and, above all, worthy of nostalgia.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review
Genuinely original, a story of triumph.

Reader Reviews
I was totally taken with this story of the birth of performance art and off-off Broadway. Robert Patrick appears to be writing a novel in Temple Slave (the names have been changed to protect the innocent, so to speak) but in fact gives a wonderfully angry, sweet, sad, touching, detailed and often thrilling account of his experiences as a writer, performer and gay man in New York in the 60s. There's also tons of sex but so what, if Edmund White can do it (re: THE FAREWELL SYMPHONY) why can't Robert Patrick? And if you've ever questioned the value of Warhol and Pop Art you will be as tickled as I was to find that you are not alone. Comment | | (Report this)