Blind Items
A (Love) Story
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
Following the tremendous success of his wickedly funny best seller Boy Culture, Matthew Rettenmund offered up Blind Items: A (Love) Story, an even more complicated - and at times heartbreaking - portrait of modern love.
Meet David Greer. He's a wisecracking, thirty-something everyman who's fiercely smart and unapologetically gay. He's also struggling to make a splash as a writer in New York, a goal that seems far off considering his day job as a reluctant copy editor for a slew of porn magazines. His only glimpse into the world of fame and fortune is through the occasional party invites for himself and his loyal buddy Carol Terry from their old friend Warren Junior, a gossip famous for his catty "Off the List" column.
At one of these fabulous to-dos, David meets - and falls for - TV hunk Alan Dillinger, superstar of the hit TV show Lifesavers. He's hot, smart, caring, rich, famous and everything else David could want in a man, except for one thing: He's closeted.
The ensuing courtship, dripping with scheming agents and publicists, sharklike paparazzi, and a particularly prying gossip columnist, navigates the choppy waters of gay relationships in the '90s. All the while, the story of John Dewey, a kid obsessed with a long-dead gay silent movie romeo - and with his own burgeoning queer identity - unfolds, making waves in this story of gay life in the past, present and future.
Rettenmund's second novel, brimming with celebrity cameos and outrageous blind items, is a provocative, witty (love) story that is moving and full of heart, and a poignant period piece with plenty of exclamation-point twists and turns.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
If not completely blind, love seems a bit shortsighted in Rettenmund's latest foray (after Boy Culture) into the gay milieu. Despite some repartee that strains for comic effect, enough one-liners find their mark to provide numerous chuckles--and the occasional flash of insight--throughout this amorous adventure. New Yorker David Greer is eking out a living editing gay porn magazines while his best bud, "somewhat flamboyant queen" Warren Junior, pens a gossip column replete with blind items that stop just this side of libel. David attends a TV network bash, dizzy with the prospect of glimpsing Alan Dillinger, the hunky star of a wildly popular beach series (think Baywatch) who's rumored to be gay. Not only do the men meet, but they embark on a tenuous affair--despite Alan's anxiety about coming out. Alternating with these close encounters are chapters centering on John Dewey, a "pale and minor" 12-year-old being raised by his grandmother in a New Jersey trailer park. This shy youngster, who has been told that his real father was gay, has increasing doubts about his own sexual identity. Becoming fixated on Granny's photo of a handsome 1920s movie star, John discovers that a Seattle film buff owns a supposedly lost film starring his idol. The boy, now 17, boards a cross-country bus to find the movie maven--Truitt Connor, an 81-year-old gay man who gives John a home. The eventual intersection of Rettenmund's two plot lines is far-fetched. Indeed, several elements here border on the improbable, but Rettenmund sprinkles the proceedings with an ultimately beguiling blend of fairy dust, fun and fantasy.
