Got 'Til It's Gone
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2.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
"With his gift for language, eye for detail and consistent tone of voice, Larry Duplechan has the makings to be a major literary figure." -Edge Publications
This is the first novel by Larry Duplechan in fifteen years, and the fourth to feature his alter ego protagonist Johnnie Ray Rousseau, a gay black man of Louisiana Creole stock. When we first met Johnnie Ray in the novel Blackbird, he was a gay teenager in love with the star of a high school play; now he’s forty-eight, still handsome and gym-built, but admittedly vain and looking down the short road to fifty. In the midst of a midlife crisis, he falls for a much younger man with some serious Daddy issues; throughout it all, Johnnie Ray tries to look at love (and his life) from both sides now (to borrow a phrase from his idol Joni Mitchell). Got ’Til It’s Gone is a queer romantic comedy for the ages.
Larry Duplechan is the author of four previous novels, including Blackbird, published in a new edition by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2006. He is a deacon at the Metropolitan Community Church in the Valley in North Hollywood, California.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Duplechan (Blackbird) revisits the life of gay, black, and sassy Johnnie Ray Rousseau in this tale of love and loss. A legal secretary during the week, the sometimes-lounge singer now croons over dead friends as deacon and soloist at the First Assembly of Love Church in Hollywood. Middle-aged, a widower-and battling an ominous pain in his testicles that nearly matches his libido in its intensity-Johnnie lifts weights to embody the "Daddy" persona he craves: an older man who's hot enough to attract a man half his age. But can he find true love with the youthful Joe Callahan, a former gay porn actor and callboy? Or will he find love where he least expects it? Between scenes of receiving bad news (his mother is diagnosed with a brain tumor) and comforting those he loves, Johnny drowns his grief in bouts of loveless and sometimes anonymous sex, which is graphically depicted in adolescent terms that too often render it-like the entire novel-more silly than erotic.
Customer Reviews
Uneven but Satisying
I have been having trouble summing up my feelings about Duplechan's Lambda (Best Romance) winning Got 'til It's Gone.
Duplechan seems to name drop artists, songs, album titles, movie moments etc. to an almost anoying level. It's as if he's substituting minutia for real characterization. Also Johnnie, his ongoing main character, tends to lapse into melodramatic histronics so much that he almost became tiresome.
I say almost because along with all of the above Duplechan manages to get the humor of Johnnie and the way he filters the world through pop culture and the way he is dealing with his own mortality. The name dropping is Johnnie's way of coping. I ultimately was won over.
Some have dismissed this novel of being like an episode of Noah's Arc, melodramatic pop culture driven but without substance. The fact that almost every guy that is interested in Johnnie (and there are a lot) is a muscled up hunk adds to this impression. Duplechan, it seems to me, nails the strata of a certain portion of gay culture (especially in LA) that one sees in urban centers. Especially the way the age divide can express itself between older and younger men.
While the novel has romance in it and I wish that had been better developed, it is really more about a man still in the process of discovering himself and in that way I found it ultimately very pleasing by the end. A good, easy read with enough depth and reflection to be memorable.