Firebird - Softcover

Doty, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099283395 ISBN 13: 9780099283393

Publisher: Vintage, 2001

Synopsis

This is the story of a ten-year-old in top hat, cane and a red chiffon scarf, interrupted while belting out Judy Garland's 'Get Happy' by an alarmed mother at the bedroom door exclaiming, in shame and exasperation: 'Son, you're a boy.'A self-confessed 'chubby smart bookish sissy with glasses and a Southern accent', Mark Doty grew up on the move, the family following his father's engineering work across America - from Memphis to Tucson to Titusville, Florida and Northern California. With his rebellious sister already heading for abortions, carnie jobs, credit-card fraud and prison, and his fragile, artistic mother slowly drinking herself to death, Mark has quite enough troubles without discovering that his dawning sexuality is The Wrong One. Attracted not to baseball gloves or space travel but to textiles and opera, theatre and free-form dance, his confusion and fear are shared by those around him, as he makes his way into the world to the sound of Petula Clark singing 'Downtown'. After experiments with drugs, psychedelia and heterosexuality he reaches the age of majority and finally acknowledges and accepts the ten-year-old Judy Garland in himself: that he is a gay man, emerging, radiant and new, from his own ashes. It is a triumphant transformation

About this title

Review:

"By the end of Mark Doty's exquisite memoir. "Firebird, " you'll have troublebelieving you haven't read a brilliantly plotted novel by a master offiction. But no made-up story could ever be as gripping as theone Doty tells, And few novelists could tell it this well."-- "San Francisco Chronicle""Supple powerful reading . . . Doty immerses his readers in a gay coming-of-age complicated family meltdown." -- "New York Times Book Review""A beautifully written. hallucinatorily evocative memoir Of growing up gay in baby-boom America."-- "Newsweek""Doty writes with the characteristic Zen calm you find also in his gorgeous poetry."--"Los Angeles Times Book Review""A lyrical, heartfelt, and ultimately haunting account of his early years."--"Washington Post Book Review""His luminous portrait of the artist as a young man also illuminates the currents of his times, and contains a haunting family history."--"Booklist "(starred review)"An American classic....Doty's writing surpasses anything he's ever attempted before and achieves a depth and a clear-eyed splendor that left me bereft and exalted at the same time."--"Salon""By turns lyrically comic and deeply sad."--"Out "magazine"Incandescent....A lasting work of art."--"Time Out"

Book Description:

A brilliant, bittersweet memoir of growing up gay by the prize-winning poet

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0099283395
• ISBN 13: 9780099283393
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224