Before tech took over San Francisco, before cellphones but after the terrible reign of AIDS, there were the gleeful revels of the \u201990s. Tradowsky\u2019s ornate novel is a love letter to a foggy, analog metropolis lit up with nightlife and art, queer friendship and desire, movie houses and day jobs, and 20-somethings aching to define themselves. Recently graduated film major Walter Simmering, out of the closet but unsure of his persona, is the Henry James ingenue or Dorothy Gale of the novel, collecting a vivacious entourage as he wanders a dazzling new city. He has never been in love, but San Francisco is quick to provide fodder for adoration and, in time, a neonoir science-fiction screenplay that becomes a clever counterpoint to the novel\u2019s narrative. The reader will be as smitten as Walter is with his new friends, especially social butterfly Cary, a quippy chanteuse in menswear, and Sasha, lithe in women\u2019s finery he also designs; they bewitch Walter with their breezy understanding of the nebulousness of gender and sexuality. Lawrence, an older gay man living with AIDS, is a link to past eras of San Francisco and Hollywood, while Jeff, a technophile grad student, already knows about cyberspace. Dreamer Walter projects his own mirages \u201conto the beautiful, gritty, eucalyptus-and-urine-scented streets of San Francisco\u201d and mulls over identity and authenticity. At night, friends, exes, and crushes try cocktails, make out while \u201cpractically radioactive with pheromones,\u201d banter, bicker, and guzzle classic films; connoisseurs of nostalgia and irony, they hold tight to \u201ca golden age they were born too late to see.\u201d Tradowsky, who teaches art history, devotes ample space to San Francisco\u2019s showy architecture and the interiors of the characters\u2019 apartments, workplaces, and nocturnal haunts. The novel is laden with period references, which will school newcomers to the \u201990s and create a fusillade of associations for those who lived them.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before tech took over San Francisco, before cellphones but after the terrible reign of AIDS, there were the gleeful revels of the \u201990s. Tradowsky\u2019s ornate novel is a love letter to a foggy, analog metropolis lit up with nightlife and art, queer friendship and desire, movie houses and day jobs, and 20-somethings aching to define […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3209"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}