The Age of Cities

Equal parts bildungsroman and purported literary artifact, The Age of Cities is -really about the age of innocence. A manuscript is discovered inside a hollowed-out home economics textbook: it is the story of a young man from a small town who comes to the big city at the height of the Cold War. His accidental discovery of a gay -subculture—culminating in a feverish, dreamlike initiation—pushes him irrevocably toward crisis. The Age of Cities is about discovery, loss, and the contemporary “closet” where stories lie hidden from view.ReviewThe hilariously wicked dialogue is outdone by the lush, vivid, and delicately crafted settings described throughout the book.—Xtra! West (Xtra!West )The Age of Cities is a rare look at a time when to be closeted meant a landscape as bare as the one outside Winston's [the protagonist's] window.—The Edge Boston(The Edge Boston )Exquisitely crafted and rich with detail, the dexterous prose of Grubisic's novel makes for a most beguiling and confident debut. Suffused with sentences both meticulous and insightful, and flavored with sly humor, one lingers over them, savoring their pleasure like that of a delectable meal.—D. Travers Scott, author of One of These Things is Not Like the Other (D. Travers Scott D. Travers Scott )An intriguing find for the ongoing dialogue on, and revision of, the Canadian canon. A.X. Palios has unearthed that rarest of finds: a novel that makes us rethink an era.—Tamas Dobozy, author of Last Notes and Other Stories and When X Equals Marylou (Tamas Dobozy Tamas Dobozy )Is it possible to be in the closet and not know it? This is a book that speaks of a time when that was entirely possible.... Grubisic's meticulous depiction of the era [the late 1950s] pays off.... written with ease and elegance. —Broken Pencil Magazine(Broken Pencil Magazine )You may think of a North American Gide, though not so chilly... The Age of Cities rewards the reader with the power of an unapologetic work of art. —Lambda Book Report (Lambda Book Report )The Age of Cities mingles past and present with powerful effect. The history of gay men and lesbians does indeed contain real artifacts that should be brought to light. But because the hidden lives of people now gone can only be imagined, we also need storytellers who make us experience the moving, sad truth of decent people making do without many of the rights we now almost take for granted. The signal achievement of Brett Josef Grubisic in this book is the beautifully realized story of Winston and his trips to the big city." —Gay & Lesbian Review (Gay & Lesbian Review )Brett Josef Grubisic manages literally to deconstruct the [coming-out novel] genre while deftly poking fun at academics who do such things for a living. Grubisic's narrative device is a delight. —Literary Review of Canada (Literary Review of Canada ) About the AuthorBrett Josef Grubisic is the author of the novel The Age of Cities (Arsenal, 2006) and the editor of Contra/Diction: New Queer Male Fiction (Arsenal, 1998)and co-editor (with Carellin Brooks) of Carnal Nation: Brave New Sex Fictions (Arsenal, 2000). He teaches English at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.