This abstract is from the cover of the book and materials provided by the publisher.
Set approximately 10 years in the future, The Book of Lies is a stylish mystery, a hilarious roman a clef, a witty critique of academia and literary criticism, and a deft character study of contemporary artistic life. It is also an affectionate tribute to Picano's compatriots in the Violet Quill Club, including Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, Robert Ferro, and others instrumental in the creation of the canon of gay literature. The novel tells the story of Ross Ohrenstedt, ambitious young academic in the fashionable field of queer studies, who, in the course of overseeing the collection of papers and works of a legendary author, discovers a baffling and provocative manuscript. His quest to identify it's writer and gain prestige and tenure puts him on the trail of a potential — unknown — masterwork penned by one of a group of writers, some living, some dead, who in the 1970s and 1980s broke new literary ground. In the novel, The Purple Circle, as they were known, have become much revered, oft studied — the foundation upon which numerous academic careers have been made.
As his search for truth uncovers increasingly bizarre and unbalanced facts about the Purple Circle members from those they left behind—uncomprehending brothers, adoring nieces, still devastated women who'd loved them, lifelong partners, and last minute boyfriends Ohrenstedt finds himself the target of mysterious attempts to derail his investigation. But as he gets closer to the Purple Circle's surviving members and to untangling the secret thread that seems to run through all of their lives and work, The Book of Lies becomes even more startling and revelatory. Felice Picano has used the field of literary studies as a vehicle to illuminate the enormous effect writers can have upon the world around them, as well as the pitfalls we face in canonizing, and thus dehumanizing, both authors and their work.
As he did with Like People In History, Picano has created an intimate exploration of a larger historical phenomenon, at the same time giving voice to those who lived through a unique era offering the reader a complex, credible human narrator as a lens through which to view them.
The Truth Behind The Book of Lies
In The Book of Lies, the latest creation from Felice Picano, the Purple Circle is fictional. But the Violet Quill Club, upon which Picano based the novel, is anything but.
Internationally considered to be the "Gay Bloomsbury Group," the group of seven American writers (Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, Robert Ferro, Michael Grumley, George Whitmore, Chris Cox, and Felice Picano) is generally credited with the creation of a new genregay literaturesome twenty five years ago. It's members are responsible for producing some of the most honored and best-selling gay books.
It was during this period that Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story, Andrew Holleran's Nights in Aruba, Robert Ferro's The Family of Max Desir, Michael Grumley's Life Drawing and After Midnight, Chris Cox's Key West, and Picano's Slashed to Ribbons in Defense of Love and Ambidextrous came into being. Their manuscripts and papers are collected at Yale University's Beiniecke Manuscript and Rare Books Library, along with notable other groups such as the Nineteenth Century American Transcendentalists and Gertrude Stein's Literary Circle in the 1920s.
The impact of the members of the Violet Quill Club on contemporary literature is immeasurable. Much as Picano vividly describes in The Book of Lies, the membership was decimated by the AIDS epidemic, and the survivors, Picano, White, and Holleran, reeling from the loss of friends and colleagues, relocated to various areas of the country where they produced some of their most famous and critically acclaimed work. Nonetheless, all one has to do is look at the body of work produced by the Violet Quill members to recognize the impact of their decision to come together in support of one another while they carved out a groundbreaking and permanent place in history.
Christopher Cox
A Key West Companion
Robert Ferro
Atlantis: The Autobiography of a Search (with Michael Grumley)
The Blue Star
The Family of Max Desir
The Others
Second Son
Michael Grumley
After Midnight
Hard Corps: Studies in Leather and Sadomasochism
Life Drawing
There are Giants in the Earth
Andrew Holleran
The Beauty of Men
Dancer from the Dance
Ground Zero
In September the Light Changes
In the Mirror of Men's Eyes
Nights in Aruba
Felice Picano
A House on the Ocean, a House on the Bay
Ambidextrous
An Asian Minor
The Book of Lies
Dryland's End
Eyes
House of Cards
Late in the Season
Like People in History
Looking Glass Lives
The Lure
Men Who Loved Me
The Mesmerist
Slashed to Ribbons in Defense of Love
Smart as the Devil
To the Seventh Power
Edmund White
The Beautiful Room is Empty
A Boy's Own Story
The Burning Library: Essays
Caracole
The Farewell Symphony
Forgetting Elena
Genet: A Biography
Marcel Proust
Nocturnes for the King of Naples
Our Paris
George Whitmore
Confessions of Danny Slocum
Nebraska
Someone Was Here: Profiles in the AIDS Epidemic
Overall, the mature writing of Felice Picano and fellow ex-Violet Quill member, Edmund White, confirms what has been long suspected: the gay writing that has emerged from America over the last three decades is as consistently brilliant as writing has got. As a critique of the catastrophic changes undergone by the Gay Community (only three members of the Violet Quill are still living) The Book of Lies is fascinating: as a brilliant story with a vicious twist, it&Mac226;s superb. A highly recommended read.
George Lear / Purefiction.com
An exciting plot, believable dialogue and interesting characters ensure an entertaining read.
Gay Community News
Felice Picano has cunningly sidestepped the pitfall of ‘writer as hero' in his latest creation, The Book of Lies, and added a further twist, examining not only a group of writes and their work, but taking a hard look at the validity and integrity of literary criticism. Readers will immediately be reminded of Henry James' The Aspern Papers, as well as touches of Passolini's Theorem, in this thoroughly engrossing tale of literary and academic intrigue. The theme of coping with the mass loss of the 80s and 90s is subtle and well handled by Picano, and he's also thought-provoking on the issue of ghetto writing: The Gay Lit. world can't, on one hand, complain about marginilisation, and on the other, whine that straight people have neither right to study, nor any understanding of, gay literature. Most of all, he demonstrates the impossibility of empirical history: all is agenda.
Gay Times
Based on Picano's involvement with the Violet Quill Club (which included Edmund White and Christopher Cox), this is an absorbing Henry James-style comedy of manners about how even when some writers find their way out of the closet, others still get left behind.
The Mail on Sunday
The Book of Lies is funny, dark, sexy, shocking, and yes, smart. Set in the near future (‘four decades after Stonewall'), the novel tells of a young scholar trying to make his academic bones on the literary bodies of the ‘Purple Circle'. Picano skewers the pedagogically pretentious with ease and wit. The Book of Lies is a wonderful novel, with some of Picano's best writing.
Bay Area Reporter
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