Description
Acclaimed by critics as a second F. Scott Fitzgerald, Billy Lee Brammer was once one of the most engaging young novelists in America. "Brammer's is a new and major talent, big in scope, big in its promise of even better things to come," wrote A. C. Spectorsky, a former staffer at the New Yorker. When he published his first and only novel, The Gay Place, in 1961, literary luminaries such as David Halberstam, Willie Morris, and Gore Vidal hailed his debut. Morris deemed it "the best novel about American politics in our time." Halberstam called it "a classic . . . [a] stunning, original, intensely human novel inspired by Lyndon Johnson. . . . It will be read a hundred years from now." More recently, James Fallows, Gary Fisketjon, and Christopher Lehmann have affirmed The Gay Place's continuing relevance, with Lehmann asserting that it is "the one truly great modern American political novel."
Leaving the Gay Place tells a sweeping story of American popular culture and politics through the life and work of a writer who tragically exemplifies the highs and lows of the country at mid-century. Tracy Daugherty follows Brammer from the halls of power in Washington, DC, where he worked for Senate majority leader Johnson, to rock-and-roll venues where he tripped out with Janis Joplin, and ultimately to back alleys of self-indulgence and self-destruction. Constantly driven to experiment with new ways of being and creating--often fueled by psychedelics--Brammer became a cult figure for an America on the cusp of monumental change, as the counterculture percolated through the Eisenhower years and burst out in the sixties. In Daugherty's masterful recounting, Brammer's story is a quintessential American story, and Billy Lee is our wayward American son.
Product Details
| Publisher | University of Texas Press |
| Publish Date | October 17, 2018 |
| Pages | 448 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9781477316351 |
| Dimensions | 9.1 X 6.1 X 1.5 inches | 1.8 pounds |
About the Author
Reviews
Daugherty recounts Brammer's saga and the times in which he lived in compelling fashion, which makes Leaving the Gay Place one of this year's best nonfiction books about Texas.-- "Dallas Morning News" (11/5/2018 12:00:00 AM)
Stellar...For decades, the questions longtime devotees of The Gay Place have asked are: Where did this one-of-a-kind masterpiece come from? And what the hell happened to its author? Daugherty's biography tells us.-- "The American Interest" (4/19/2019 12:00:00 AM)
[A] superbly gauged and powerfully evocative new biography.-- "Bookforum" (12/1/2018 12:00:00 AM)
A captivating new biography.-- "Porter House Review" (8/5/2019 12:00:00 AM)
A comprehensive and compelling account of a life lived by a unique character against the background of a tumultuous era.-- "Texas Monthly" (10/22/2018 12:00:00 AM)
Daugherty does a very good job of describing both the promise and the sheer waste of Brammer's life.-- "Western American Literature" (10/1/2019 12:00:00 AM)
Daugherty offers those interested in the rise and fall of American liberalism and [Lyndon] Johnson a unique and personal window into this turbulent time.-- "Journal of Southern History" (11/1/2019 12:00:00 AM)
Mr. Daugherty paints a persuasive picture of a young man as an ambitious novelist, feeling the frustration, in draft after draft, of trying to get a book exactly right.-- "Wall Street Journal" (12/28/2018 12:00:00 AM)
The book is by turns a strong, clear biography (with shades of rock n roll memoir), a poetic ode to various places and people in midcentury Texas and an oral history, all of it plugging in to an increasingly turned-on, tuned-in and dropped-out Brammer.-- "Texas Observer" (9/12/2018 12:00:00 AM)
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