#gods
ORDER HERE
A RADICAL NEW MYTH ABOUT SEX, FAITH,
AND THOSE OF US WHO WILL NEVER DIE
A young boy wanders into the woods of Harlem and witnesses the abduction of his
sister by a glowing creature. Forty years later,
now working as a New York City homicide
detective, Gus is assigned to a case in which he
unexpectedly succumbs to a vision that Helen
is still alive. To find her, he embarks on an
uorthodox investigation that leads to an ancient
civilization of gods and the people determined
to bring them back.
In this colossal new novel from the author
of The Metropolis Case, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice collides with a new religion founded by three corporate office workers, creating something
beautiful, illogical, and overwhelming. Part sex
manifesto, part religious text, part Manhattan
noir—with a dose of deadly serious, internet inspired satire—#gods is a sprawling inquest
into the nature of faith and resistance in the
modern world. With each turn of the page,
#gods will leave you increasingly reborn.
Praise for #gods
“#gods is a mystery, an excavation of myths, an index of modern life, a gay coming-of-age
story, an office satire, a lyrical fever dream, a conspiracy. One of the most ambitious
novels in recent memory—and a wild, possibly transformative addition to the canon of
gay literature—it contains multitudes, and seethes with brilliance.” —Mark Doten,
author of The Infernal
“Matthew Gallaway’s #gods is a novel so brilliant, so funny, so full of strange and marvelous
things, I couldn’t stop writing OMG WTF I <3 THIS SO MUCH in its margins. It’s rare to
find a novel that so dazzlingly reinvigorates age-old meditations on faith and f&!*ing, art
and eros. Luminous, enterprising, and sublimely cheeky, #gods tells the story, the myth,
the dream of the human soul in all its glorious complexity.” —Suzanne Morrison,
author of Yoga Bitch
“Matthew Gallaway’s storytelling manages to be both dreamy and serious; lean and luxurious.
His words carry an incantatory power of mythic storytelling where beauty and
savagery wrap around each other like bright threads in a gorgeous tapestry.”
—Natasha Vargas-Cooper,
author of Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America
“If the ancient gods were just like us, only more so, then the same could be said for this
strange, wonderful book, in which the mundane sorrows and small triumphs of very
ordinary lives glow ever so slightly around the edges, sometimes quite literally. At once
an oddly romantic send-up of dead-end office culture and an offbeat supernatural procedural,
#gods is terrifically weird, melancholy, sexy, and charming.” —Jacob Bacharach,
author of The Bend of the World
Regarding your last picture: I used to live around the corner and across 7th Ave from that building, actually. For 11 years, before I moved to Inwood, I lived on Grove Street. I still miss that neighborhood, and never more so than when I visit now and see that it has become a completely different neighborhood.
By the way, the building in that last picture above? (The Northern Dispensary, as I believe it's called.) That's a notable landmark for two reasons: although there are other triangular buildings in NYC (e.g., Flatiron, etc.) that's the only building in NYC with one side on two streets and two sides on one street -- plus it was there that "Edgar Allan Poe was treated for a cold and released," as the official lit or plaque somewhere puts it.
Posted by: DAB | 06/18/2010 at 11:42 PM
Thanks, Derek -- Ive long admired that building, too. I remember marching right past it in last years gay pride: I made some quip about the sign (which I believe says something about 1849), but which now escapes me. Whatever it was, Im sure it only seemed funny as a result of my exhaustion by that point of the day!
Posted by: Matthew Gallaway | 06/19/2010 at 12:25 AM