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Hi everyone: I wrote a long essay for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that is less about my memories of Pittsburgh and more about the act of describing my memories of Pittsburgh. If you're in Pittsburgh on Thursday night, I'll hope to see you at the reading!
(Please note that while that's me as a seven-year-old kid in the above image -- and thanks to my mother for making us do family portraits circa 1975), the collage is by Ben Howard of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.)
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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
'It’s to the credit of Matthew Gallaway’s enchanting, often funny first novel that it doesn’t require a corresponding degree of obsession from readers, but may leave them similarly transported: the book is so well written — there’s hardly a lazy sentence here — and filled with such memorable lead and supporting players that it quickly absorbs you into its worlds.'
-- The New York Times
Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine
Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.
Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past
Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.
Video: The Chaos Detective
The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.
matthew-- i grew up in mount lebanon at about the same time-- i wonder if i knew you--- i remember some gallaway boys.....i am home as my father is slowly dying and seeing the essay in the paper along side a story about the dearth of "historical fiction of US history" in the post gazette-- i have decided i cant wait to read your book being an "exiled" pittsburgh-er!
Posted by: david kraemer | 04/17/2011 at 01:28 PM
Loved it, great read, and that illustration is priceless. I cheerfully read [Cleveland] as much as [Pittsburgh]. PS did you know Cleveburgh is like a thing? http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11002/1114678-109.stm
Posted by: Brian | 04/17/2011 at 02:09 PM
Wow, Cleveburgh -- it does make a certain amount of sense!
Posted by: Matthew Gallaway | 04/17/2011 at 02:17 PM
Thanks, David -- I suspect you might be a few years older than me if you knew my brothers, but thanks for reading and best of luck with your father.
Posted by: Matthew Gallaway | 04/17/2011 at 02:18 PM
Nostalgae: that which clouds the memory pool.
You are not guilty of it.
Posted by: Matt | 04/19/2011 at 12:23 AM
Thanks, Matt -- appreciate the comment.
Posted by: Matthew Gallaway | 04/19/2011 at 09:21 AM
Great piece Matt. I've been in PGH 9 weeks, still settling in, but so far I think it's charming, magical and flawed. I'm drawn to underdogs. Pittsburgh isn't a "thing" like a place like Portland, Austin or Brooklyn is. "Thingness" causes high rent, and I'm glad to avoid that. I hope to be at your reading this week (just fighting with my work schedule).
Posted by: Rob W. | 04/19/2011 at 03:21 PM