1. As Halloween approached, I contemplated all of the possible costumes and ultimately decided on being an autumn oak leaf. It wasn't the most frightening costume, but I think you'll agree that the results were effective. Most people couldn't even tell that I was anything other than a leaf. Someone even tried to sweep me off the sidewalk and into the trash. "It's just a costume," I said. "Leave me alone."
2. Stephen had more impressive ambitions, which he executed well. Specifically, he went as two rows of houses on Sylvan Terrace. Nobody could tell the difference between his costume and the real thing.
3. Real-estate developers rushed in his direction. They wanted to flip these houses and make as much money as possible while doing the least amount of work. Sometimes, they explained in whispers that managed to be at once hushed and gloating, no work at all was required; the passage of time was enough to get rich. It was slightly demoralizing to see the effects of r > g (via Thomas Piketty's 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century', where r = rate of return on capital and g = economic growth) playing out so close to home.
4. After changing out of our costumes, we walked over to Jumel Terrace, where we admired the brick paths and the apartment building on the corner of 160th and Edgecombe Avenue. Also known as "The Paul Robeson Residence," it's the same apartment building where I imagined one of the characters (Gloria) from my newish novel (#gods) living with her brother and parents.
5. One of the nice things about living in Washington Heights is that it hasn't been "overexposed" in popular books and movies. For this reason, its buildings and forests often seem to pulse with secrets from the past. They don't even need costumes for Halloween; they can just go as themselves. When they walk into the room, everyone turns and says, "Who is this beautiful mystery gracing us with their presence?"
6. In the garden, strange visitors looked exactly like our cats.
7. "Who are these imposters?" asked Elektra, who predictably enough was the only one who could tell the difference. "Get my lawyer on the line."
8. A wind storm had blown many birch leaves and deciduous conifer branches down from the trees. Or were they just more people in costumes? At this time of year, it was hard to tell.
9. Zephyr, not wanting to participate in what he termed "an increasingly overbearing exercise in corporate regression," refused to go outside, or at least not in a costume. "I want to live my most authentic version of myself."
10. Only the sunlight, he insisted, could burn away these costumes to expose us for what we really are.
Programming notes: if you'd like to read more about Gloria and Washington Heights (in a fictional context), you can buy #gods here. If you're a bookstore (or going as one for Halloween), you can order from Small Press Distribution. If you've already read the book, consider going as one of the #gods characters for Halloween (I recommend one of the Muses or Satyrs from the "mythological" fourth part of the book), or you can go as the book itself, or the process of writing or maybe revisions. (Send pictures.) And please don't forget to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Be honest in your review: for example you might say, "Yall. This book may not be perfect, but it's better than [inescapable NF show about kids on bikes I guess and everything in the 80s that meant nothing to me and still means nothing to me]." Happy Halloween. Keep the good candy and trade the bad :)
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10/28/2017
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
'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.