|Los Angeles Times
A graphic and funny memoir…He becomes the connective tissue that binds together a diaspora of subcultures: the beatnik-era experimental writing and happenings of downtown New York, the 1960s co-opted counterculture gone awry, the punk movement that followed, and the art and intellectual circles of the Reagan 80s, when the AIDS crisis was wiping out a generation of young gay men like him.”
From the Publisher
"In sharing his memoirs, Gary Indiana exposes the inner turmoil, his naked truths of sexuality as a gay man and the clear and still present intuitive qualities of his distinctive and intelligent voice as a writer. . . 'I Can Give You Anything But Love' is not a breezy read and that is part of the fascination to be found in his writing style and livelihood."
-EDGEMEDIANETWORK.COM
"It's impossible to agree or disagree with all of Indiana's (often fearless) critical pronouncements, but it's likewise impossible to discount his tremendous style, wit, and education. Careworn copies of this long overdue memoir will change hands for the rest of the year and beyond."
-FLAVORWIRE.COM
"This memoir is classic Gary Indiana, waspish and gorgeous and a little wary of sharing its heart when sharing its other parts might work just as well."
-openlettersmonthly.com
"A graphic and funny memoir, [I Can Give You Anything But Love] finds Indiana reinventing yet another genre - this time using his own personal narrative. He becomes the connective tissue that binds together a diaspora of subcultures: the beatnik-era experimental writing and happenings of downtown New York, the 1960s co-opted counterculture gone awry, the punk movement that followed, and the art and intellectual circles of the Reagan 80s, when the AIDS crisis was wiping out a generation of young gay men like him."
-THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
"I Can Give You Anything But Love is discursive, impressionistic, punctuated by incisive reflections on history and culture, witty evocations of period and place, mystifying forays into character assassination, and frank descriptions of sex."
-THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
Kirkus Reviews
2015-06-28
A writer, filmmaker, playwright, and artist recalls his past. In this ironically titled memoir, Indiana (Andy Warhol and the Can that Sold the World, 2010, etc.) gives little evidence of love but much graphic detail of sex, focused often on comparative penis sizes and tumescence. Although he claims to have "an unshakeable sense of utter insignificance," being "too peculiar to figure importantly in anyone's life, including my own," his voice throughout tends to be supercilious. Indiana characterizes his parents as "emotionally constipated," creating an environment that prepared him "for absolutely nothing." Growing up within "a swamp of human wreckage tainted by alcohol," any problem, he was taught, "was other people's fault." Early sexual experiences with boys left him believing that "sodomy was an arcane, specialized perversion, like bestiality." In his 20s, he was subject to panic attacks and depression; pickups did not fulfill his "pinching wish for attachment." In late-1960s California, Indiana "lived on no money, with no fixed address, becoming a ward of whatever boyfriend or commune whose orbit I drifted into," usually connected to his friend Ferd, a political activist and porno filmmaker. In those years, writes the author, psychedelic drugs "were taken like aspirin…and heroin users were seen as the truly daring souls, more ‘seriously' troubled than aimless run-of-the-mill LSD dropouts." Ferd often sent him to emergency rooms to steal syringes, errands he performed with alacrity. Later, living in Cuba, the author had an affair—"a complete pornographic fantasy"—with a sexually energetic deaf mute, a relationship he quickly found "tiresome." Among those singled out for scorn is Susan Sontag: arrogant, "exasperating," a woman whose "chronic aesthetic gourmandizing filled her with a histrionic rapture that required live witnesses." David Lynch was humorless, boring, and "smarmy." Indiana remarks that his memories are "colored by mood and contingency." The mood of this memoir is mostly rueful, bitter, and sad.
