12/15/2014 In this revealing memoir, Gooch (City Poet) reanimates the wild gay subculture in Manhattan during the 1970s and 1980s, which he calls the “golden age of promiscuity,” when “everything was sex and poetry and La Bohème for suburban American kids arriving to create their identities, and do drugs, and get laid.” The fine book contains many entertaining cameos by Andy Warhol, described as charming and flattering; William Burroughs, whose windowless and soundproofed residence, named the Bunker, was a meeting place for drug-fueled parties and dinners akin to “board meeting out of A Clockwork Orange”; Susan Sontag, who was rumored to have snuck into an all-male sex club disguised as a man to “participate in its democratic voyeurism”; and Madonna, who sent Gooch’s longtime boyfriend, Howard Brookner, an early release of her album Like A Prayer when he was dying of AIDS. Gooch richly recollects his experiences as a model in Italy—describing his time in Milan as “feeling blindfolded and spun about three times”—and Paris, though the bulk of the narrative revolves around Gooch’s decade-long relationship with Brookner, a filmmaker. Citing letters and journals, the writer touchingly reconstructs Gooch’s loving and tumultuous life with Brookner, from their first date in 1978, to the summer they spent in an abandoned cottage on Fire Island, to their struggles with Brookner’s heroin addiction and Gooch’s resistance to monogamy, and finally Brookner’s death at the age of 34. This worthwhile account is a poetic meditation on an exceptional relationship and a stirring moment in New York’s cultural history. Photos. (Apr.)
The fact that a writer of Brad Gooch’s significance has been witness to remarkable events and people, and has written about them, is a genuine gift to the world. Smash Cut is a beautiful and important book.” — Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize winning author
“A gorgeous memoir...a potent mix of love, art, and death.” — Vanity Fair
“That Gooch is a splendid writer will not be left in doubt for anyone who delves into his new memoir. . . . Literary memoirs abound; this one excels in beautiful honesty.” — Booklist (starred review)
“Brad Gooch’s story is harrowingly honest written with love and in grief, a deftly articulated insightful history that is at once personal and deeply resonant. Brave and powerfulI couldn’t put it down.” — A.M. Homes, author of May We Be Forgiven
“So glamorous, so sexy, and so devastating, this love story will be the gay picture of the 70s/80s. That it took place between two beautiful, talented young men only makes it the more romantic and poignant.” — Edmund White, author of CITY BOY
“Far more than a memoir, Smash Cut is a bold and tender anatomy of love in an age of ambition, art, and changing light.” — Brenda Wineapple
“Smash Cut is a love story, an elegy, an intimate history written with enormous grace by a novelist and poet, who is also a master biographer. ” — Honor Moore, author of The Bishop's Daughter
“Gooch brings the city to life with all its promise and possibility. A personal, intimate look at our country’s creative history that will also keep you up all night and make you see the city in a new way.” — Susan Cheever
“Engrossing, intimate. . . . This candid memoir lovingly evokes a life, and a world, lost.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Like everyone who ever met Brad, I fell instantly in love. If YOU’VE not met him, reading this book will be the next best thing.” — Andrew Tobias, author of The Best Little Boy in the World
“In Gooch’s visceral, gut-punching narrative, the arrival of AIDS turns the city into a cemetery. . . . This is a memoir that needs to be read by those who remember and those who never knew.” — Interview Magazine
“It is both unparalleled in its intimacy, focusing on his romance with the filmmaker Howard Brookner, and its universality, as a testament to the havoc wreaked by the AIDS pandemic, something he witnessed firsthand in Brookner’s decline and eventual death in 1989.” — Kirkus
“A powerful, poignant and especially frank memoir. . . Rife with humor, glamour, audacity and tragedy, Smash Cut is a witty, whimsical portrait of art and artists from an unforgettable time period.” — Edge Media
“In his memoir Smash Cut , Gooch traces the life of ‘70s and ‘80s New York with the same fashionable tongue of a literary connoisseur, approaching the details of his life with humour and poignancy.” — Pop Matters
“Gooch has documented his life... with unselfconscious ease that makes his memoir a literary achievement more than a simple biography... It’s short but impactful, like a poem you didn’t realize you’d been waiting your whole life to read and stumbled across by chance.” — Boy Culture
“Acclaimed literary biographer Brad Gooch turns to the contours of his own life, particularly his romance with film director Howard Brookner, in this brave and intimate memoir... The elegiac book traces complex terrains of sex and drugs, ambition and love, and art and mortality with tender honesty.” — GOOP
“Smash Cut is an eloquent, deeply felt exploration of love and ambition in dangerous times. . . Smash Cut [is] a moving, memorable and important book.” — Miami Herald
“Gooch is a cool witness to the era’s excess and his own conflicting behavior; his quiet honesty is bold. Smash Cut is a love story and an elegy. It’s heady, sexy, heartbreaking, and most notably, even in the face of death, written not from anger, but love.” — Bay Area Reporter
“Gooch excels when reporting on the cruelty wrought by H.I.V. that would eventually take Brookner’s life-and on the complexity of a relationship that defied category.” — New York Times Book Review
The fact that a writer of Brad Gooch’s significance has been witness to remarkable events and people, and has written about them, is a genuine gift to the world. Smash Cut is a beautiful and important book.
Acclaimed literary biographer Brad Gooch turns to the contours of his own life, particularly his romance with film director Howard Brookner, in this brave and intimate memoir... The elegiac book traces complex terrains of sex and drugs, ambition and love, and art and mortality with tender honesty.
Gooch has documented his life... with unselfconscious ease that makes his memoir a literary achievement more than a simple biography... It’s short but impactful, like a poem you didn’t realize you’d been waiting your whole life to read and stumbled across by chance.
So glamorous, so sexy, and so devastating, this love story will be the gay picture of the 70s/80s. That it took place between two beautiful, talented young men only makes it the more romantic and poignant.
11/15/2014 Probably best known for his biographies City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara (definitive, that one) and the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor, Gooch turns his fine eye on himself. This memoir recalls his blazing life in 1980s New York and intense affair with film director Howard Brookner, who suddenly fell ill with a devastating new illness called AIDS.
2014-12-06 Filmmaker Howard Brookner (1954-1989) is the focus of this engrossing, intimate memoir by novelist and biographer Gooch (English/William Paterson Univ.; Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor, 2009, etc.). Meeting at a gay bar in Manhattan in the 1970s, Gooch and Brookner felt instant attraction and rapport. "Our warped lives, our shared predilection for the ‘far out,' was a bond between Howard and me, as well as between us and our peers," writes the author. "We were all trying strenuously to walk on the wild side." An "increasingly bold and expressionist phase of gay culture" fueled that wildness with rent boys and bathhouses, speed, cocaine and heroin. Brookner was involved in making a documentary about the notorious writer William Burroughs. Gooch, after earning a doctorate in English at Columbia, detoured to become a male model. Needing a portfolio, he approached the only photographer he knew: Robert Mapplethorpe. "Robert and I were both pretty clueless about fashion photography," Gooch admits, and the results were bizarre. In Paris on a modeling gig, Gooch met the young Andy Warhol, "weirdly, transparently needy and vulnerable," and spent some time on "Planet Warhol…a giddy, weightless planet, but without much oxygen." When modeling ran dry, Gooch turned to writing, first porn reviews for a gay newspaper, then fiction, mainstream articles and interviews. Brookner's career took off after he released Burroughs: The Movie in 1983, to critical raves. By then, however, gay exuberance was tempered by rumors of an insidious virus. In 1987, Brookner tested positive for HIV. For Gooch, the news felt like "emotional whiplash." Soon, Brookner fell prey to an opportunistic virus that affected brain cells, and he began to lose his sight. Spasms, fever and bacterial pneumonia followed. At the age of 35, a man Gooch calls "a cresting young genius" was dead. This candid memoir lovingly evokes a life, and a world, lost.
That Gooch is a splendid writer will not be left in doubt for anyone who delves into his new memoir. . . . Literary memoirs abound; this one excels in beautiful honesty.
Booklist (starred review)
Smash Cut is a love story, an elegy, an intimate history written with enormous grace by a novelist and poet, who is also a master biographer.
Gooch brings the city to life with all its promise and possibility. A personal, intimate look at our country’s creative history that will also keep you up all night and make you see the city in a new way.
A gorgeous memoir...a potent mix of love, art, and death.
Brad Gooch’s story is harrowingly honest written with love and in grief, a deftly articulated insightful history that is at once personal and deeply resonant. Brave and powerfulI couldn’t put it down.
Like everyone who ever met Brad, I fell instantly in love. If YOU’VE not met him, reading this book will be the next best thing.
Far more than a memoir, Smash Cut is a bold and tender anatomy of love in an age of ambition, art, and changing light.
Smash Cut is an eloquent, deeply felt exploration of love and ambition in dangerous times. . . Smash Cut [is] a moving, memorable and important book.
Gooch is a cool witness to the era’s excess and his own conflicting behavior; his quiet honesty is bold. Smash Cut is a love story and an elegy. It’s heady, sexy, heartbreaking, and most notably, even in the face of death, written not from anger, but love.
In his memoir Smash Cut , Gooch traces the life of ‘70s and ‘80s New York with the same fashionable tongue of a literary connoisseur, approaching the details of his life with humour and poignancy.
In Gooch’s visceral, gut-punching narrative, the arrival of AIDS turns the city into a cemetery. . . . This is a memoir that needs to be read by those who remember and those who never knew.
A powerful, poignant and especially frank memoir. . . Rife with humor, glamour, audacity and tragedy, Smash Cut is a witty, whimsical portrait of art and artists from an unforgettable time period.
Gooch excels when reporting on the cruelty wrought by H.I.V. that would eventually take Brookner’s life-and on the complexity of a relationship that defied category.
New York Times Book Review
Smash Cut is an eloquent, deeply felt exploration of love and ambition in dangerous times. . . Smash Cut [is] a moving, memorable and important book.