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Village Voice review:
""Bruce Benderson has always been a connoisseur of the louche, a writer in constant pursuit of illicit adventures that have no place in our newly gentrified, family values Queer Eye world. "I am . . . a cultural leftover," he confesses early on in The Romanian, a blistering (and surprisingly engaging) memoir of his affair with an Eastern European hustler. "As recently as six years ago, I still spent white nights in the company of midtown Manhattan hustlers, ex-cons and junkies, sponging up their speech and vampirizing their emotions to write about," notably in the 1994 novel User.................
....................Occasionally someone questions his warped vision. When he reads a passage about Romulus to a New York gathering of Romanian exiles, one poet asks why everyone who writes about Romania always writes about prostitutes. The jazz pianist Johnny Raducanu points out, "For you is fun, a dream and an adventure. . . . But see how you like the party when you stay forever!" Not that Benderson ever hesitates to make himself look bad. A tightly controlled book about the loss of control necessitated by obsession, The Romanian openly offers up the author's blind spots and weaknesses. It's not until he's out of the thick of things that Benderson can see for himself what we've witnessed: a man transforming his midlife fears and desires into a grand, if disturbing, adventure."
www.villagevoice.com/2006-01...c-party/
""Bruce Benderson has always been a connoisseur of the louche, a writer in constant pursuit of illicit adventures that have no place in our newly gentrified, family values Queer Eye world. "I am . . . a cultural leftover," he confesses early on in The Romanian, a blistering (and surprisingly engaging) memoir of his affair with an Eastern European hustler. "As recently as six years ago, I still spent white nights in the company of midtown Manhattan hustlers, ex-cons and junkies, sponging up their speech and vampirizing their emotions to write about," notably in the 1994 novel User.................
....................Occasionally someone questions his warped vision. When he reads a passage about Romulus to a New York gathering of Romanian exiles, one poet asks why everyone who writes about Romania always writes about prostitutes. The jazz pianist Johnny Raducanu points out, "For you is fun, a dream and an adventure. . . . But see how you like the party when you stay forever!" Not that Benderson ever hesitates to make himself look bad. A tightly controlled book about the loss of control necessitated by obsession, The Romanian openly offers up the author's blind spots and weaknesses. It's not until he's out of the thick of things that Benderson can see for himself what we've witnessed: a man transforming his midlife fears and desires into a grand, if disturbing, adventure."
www.villagevoice.com/2006-01...c-party/
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