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The Golden Age of Promiscuity
The author of Scary Kisses delivers a shocking and powerful novel about the gay club scene in New York in the 1970s. Sean Devlin leaves Columbia University to pursue the downtown life of an avant-garde filmmaker, in the tradition of Warhol. As Sean slowly becomes a famous filmmaker, readers pass through an erotic, decadent, lost world of drugs, dim lights, and strange rooms.
- GenresFictionGay Fiction
301 pages, Hardcover
First published May 28, 1996
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83 people want to read
About the author
Brad Gooch
28 books107 followersBrad Gooch is the author of Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor (Little, Brown, 2009.) His previous books include City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara; as well as Godtalk: Travels in Spiritual America; three novels--Scary Kisses, The Golden Age of Promiscuity, Zombie00; a collection of stories, Jailbait and Other Stories, chosen by Donald Barthelme for a Pushcart Foundation Writer’s Choice Award; a collection of poems, The Daily News; and two memoirs, Finding the Boyfriend Within and Dating the Greek Gods.
His work has been featured in numerous magazines including: The New Republic, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Travel and Leisure, Partisan Review, The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Art Forum, Harper’s Bazaar, The Nation, and regularly on The Daily Beast.
A Guggenheim fellow in Biography, he has received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, and a Furthermore grant in publishing from the J.M. Kaplan Fund.
A professor of English at William Paterson University, he earned his PhD at Columbia University, and lives in New York City.
His work has been featured in numerous magazines including: The New Republic, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Travel and Leisure, Partisan Review, The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Art Forum, Harper’s Bazaar, The Nation, and regularly on The Daily Beast.
A Guggenheim fellow in Biography, he has received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, and a Furthermore grant in publishing from the J.M. Kaplan Fund.
A professor of English at William Paterson University, he earned his PhD at Columbia University, and lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 20, 2014
Unreadable, and not a single true insight into that time and place. There's a story, somewhere, about how this novel was published.
June 21, 2020
The title suckered me in as did the non gay reviews but honestly this is simply tedious and dull which it should not be.
August 17, 2023
A vital period piece that means to shock but can only hint at the horrors to come.
This autobiographical roman à clef is a fascinating period piece that brings the crazy, new DIY art, gay sex obsessed, and druggy 1970's and 1980's to life. Gooch was in the thick of it: the Mineshaft, the glittery Studio 54, heavy S&M play, opening boundaries on galleries and literature, and as much non-stop drug action as possible.
I'm sure his good lucks gave him access (He was a model! Just another fact about the fabulous Gooch) but he really takes advantage of it, never missing a night out, a handsome stranger, an unclear but combustible combination of drugs, or a crazy party. His descriptions of the Mineshaft are glorious but debauched in a way that may be hard to comprehend today. His visits to Studio 54 are funny but, as he unwinds in the theater seats overlooking the fabulous crowd, can also be strangely peaceful. He's a filmmaker, willing to let things happen around him and just film them. But sometimes he's so high, he can't do much to affect the action and sometimes can't remember what did happen. He indulges in a number of wild S&M scenes at The Mineshaft, at home, in strangers' lofts, and in visits to Philly and DC. He films many of his sex adventures to make a movie that becomes a minor sensation. He runs with a lively crowd who are creating the art, poetry, and literature that defines the ‘70's and ‘80's. And he uses all the major drugs whenever he can.
Written in 1996, the World Trade Towers appear a few times in the novel. We now know how 9/11 changed NYC and Gooch hints at the upcoming AIDS crisis at the end of "The Golden Age…." He mines many of the incidents in the novel for his later memoir "Smash Cut," which describes his long-term relationship with "Willy," with whom he sort of settles down at the end of "The Golden Age…."
If "The Golden Age…" is a bit flat, it's because the narrative isn't compelling. After a while it begins to devolve into an attempt to out-do itself. So many S&M scenes, so many drugs, so many men, so many parties. But it's unsurpassed as a bit of queer NYC history that few people saw, even fewer lived to write about, all in a world that took place in a few dozen square blocks that changed the scope of gay life forever.
A note on the original, fabulous hard-cover dust jacket, when you open it, it reads "…the seventies, downtown, was like a glory hole through which you could watch secret rituals being acted out…"
This autobiographical roman à clef is a fascinating period piece that brings the crazy, new DIY art, gay sex obsessed, and druggy 1970's and 1980's to life. Gooch was in the thick of it: the Mineshaft, the glittery Studio 54, heavy S&M play, opening boundaries on galleries and literature, and as much non-stop drug action as possible.
I'm sure his good lucks gave him access (He was a model! Just another fact about the fabulous Gooch) but he really takes advantage of it, never missing a night out, a handsome stranger, an unclear but combustible combination of drugs, or a crazy party. His descriptions of the Mineshaft are glorious but debauched in a way that may be hard to comprehend today. His visits to Studio 54 are funny but, as he unwinds in the theater seats overlooking the fabulous crowd, can also be strangely peaceful. He's a filmmaker, willing to let things happen around him and just film them. But sometimes he's so high, he can't do much to affect the action and sometimes can't remember what did happen. He indulges in a number of wild S&M scenes at The Mineshaft, at home, in strangers' lofts, and in visits to Philly and DC. He films many of his sex adventures to make a movie that becomes a minor sensation. He runs with a lively crowd who are creating the art, poetry, and literature that defines the ‘70's and ‘80's. And he uses all the major drugs whenever he can.
Written in 1996, the World Trade Towers appear a few times in the novel. We now know how 9/11 changed NYC and Gooch hints at the upcoming AIDS crisis at the end of "The Golden Age…." He mines many of the incidents in the novel for his later memoir "Smash Cut," which describes his long-term relationship with "Willy," with whom he sort of settles down at the end of "The Golden Age…."
If "The Golden Age…" is a bit flat, it's because the narrative isn't compelling. After a while it begins to devolve into an attempt to out-do itself. So many S&M scenes, so many drugs, so many men, so many parties. But it's unsurpassed as a bit of queer NYC history that few people saw, even fewer lived to write about, all in a world that took place in a few dozen square blocks that changed the scope of gay life forever.
A note on the original, fabulous hard-cover dust jacket, when you open it, it reads "…the seventies, downtown, was like a glory hole through which you could watch secret rituals being acted out…"
September 24, 2024
Golden ages, memory lanes. Brad Gooch's novel of 1970s queer New York is quite a ride through a dark golden age of brooding leather bars, Anvils and Meat Racks. The main character, Sean, is an avant garde pornographer, in the mode of Fred Halsted and Robert Mapplethorpe (Sean even has a Patti Smith-ish bestie who disappears midway through), which is strange since Halsted and Mapplethorpe both appear in this fictional narrative. This book is wild and messy, overstuffed and overwritten, a coming of age story that depends on our knowing awareness of the plague that followed. Sean has a taste for sub, and other dark inclinations, and the narrative mostly resides in that territory, only to take a vivid detour into Studio 54, which is described with such detail as through meant to be a balancing element after all the kinky, piss and scat sex in the leather bars. You get the sense that this is not a book that Gooch, who recently published a bio of Keith Haring, would like to be reminded of. Yet it is also one (which was picked up in a free library) that has a deluxe, die-cut glory hole cover that suggests the publisher was banking on it being a best seller. Dreams fade and wither, golden ages patina. . . .
February 19, 2017
Fascinating.
July 9, 2023
This book is a time trip through 1970s gay NYC. The narrator, Sean Devlin is an incipient film-maker and viists a number of sex sites, ostensibly to find material for his avant-garde films. Sean is kind of an uninteresting enigma and the narrative doesn't quite ring true but it an interesting journey. I have read other books by Brad Gooch and this is by far his weakest and probably most personal.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews