What do you think?
Rate this book
I Loved You More
Tom Spanbauer’s first novel in seven years is a love story triangle akin to The Marriage Plot and Freedom , only with a gay main character who charms gays and straights alike. I Loved You More is a rich, expansive tale of love, sex, and heartbreak, covering twenty-five years in the life of a striving, emotionally wounded writer. In New York, Ben forms a bond of love with his macho friend and foil, Hank. Years later in Portland, a now ill Ben falls for Ruth, who provides the care and devotion he needs, though they cannot find true happiness together. Then Hank reappears and meets Ruth, and real trouble starts. Set against a world of struggling artists, the underground sex scene of New York in the 1980s, the drab, confining Idaho of Ben’s youth, and many places in between, I Loved You More is the author’s most complex and wise novel to date.
468 pages, Paperback
First published March 17, 2014
82 people are currently reading
2472 people want to read
About the author
Tom Spanbauer
12 books476 followersTom Spanbauer was an American writer whose work often explored issues of sexuality, race, and the ties that bind disparate people together. Raised in Idaho, Spanbauer lived in Kenya and across the United States. He later lived in Portland, Oregon, where he taught a course titled "dangerous writing". He graduated in 1988 from Columbia University with an MFA in Fiction and has written five novels.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 168 reviews
July 10, 2015
Puto Spanbauer, tío.
January 8, 2014
First of all, the pub date is April 1st, 2014. But you can order this NOW direct from Hawthorne books. Link? Link. http://hawthornebooks.com/catalogue/i...
There were so many things I took away from Tom Spanbauer's workshop. But two of them really stood out in this book, and stood out in a way where I can recommend the book to anybody.
The first one, that a writer should tell a story the way he would tell it to a dear friend he hasn't seen in years, 2 cocktails in. You pick up your old friend at the airport, you say, "Have I got a story for you. But first I need a drink." Right in the middle of that second Ginger Whale (a drink that some idiots call a Highball, missing the obvious combination of the words "whiskey" and "ginger ale"), you start in.
This book, it's like that. Except better.
You know how your friends have one or two really great stories? Tom Spanbauer is the friend who has dozens. More than dozens. Some of them are sad, some are hilarious. A lot of them are a lot more than one thing. All of them are incredible, and all of them are told just right.
The beauty is, sometimes when a friend has this many great stories, you kind of hate that person. You know, every part of his or her life is Epic. Life-Changing. Really Made Me Re-Evaluate. But this book, this book strikes the perfect balance. You believe the narrator. You want to hear how his stories end. But he's not in it to make himself out to be the hero.
The second thing, quoting another author, he said that a reader should be brought to his knees, riven before the event. It's a great description of how it feels to finish a great book. You just don't know what to do next. You sit there, holding it closed, and it's hard to believe that everything happened in between those covers. The book feels larger, heavier. It's hard to believe, after you read a book like I Loved You More, that these things didn't happen to EVERYBODY. That you can't go up to people and say, "Remember when Ben and Hank went to that book thing in Idaho and...".
The book, this book. It felt like the whole world.
There were so many things I took away from Tom Spanbauer's workshop. But two of them really stood out in this book, and stood out in a way where I can recommend the book to anybody.
The first one, that a writer should tell a story the way he would tell it to a dear friend he hasn't seen in years, 2 cocktails in. You pick up your old friend at the airport, you say, "Have I got a story for you. But first I need a drink." Right in the middle of that second Ginger Whale (a drink that some idiots call a Highball, missing the obvious combination of the words "whiskey" and "ginger ale"), you start in.
This book, it's like that. Except better.
You know how your friends have one or two really great stories? Tom Spanbauer is the friend who has dozens. More than dozens. Some of them are sad, some are hilarious. A lot of them are a lot more than one thing. All of them are incredible, and all of them are told just right.
The beauty is, sometimes when a friend has this many great stories, you kind of hate that person. You know, every part of his or her life is Epic. Life-Changing. Really Made Me Re-Evaluate. But this book, this book strikes the perfect balance. You believe the narrator. You want to hear how his stories end. But he's not in it to make himself out to be the hero.
The second thing, quoting another author, he said that a reader should be brought to his knees, riven before the event. It's a great description of how it feels to finish a great book. You just don't know what to do next. You sit there, holding it closed, and it's hard to believe that everything happened in between those covers. The book feels larger, heavier. It's hard to believe, after you read a book like I Loved You More, that these things didn't happen to EVERYBODY. That you can't go up to people and say, "Remember when Ben and Hank went to that book thing in Idaho and...".
The book, this book. It felt like the whole world.
June 8, 2021
I closed the final page of this novel and couldn't move. And then the tears came.
Spanbauer has written a novel so painful and honest that at times it felt like a physical punch to the gut. This a piece of work that you immerse yourself in. I lived these characters' lives.
Now I'm going to spend the rest of my day feeling not quite sure what to do with myself because I'm still processing all these feelings.
Spanbauer has written a novel so painful and honest that at times it felt like a physical punch to the gut. This a piece of work that you immerse yourself in. I lived these characters' lives.
Now I'm going to spend the rest of my day feeling not quite sure what to do with myself because I'm still processing all these feelings.
August 26, 2017
Uf, por fin lo terminé. Según Goodreads parece ser que soy de las pocas, poquísimas personas a las que este libro no les ha gustado. Me ha resultado pesado, aburrido y repetitivo y eso que la historia me llamaba muchísimo. Puta coletilla cansina, tío, la bombilla que titila, Litlle Ben arriba, Big Ben abajo, y expresiones recurrentes varias, un no parar vaya. Por no hablar de la absoluta idealización de Hank por parte de Ben, no puedo con ella, es que todo en él es perfección (ajá, mmm, claro…).
No he conseguido conectar con los personajes como debería haberlo hecho y he llegado a estar tan completamente fuera de la historia que los momentos buenos no han podido compensar al resto. Quizá una estrella sea muy poco, pero ponerle dos significaría un “it was ok” y ahora mismo no es esa la sensación que me ha dejado su lectura.
No he conseguido conectar con los personajes como debería haberlo hecho y he llegado a estar tan completamente fuera de la historia que los momentos buenos no han podido compensar al resto. Quizá una estrella sea muy poco, pero ponerle dos significaría un “it was ok” y ahora mismo no es esa la sensación que me ha dejado su lectura.
July 6, 2015
Empieza fuerte, con la fuerza ingenua de la juventud, luego los personajes se alejan de Nueva York y parece que la historia frena. Pero solo está cogiendo carrerilla para unas páginas finales demoledoras. Hay tantas frases que cortan como un cuchillo...
March 10, 2016
"Si el efecto equivalente no es posible, que sea yo quien ame más" | W. H. Auden
May 21, 2018
"(...) Cuando te acercas a la vena donde palpita la verdad, cuando abres esa vena, puedes lavarte el alma con su sangre".
Puto Tom Spanbauer, tío.
Puto Tom Spanbauer, tío.
May 12, 2014
I picked this book up on a whim at a Barnes&Noble on a table with contemporary fiction of note as I was buying a travel guide for a coming trip, thinking it’s always good to have a book when traveling because you never know when you’ll be stuck in the airport or somewhere, and the inside front cover and back cover were full of glowing reviews, and I thought, man it’s been a while since I read any contemporary LGBT fiction, and given a part of the novel takes place in my neighborhood in the mid80s, I thought this should be interesting and how could I go wrong?
Apparently, I could go very wrong.
It's Spanbauer's style that really made every page of this a pissing-me-off experience: his sentence fragments, clipped, awkward (the fragment. dammit. the fucking fragment. what it's doing.); his constant repetitions; his insertion of phrases and citations from songs and ads and other pop effluvia (groan); his peppering of the text with what I assume are intended to be subtle truths and profound aphorisms on sweat, dance, men.... Five pages in, and I knew I hated his style.
And all this coming through Spanbauer's 1st person narrator Ben: the wretched, guilt-obsessed, Catholic, trembling, weepy, frightened, often petty/jealous, gay/bi writer/student/teacher suffering from erectile disfunction and (later) AIDS. It's pretty hard to want to follow him on his 20 year journey when the tics of his style and obsessive repetitions (Big Ben, Little Ben, the filament in his chest, the most miserable at the bottom of hell) and quirky citations (Portnoy's complaint, dead Lorca, Atlas shrugs, if you can make it here, you've come a long way babe...) swallow all the air in the room.
I also didn't find that the narrator truly made a case for why Hank was so fascinating, so worthy of his love and obsession; I didn't see the magic. I just saw some big ol' Joe with dark eyes and broad shoulders. Calling a guy a saint and a guardian and describing his roman nose and laughter and farts isn't enough to make me believe he's worth falling in love with. And I certainly didn't see why Hank (or anyone) would be drawn to Ben. What are Hank and Ruth and Buster and Andy seeing that I don't see? Hell if I know. And, given that everything in the story is predicated upon the narrator's love for Hank and their friendship, what's one to do?
And don't get me started on how the narrator treats Ruth. The 1st person (male) narration doesn't leave much room for her pains and frustrations. And while it's surely unintentional, I felt a fair amount of misogyny in Ben's appraisal of their relationship.
On a narrative level, especially in the first half of the book, Spanbauer's writing feels sloppy, unedited, unrevised (or over-revised?). The story is constantly cut with asides and memories and tidbits; scenes end abruptly, then pick up later after some curtain has dropped; flashbacks/forwards abound; but none of this with a Proustian or Faulknerian hallucinatory control - it just feels lazy. And it's very frustrating.
I will say that the second half of the book (from the Idaho trip on) is a better read than the initial Hank and Ben in New York section. There's some nice moments in the hot springs, in Portland. The material on AIDS and clinical depression is heartfelt and earnest. But everywhere there's still that damn style. And Ben. Fucking Gruney.
Oh, and then there's the layout (though even a poorly edited book can shine at times). Whoever edited this book should be sent back to design school. A one-inch top margin and a ¼-inch bottom margin make the whole book look mis-cut. Then there's the deep gutter, a 1cm paragraph indent but no indent at section beginnings (which are THREE WORDS IN all caps), and the unjustified text. And another thing: if you use roman numerals for front matter, when you start numbering pages in the story, you really should restart at "1"... The layout is about as awkward as Catholic schoolboy at his first screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show. I am unsure if this f*ed-upness is intentional.
Sadly, Spanbauer's just not the author for me.
Apparently, I could go very wrong.
It's Spanbauer's style that really made every page of this a pissing-me-off experience: his sentence fragments, clipped, awkward (the fragment. dammit. the fucking fragment. what it's doing.); his constant repetitions; his insertion of phrases and citations from songs and ads and other pop effluvia (groan); his peppering of the text with what I assume are intended to be subtle truths and profound aphorisms on sweat, dance, men.... Five pages in, and I knew I hated his style.
And all this coming through Spanbauer's 1st person narrator Ben: the wretched, guilt-obsessed, Catholic, trembling, weepy, frightened, often petty/jealous, gay/bi writer/student/teacher suffering from erectile disfunction and (later) AIDS. It's pretty hard to want to follow him on his 20 year journey when the tics of his style and obsessive repetitions (Big Ben, Little Ben, the filament in his chest, the most miserable at the bottom of hell) and quirky citations (Portnoy's complaint, dead Lorca, Atlas shrugs, if you can make it here, you've come a long way babe...) swallow all the air in the room.
I also didn't find that the narrator truly made a case for why Hank was so fascinating, so worthy of his love and obsession; I didn't see the magic. I just saw some big ol' Joe with dark eyes and broad shoulders. Calling a guy a saint and a guardian and describing his roman nose and laughter and farts isn't enough to make me believe he's worth falling in love with. And I certainly didn't see why Hank (or anyone) would be drawn to Ben. What are Hank and Ruth and Buster and Andy seeing that I don't see? Hell if I know. And, given that everything in the story is predicated upon the narrator's love for Hank and their friendship, what's one to do?
And don't get me started on how the narrator treats Ruth. The 1st person (male) narration doesn't leave much room for her pains and frustrations. And while it's surely unintentional, I felt a fair amount of misogyny in Ben's appraisal of their relationship.
On a narrative level, especially in the first half of the book, Spanbauer's writing feels sloppy, unedited, unrevised (or over-revised?). The story is constantly cut with asides and memories and tidbits; scenes end abruptly, then pick up later after some curtain has dropped; flashbacks/forwards abound; but none of this with a Proustian or Faulknerian hallucinatory control - it just feels lazy. And it's very frustrating.
I will say that the second half of the book (from the Idaho trip on) is a better read than the initial Hank and Ben in New York section. There's some nice moments in the hot springs, in Portland. The material on AIDS and clinical depression is heartfelt and earnest. But everywhere there's still that damn style. And Ben. Fucking Gruney.
Oh, and then there's the layout (though even a poorly edited book can shine at times). Whoever edited this book should be sent back to design school. A one-inch top margin and a ¼-inch bottom margin make the whole book look mis-cut. Then there's the deep gutter, a 1cm paragraph indent but no indent at section beginnings (which are THREE WORDS IN all caps), and the unjustified text. And another thing: if you use roman numerals for front matter, when you start numbering pages in the story, you really should restart at "1"... The layout is about as awkward as Catholic schoolboy at his first screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show. I am unsure if this f*ed-upness is intentional.
Sadly, Spanbauer's just not the author for me.
July 29, 2014
My heart was in a meat grinder reading this and it felt damn good. So good I'm going to read it again.
November 28, 2021
Absolutely stunning.
August 27, 2016
La perfección hecha libro.- Amor, desamor, dolor, enfermedad, SIDA, cancer, amistad, celos.- Todos los temas dolorosos que puedan imaginar, sin golpes bajos.- Con mucho humor.- El talento de este escritor es envidiable.- Una maravilla.- No dejen de leerlo!
July 6, 2015
I love Tom Spanbauer's writing. I have read all four of his previous novels of literary fiction and each made a permanent, positive impression on me. His first and highly original 1991 novel, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, is recognized as a breakthrough in modern gay fiction, honestly exploring multiple aspects of human sexuality. It's one of my all-time favorite books. The other three are similar in quality. He is also a successful teacher of creative writing whose many students have likewise been successful in their own literary work.
But I did not like I Loved You More. It's a weepy hot mess, at times disgusting, which is designed to maximize tears.
About the disgust, first. By referencing, in a narrative, a good portion of normal human activities having to do with food, both at ingress and at egress, an author establishes a common animal link with his readers. This is a device used since the beginning of storytelling. But why be gross? In this novel, we have too many eating scenes culminating in food sprayed from chewing mouths onto others' clothes, faces, and plates. Concerning the other end, anatomically, I lost count of the number of uses of the phrase "shit spray," one often used in war novels metaphorically, but here it's used disturbingly literally. Along with the "sprays" naturally come explosive farts. Many of them. Unfairly, though, in this book only the straight guys emit them, denying the gay guys the public pleasure of pressure relief that they surely need, too. This is one of the many sexual stereotypes Spanbauer so often repeats, and to his credit often destroys, in this book. Gay people only fart quietly, we see, but we must assume with as much deadliness.
While these scenes perhaps were intended as crude humor, the overall tone of the book is not comedy, but overwhelming sadness. All throughout, everybody is crying, anywhere and everywhere, for hour after hour: men, women, children, adults, gay, and straight. Spanbauer shows us that over-the-top demonstrativeness is an equal opportunity emotion, just as sexuality is not as clearcut as gay and straight. The degree to which tears are unceasingly shed is outside the realistic realm of actual behavior. The main characters in I Loved You More are always one tissue away from breakdown.
Like most romance novels, and unlike Spanbauer's previous four novels of literary fiction, cliches permeate this novel and are used to build its structure without using even the pretense of a character's intellectuality. The triteness at the novel's core, around which everything is built, is every gay man's frustratingly unachievable fantasy of seducing the Adonis-like straight man. The object of this enduring desire is the not-to-be-found-in-nature, highly sensitive Hank, with his pursuit by Ben spread unlikely out over an entire lifetime. Hank responds awkwardly, yet sincerely, showing us that straight men have the capacity for empathy and emotional love. But don't we know this already? What's new here? Nothing. Nothing, except an overly earnest cry for men's emotions to gush forth whenever their feelings demand it, unrestrained by a macho "I got your back" type of simplistic behavior.
Then there is the woman, Ruth, who out of compassion for gay Ben's illness AIDS, "gets together" with him. Ben also has a problem with sexual confidence: he can't get hard for guys, even though he's gay. He and Ruth spend a few happy years in a relationship of some sort—the time-shifting is so frequent I was not sure exactly for how long. Ben, startlingly for us, enjoys the hetero-sex with Ruth. We are treated to breathless name-dropping of all those unfamiliar female body parts which Ben licks and kisses, ironically able to get it up. After this period of relative happiness, although punctuated with plenty of crying, Ruth, completely predictably, leaves the gay Ben who can't give her what she most deeply needs. And her next target? Naturally, she marries Hank, with whom Ben is best friends, remember? Death and destruction are sure to follow.
We're not yet done with the cliches yet. Ben returns to NYC where he lived his bromance with Hank years before only to find that Mayor Bloomberg has ruined everything by demolishing his, Ben's, rundown rattrap tenements and his favorite sex clubs, perpetually slimy with beer, spit, urine, and come. Ben's been left behind by the new, cleaner generation, one afraid of AIDS, and which worships money. His own life as a writer poetically evanesces, per the frequent allusions to Auden, perhaps as a way to add art to this soggy mix of mindless matter.
And if those above noted themes and episodes elicit insufficient empathy, and tears, from the readers, Ben returns, in still another cliche seen in almost every coming-out novel ever written, to his bigoted, redneck hometown to find that no one remembers him, his childhood there erased by the locals. Such friends as he had have left for more liberal climes. His existence at home has been brutally rejected as contrary to accepted little-town morality. Still, he extracts some solace from his Native American "brother." There's more crying in bars, in mining ghost towns, and while high on mushrooms at a wilderness hot springs. The environment and freedom so achingly evoked are nostalgically reminiscent of those halcyon, freewheeling hippie days (another cliche).
Beyond the worn-out plot, there is the unsatisfying writing itself. The narrator Ben speaks with a semi-literate style using fragmentary sentences and often ungrammatical construction, even though he is a famous published writer of literary novels. Why would Ben write a lengthy memoir in this way? Unless he was distraught? For 464 pages? Really? It is unsustainable. This device is not believable: his colloquial, occasionally "text message-based" style seems affected. I was always seeing the author, Spanbauer, constructing his sentences, instead of hearing the narrator relate his life.
I can't end this review without noting, as one other reviewer has done, the less than perfect book production. The page numbers are weird, with the Table of Contents as page "xi", the only page so labelled with a roman numeral, and the first numbered text page as "19". This makes no sense. There are also many typos in the text, with a very embarrassing one in the section title for "Book 3". You'll see. This is really not that important, but WTF? Where were the editors?
To repeat, Spanbauer is a skilled writer of excellent novels which honestly and movingly reflect, in his own experience, our given multiple aspects of sexuality. His first four books will survive as worthwhile, admirable, literary expressions of the human experience. Go read them, instead.
There is a question that I more and more find myself asking these days: Why the recent flood of drippy, weeping, novels with little rational content? You know which they are. They're usually the latest works of hyper-fiction everyone seems to be reading. I see I've answered my own question.
But I did not like I Loved You More. It's a weepy hot mess, at times disgusting, which is designed to maximize tears.
About the disgust, first. By referencing, in a narrative, a good portion of normal human activities having to do with food, both at ingress and at egress, an author establishes a common animal link with his readers. This is a device used since the beginning of storytelling. But why be gross? In this novel, we have too many eating scenes culminating in food sprayed from chewing mouths onto others' clothes, faces, and plates. Concerning the other end, anatomically, I lost count of the number of uses of the phrase "shit spray," one often used in war novels metaphorically, but here it's used disturbingly literally. Along with the "sprays" naturally come explosive farts. Many of them. Unfairly, though, in this book only the straight guys emit them, denying the gay guys the public pleasure of pressure relief that they surely need, too. This is one of the many sexual stereotypes Spanbauer so often repeats, and to his credit often destroys, in this book. Gay people only fart quietly, we see, but we must assume with as much deadliness.
While these scenes perhaps were intended as crude humor, the overall tone of the book is not comedy, but overwhelming sadness. All throughout, everybody is crying, anywhere and everywhere, for hour after hour: men, women, children, adults, gay, and straight. Spanbauer shows us that over-the-top demonstrativeness is an equal opportunity emotion, just as sexuality is not as clearcut as gay and straight. The degree to which tears are unceasingly shed is outside the realistic realm of actual behavior. The main characters in I Loved You More are always one tissue away from breakdown.
Like most romance novels, and unlike Spanbauer's previous four novels of literary fiction, cliches permeate this novel and are used to build its structure without using even the pretense of a character's intellectuality. The triteness at the novel's core, around which everything is built, is every gay man's frustratingly unachievable fantasy of seducing the Adonis-like straight man. The object of this enduring desire is the not-to-be-found-in-nature, highly sensitive Hank, with his pursuit by Ben spread unlikely out over an entire lifetime. Hank responds awkwardly, yet sincerely, showing us that straight men have the capacity for empathy and emotional love. But don't we know this already? What's new here? Nothing. Nothing, except an overly earnest cry for men's emotions to gush forth whenever their feelings demand it, unrestrained by a macho "I got your back" type of simplistic behavior.
Then there is the woman, Ruth, who out of compassion for gay Ben's illness AIDS, "gets together" with him. Ben also has a problem with sexual confidence: he can't get hard for guys, even though he's gay. He and Ruth spend a few happy years in a relationship of some sort—the time-shifting is so frequent I was not sure exactly for how long. Ben, startlingly for us, enjoys the hetero-sex with Ruth. We are treated to breathless name-dropping of all those unfamiliar female body parts which Ben licks and kisses, ironically able to get it up. After this period of relative happiness, although punctuated with plenty of crying, Ruth, completely predictably, leaves the gay Ben who can't give her what she most deeply needs. And her next target? Naturally, she marries Hank, with whom Ben is best friends, remember? Death and destruction are sure to follow.
We're not yet done with the cliches yet. Ben returns to NYC where he lived his bromance with Hank years before only to find that Mayor Bloomberg has ruined everything by demolishing his, Ben's, rundown rattrap tenements and his favorite sex clubs, perpetually slimy with beer, spit, urine, and come. Ben's been left behind by the new, cleaner generation, one afraid of AIDS, and which worships money. His own life as a writer poetically evanesces, per the frequent allusions to Auden, perhaps as a way to add art to this soggy mix of mindless matter.
And if those above noted themes and episodes elicit insufficient empathy, and tears, from the readers, Ben returns, in still another cliche seen in almost every coming-out novel ever written, to his bigoted, redneck hometown to find that no one remembers him, his childhood there erased by the locals. Such friends as he had have left for more liberal climes. His existence at home has been brutally rejected as contrary to accepted little-town morality. Still, he extracts some solace from his Native American "brother." There's more crying in bars, in mining ghost towns, and while high on mushrooms at a wilderness hot springs. The environment and freedom so achingly evoked are nostalgically reminiscent of those halcyon, freewheeling hippie days (another cliche).
Beyond the worn-out plot, there is the unsatisfying writing itself. The narrator Ben speaks with a semi-literate style using fragmentary sentences and often ungrammatical construction, even though he is a famous published writer of literary novels. Why would Ben write a lengthy memoir in this way? Unless he was distraught? For 464 pages? Really? It is unsustainable. This device is not believable: his colloquial, occasionally "text message-based" style seems affected. I was always seeing the author, Spanbauer, constructing his sentences, instead of hearing the narrator relate his life.
I can't end this review without noting, as one other reviewer has done, the less than perfect book production. The page numbers are weird, with the Table of Contents as page "xi", the only page so labelled with a roman numeral, and the first numbered text page as "19". This makes no sense. There are also many typos in the text, with a very embarrassing one in the section title for "Book 3". You'll see. This is really not that important, but WTF? Where were the editors?
To repeat, Spanbauer is a skilled writer of excellent novels which honestly and movingly reflect, in his own experience, our given multiple aspects of sexuality. His first four books will survive as worthwhile, admirable, literary expressions of the human experience. Go read them, instead.
There is a question that I more and more find myself asking these days: Why the recent flood of drippy, weeping, novels with little rational content? You know which they are. They're usually the latest works of hyper-fiction everyone seems to be reading. I see I've answered my own question.
March 11, 2015
Chelsea Cain. Chuck Palahniuk. Cheryl Strayed. Monica Drake. Just a few of the names who talk Tom Spanbauer.
Last week it was announced that Tom Spanbauer has been awarded the Steward H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award for contributions to Oregon's literary life. Spanbauer has been running a regular workshop in Portland for decades, and the amount of writing talent in and out of his door is staggering. Indeed, more than 30 of Spanbauer's workshop students have gone on to publish their own work.
It's a great and prestigious award, but just for a moment, I want to forget about Spanbauer's students, about his impact on literature today. Forget that he was a student of Gordon Lish (famous editor of Raymond Carver and others) along with Amy Hempel. Forget all these other people.
I want to forget about that big picture stuff and talk about this book. Just this one book.
'I Loved You More' is the most beautiful book I've ever read. Period. The words, the sentences, the way the story fits together, it reads like nothing I've read before. If you're someone who prides herself on reading great prose, this is a book you need to pick up. If you're an aspiring writer, this is something you need to read, to experience.
And not only are the words beautiful, the story, the characters are beautiful as well. The narrator, Ben, is a beautiful flawed, and real person. Hank is the same way. Every character in this book feels real in a way that most characters do not. They feel like people who existed a long time before the book started, like people who have lived real lives before the book started.
There's something that Tom Spanbauer says to his students. When you go to write a story, he tells you to imagine that you're meeting an old friend. You haven't seen this friend for a long, long time, and the two of you meet up and have a drink together. And it's somewhere around your second cocktail that you're ready to tell your friend this story, your big story from the last few years.
Write the story the way you'd tell it to your best friend after two cocktails.
Reading this book, for most of us it's as close as we'll get to sitting with Tom Spanbauer, having a couple cocktails, and hearing one of the world's greatest storytellers tell one of the world's greatest stories.
-Pete
Last week it was announced that Tom Spanbauer has been awarded the Steward H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award for contributions to Oregon's literary life. Spanbauer has been running a regular workshop in Portland for decades, and the amount of writing talent in and out of his door is staggering. Indeed, more than 30 of Spanbauer's workshop students have gone on to publish their own work.
It's a great and prestigious award, but just for a moment, I want to forget about Spanbauer's students, about his impact on literature today. Forget that he was a student of Gordon Lish (famous editor of Raymond Carver and others) along with Amy Hempel. Forget all these other people.
I want to forget about that big picture stuff and talk about this book. Just this one book.
'I Loved You More' is the most beautiful book I've ever read. Period. The words, the sentences, the way the story fits together, it reads like nothing I've read before. If you're someone who prides herself on reading great prose, this is a book you need to pick up. If you're an aspiring writer, this is something you need to read, to experience.
And not only are the words beautiful, the story, the characters are beautiful as well. The narrator, Ben, is a beautiful flawed, and real person. Hank is the same way. Every character in this book feels real in a way that most characters do not. They feel like people who existed a long time before the book started, like people who have lived real lives before the book started.
There's something that Tom Spanbauer says to his students. When you go to write a story, he tells you to imagine that you're meeting an old friend. You haven't seen this friend for a long, long time, and the two of you meet up and have a drink together. And it's somewhere around your second cocktail that you're ready to tell your friend this story, your big story from the last few years.
Write the story the way you'd tell it to your best friend after two cocktails.
Reading this book, for most of us it's as close as we'll get to sitting with Tom Spanbauer, having a couple cocktails, and hearing one of the world's greatest storytellers tell one of the world's greatest stories.
-Pete
September 5, 2017
This personal saga covers decades in author Ben's life, and mostly his bromance with writing colleague Hank. Dipping back and forth in time, the novel includes New York's '80s, his Idaho youth, and a few intimate-epic trips. Having recently read Spanbauer's novel Now Is The Hour, I got a clear 'roman a clef' sense, from his references to childhood, and other aspects. The repetition of phrases and foretelling of pivotal events to come, whether poetic or annoying, depending on your taste, returned and returned.
The section of Ben's HIV illness is moving, painful, and truthful. I felt many scenes were well dramatized; the trippy moments, the conversations and settings. I empathized for his breakup with Ruth, and despite Ben being gay, how he felt trapped in a marriage of a sort. We're shown the inevitability of Ruth's connection with Hank. Yet I never truly understood why Hank was so fascinating. The near-Kerouac/Cassidy man-love is understandable. But without so much as a sentence or paragraph from Hank's book, why is he so alluring, other than being a handsome man who is a close -then distant- friend?
Still, evocative and amusing, touching in many parts, I look forward to reading more of the author's books.
The section of Ben's HIV illness is moving, painful, and truthful. I felt many scenes were well dramatized; the trippy moments, the conversations and settings. I empathized for his breakup with Ruth, and despite Ben being gay, how he felt trapped in a marriage of a sort. We're shown the inevitability of Ruth's connection with Hank. Yet I never truly understood why Hank was so fascinating. The near-Kerouac/Cassidy man-love is understandable. But without so much as a sentence or paragraph from Hank's book, why is he so alluring, other than being a handsome man who is a close -then distant- friend?
Still, evocative and amusing, touching in many parts, I look forward to reading more of the author's books.
February 10, 2016
This book reminded me of Fight Club, but not in the way you’d think. It’s not about guys beating the shit out of each other, at least not on the surface. But it is a similar meditation on masculinity, from a very different perspective. Because he’s gay, Ben is in many ways an outcast from the world of men. Through his friendship with Hank, a straight guy and in many ways the masculine ideal, the author explores this idea of what it means to be a man, and what it means to be a gay man.
The books also have a similar recklessness, a similar fearlessness. I Loved You More isn’t afraid to dig into the fucked up recesses of the psyche, to make us feel the love and hate, despair and transcendent joy the characters feel. It’s rare and really a delight to feel this close to a protagonist.
Unlike Fight Club, which takes us to extreme circumstances to illuminate its ideas, I Loved You More imbues every little detail with meaning and purpose. Each word wounds or soothes, is love or hate, is cruel or accepting. There is so much to experience in this rich book. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
The books also have a similar recklessness, a similar fearlessness. I Loved You More isn’t afraid to dig into the fucked up recesses of the psyche, to make us feel the love and hate, despair and transcendent joy the characters feel. It’s rare and really a delight to feel this close to a protagonist.
Unlike Fight Club, which takes us to extreme circumstances to illuminate its ideas, I Loved You More imbues every little detail with meaning and purpose. Each word wounds or soothes, is love or hate, is cruel or accepting. There is so much to experience in this rich book. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
January 28, 2020
Everyone should read at least one Tom Spanbauer jam in their life. His words and syntax are what major publishing houses miss when they recruit new talent and his wizardry is unbridled excellence in literary culture.
This jam’s just another example of Spanbauer magic, a story about a middle-aged gay man who’d experienced life as a straight man and doesn’t want to spend his time with so many lost years, lacking the love he’d always yearned. This he found in a strapping man, Hank, although ten years his senior.
There’s much more to the story than that, but I don’t like to write too much about a good jam that might spoil the story for others.
This jam’s just another example of Spanbauer magic, a story about a middle-aged gay man who’d experienced life as a straight man and doesn’t want to spend his time with so many lost years, lacking the love he’d always yearned. This he found in a strapping man, Hank, although ten years his senior.
There’s much more to the story than that, but I don’t like to write too much about a good jam that might spoil the story for others.
April 17, 2024
Ya lo dijo Michi Panero que en esta vida se puede ser de todo, DE TODO, menos un coñazo. ¿Sabéis esa persona que os propone una quedada y os da un palo horrible, pero acabáis accediendo y al final no lo pasáis tan mal, aunque tampoco bien, y días más tarde os vuelve a proponer un plan y la misma pereza se os despierta -aunque más complicado es dar largas- y así todo el tiempo mientras dura la relación? Pues eso es este libro. Me pregunto por qué tanta gente le ha puesto 5 estrellas, pero bueno, el nacionalsocialismo también obtuvo mayoría y Coldplay hace sold outs. You cant trust people. Estrellita extra porque las últimas 50 páginas me han hecho gracia.
May 18, 2014
Tom's a favorite of mine, and more and more every time I pick up one of his novels. This one, though--I'll be honest, my favorite author is Chuck Palahniuk, not Tom Spanbauer--but this one, though. This book is by far the most significant book I've ever read, my FAVORITE book now, too. It's, in my opinion, the best modern book on the shelf. Don't miss out.
Also, anyone who's ignorant enough to mistreat homosexuals, you ought to read this, too--it'll make you feel like such an ass, and maybe you'll get it, then.
Also, anyone who's ignorant enough to mistreat homosexuals, you ought to read this, too--it'll make you feel like such an ass, and maybe you'll get it, then.
March 7, 2014
This beautifully written, tender, sensitive narration is about love in all its expressions. It's about loving ourselves and all of the ways we are human, as lover, son, brother, writer, friend. It's a Great American Story - western movement, the return home, history, both personal and collective and a story of home.
There were passages that made me stop reading and hold the book to my chest until I could breathe again. It's that beautiful. It's haunting.
There were passages that made me stop reading and hold the book to my chest until I could breathe again. It's that beautiful. It's haunting.
April 26, 2014
I cried several times during this book. I love Tom Spanbauer's writing.
November 3, 2020
2.5.
Decepción.
Por ir leyendo en busca de algún fragmento interesante y profundo que -casi nunca- llega.
Porque ‘Ahora es el momento’ me conmovió en lo más profundo y pensé que Spanbauer me acompañaría siempre.
Porque aunque ‘El Hombre que se enamoró de la luna’ no me gustó, lo achaqué, huyendo de la decepción hacia delante, a que no era su momento conmigo.
Porque sé que hay millones de libros maravillosos esperando a cambiarme la vida para seguir leyendo en diagonal.
Decepción.
Por ir leyendo en busca de algún fragmento interesante y profundo que -casi nunca- llega.
Porque ‘Ahora es el momento’ me conmovió en lo más profundo y pensé que Spanbauer me acompañaría siempre.
Porque aunque ‘El Hombre que se enamoró de la luna’ no me gustó, lo achaqué, huyendo de la decepción hacia delante, a que no era su momento conmigo.
Porque sé que hay millones de libros maravillosos esperando a cambiarme la vida para seguir leyendo en diagonal.
August 7, 2017
Sin duda lo primero q debo decir es q no le llega ni a la suela del zapato a El hombre q se enamoró de la luna de este mismo autor. En segundo lugar q me ha costado una vida entrar en el libro y que hasta más allá de la mitad no entendía cual era el camino por el q me estaba llevando. Y en tercer y último lugar, finalmente consiguió entretenerme y hacerme ver los por qué del protagonista.
July 8, 2018
Maravillosa historia, aunque a ratos muy triste, qué difíciles pueden llegar a ser las relaciones entre amigos que se quieren profundamente. Muy recomendable.
November 6, 2023
Entra solo
July 8, 2014
"I inhale on the cigarette so deep I inhale every aspect of the night, the place, that moment: the kerosene light, the heat from the stove, the draft from the back door, the drizzle of rain on the tin roof, the smell of the rain and the smell of tamales and boiled beans, the smack of hot sauce on my tongue, the tang of the beer."
This book has such beautiful writing and such rawness and realness to it. It's a book about being gay, love, friendship, writing, AIDS, cancer and hope. It's pretty amazing but not an easy read (although not actually as bleak as it sounds). It feels so real, it feels like real life.
My husband wrote a great review of this right here, which is way better than anything I can write about this book.
This book has such beautiful writing and such rawness and realness to it. It's a book about being gay, love, friendship, writing, AIDS, cancer and hope. It's pretty amazing but not an easy read (although not actually as bleak as it sounds). It feels so real, it feels like real life.
My husband wrote a great review of this right here, which is way better than anything I can write about this book.
February 18, 2022
9 días y 448 páginas después. El primer libro que leo del autor, y que conocí hace algunos ayeres, lo leí porque el fue el maestro de Palahniuk, y la escritura peligrosa (más no transgresora) se ve permeada aquí, totalmente.
Un libro intenso, cansado, sentimental y sumamente profundo. Tantos puntos de vista en una sola persona y en una sola perspectiva. Un libro que me costó mucho, sobre todo lo primera parte, porque es demasiada información y demasiados sentimientos.
La calidad del escritor se nota, y se nota lo fundamental que es para él, el tema de las relaciones personales. No me queda más que recomendarles este libro, pero con un buen timing, y la suficiente paciencia.
Largo pero que vale la pena. Quiero leer más del autor y lo haré, solo necesito acabar de digerirlo.
Un libro intenso, cansado, sentimental y sumamente profundo. Tantos puntos de vista en una sola persona y en una sola perspectiva. Un libro que me costó mucho, sobre todo lo primera parte, porque es demasiada información y demasiados sentimientos.
La calidad del escritor se nota, y se nota lo fundamental que es para él, el tema de las relaciones personales. No me queda más que recomendarles este libro, pero con un buen timing, y la suficiente paciencia.
Largo pero que vale la pena. Quiero leer más del autor y lo haré, solo necesito acabar de digerirlo.
March 14, 2015
This book is an amazing achievement, and has become the book by which I judge all others. There are just not enough stars. It's heart-breaking and beautiful and unflinchingly honest. Spanbauer nails love and longing and loss. The ending is really something special, and left me more than a little bit in love with Tom/Ben.
February 8, 2016
Pues me ha gustado mucho aunque me costó trabajo.
Curioso, pero la primera mitad me distraje un poco, me confundió, incluso me hastió, y la segunda retomó el vuelo tremendamente! La viví, la sufrí y la amé.
Quizá yo me concentré mejor en la parte final y esa, por sí misma, hubiera hecho un libro completo, a mi parecer.
Me gusta el escritor, seguiré leyéndolo.
Curioso, pero la primera mitad me distraje un poco, me confundió, incluso me hastió, y la segunda retomó el vuelo tremendamente! La viví, la sufrí y la amé.
Quizá yo me concentré mejor en la parte final y esa, por sí misma, hubiera hecho un libro completo, a mi parecer.
Me gusta el escritor, seguiré leyéndolo.
January 5, 2016
Una novela sincera, intensa, perturbadora, triste.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 168 reviews