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Purple Men 2000
The next time Trent wakes up it’s 4 a.m. on Wednesday, August 4, 1993. Therapists prepare us for death and Morrissey just released his third solo album.
Trent and Daryl are a couple living together in San Francisco in the early nineties. This story follows them over the course of one day as they prepare to throw a dinner party, while dealing with— among other things—ailing pet fish, HIV, a psychotic stalker ex, annoying friends, a new job and the ennui of approaching middle age. Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, Purple Men 2000 is Robert Glück’s distinct take on the “day in the life” genre: funny, smart, uncomfortable and moving in equal measure.
“Because Glück emphatically constructs the reality he shows, his reader is always aware of the writer writing; and this translucence is, somehow, an entirely natural element in his work, rather than a conspicuous device. Glück’s authorial voice is personal and dispassionate; it is a voice whose very mildness lures one into an orgiastic wilderness without maps or compass. He is an avuncular de Sade.”
—Gary Indiana
Trent and Daryl are a couple living together in San Francisco in the early nineties. This story follows them over the course of one day as they prepare to throw a dinner party, while dealing with— among other things—ailing pet fish, HIV, a psychotic stalker ex, annoying friends, a new job and the ennui of approaching middle age. Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, Purple Men 2000 is Robert Glück’s distinct take on the “day in the life” genre: funny, smart, uncomfortable and moving in equal measure.
“Because Glück emphatically constructs the reality he shows, his reader is always aware of the writer writing; and this translucence is, somehow, an entirely natural element in his work, rather than a conspicuous device. Glück’s authorial voice is personal and dispassionate; it is a voice whose very mildness lures one into an orgiastic wilderness without maps or compass. He is an avuncular de Sade.”
—Gary Indiana
66 pages, Paperback
Published December 6, 2025
About the author
Robert Glück
39 books77 followersBorn in Cleveland, poet, fiction writer, editor, and New Narrative theorist Robert Glück grew up there and in Los Angeles. He was educated at the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Edinburgh, the College of Art in Edinburgh, and the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a BA. He also studied writing in New York City workshops with poet Ted Berrigan and earned an MA at San Francisco State University.
With Bruce Boone and other writers, Glück co-founded the New Narrative movement in San Francisco in the early 1980s. Glück’s experimental work—typically prose—infuses L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E theory with queer, feminist, and class-based discourse while exploring issues of autobiography and self. In his essay “Long Note on New Narrative,” which appeared in Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative (2004), Glück stated, “We were thinking about autobiography; by autobiography we meant daydreams, nightdreams, the act of writing, the relationship to the reader, the meeting of flesh and culture, the self as collaboration, the self as disintegration, the gaps, inconsistencies and distortions, the enjambments of power, family, history and language.”
Glück’s poetry includes the collection Reader (1989) and, with Bruce Boone, the collaboration La Fontaine (1981). His fiction includes the story collection Denny Smith (2003) and the novels Jack the Modernist (1995) and Margery Kempe (1994). Glück’s work has been selected for numerous anthologies, including The Faber Book of Gay Short Fiction (1992), Best American Erotica 2005, and Lust for Life: On the Writings of Kathy Acker (2006). He has received a California Arts Council Fellowship and a San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Grant.
Glück has served as director of San Francisco State’s Poetry Center, codirector of the Small Press Traffic Literary Center, and editor for Lapis Press and the literary journal Narrativity. He lives in San Francisco.
With Bruce Boone and other writers, Glück co-founded the New Narrative movement in San Francisco in the early 1980s. Glück’s experimental work—typically prose—infuses L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E theory with queer, feminist, and class-based discourse while exploring issues of autobiography and self. In his essay “Long Note on New Narrative,” which appeared in Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative (2004), Glück stated, “We were thinking about autobiography; by autobiography we meant daydreams, nightdreams, the act of writing, the relationship to the reader, the meeting of flesh and culture, the self as collaboration, the self as disintegration, the gaps, inconsistencies and distortions, the enjambments of power, family, history and language.”
Glück’s poetry includes the collection Reader (1989) and, with Bruce Boone, the collaboration La Fontaine (1981). His fiction includes the story collection Denny Smith (2003) and the novels Jack the Modernist (1995) and Margery Kempe (1994). Glück’s work has been selected for numerous anthologies, including The Faber Book of Gay Short Fiction (1992), Best American Erotica 2005, and Lust for Life: On the Writings of Kathy Acker (2006). He has received a California Arts Council Fellowship and a San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Grant.
Glück has served as director of San Francisco State’s Poetry Center, codirector of the Small Press Traffic Literary Center, and editor for Lapis Press and the literary journal Narrativity. He lives in San Francisco.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 6, 2026
The opening scenes are languid and charming, then we get to that fraught Boys in the Band-style dinner party, whew. Tender and lovely closing sequence. No major surprises, but well-crafted and good fun.
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April 1, 2026Schön flüchtig. Ringend.
April 20, 2026
My hero doesn't miss
February 26, 2026
There was something playful and charming here and the Mrs Dalloway parallels were fun but on the whole it felt like an idea and a vibe rather than a finished project. The characters deserved to be fleshed out some more and the themes felt a bit like set dressing at times but this was still a nice short n sweet read that I enjoyed. (3.5*)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews