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Tricks Of The Trade
When writer Bart Cain encounters Rodrigo Dominguez, a Latino hustler looking for his big break, they become involved with Jim Fallon, a beloved television star whose penchant for young guys is exposed, leading all three men on a riotous romp through Hollywood. Reprint.
256 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 9, 2015
Complete garbage, unreadable. Characters are completely unrealistic as are the interpersonal relationships. Even the sex scenes are bad!
August 5, 2021
Creating a work of, umm, art that's so bad it's good is, well, difficult. The creator must be utterly convinced of his talent and his message, because one has to aim high in order to fall spectacularly low. Furthermore, the resulting product has to be so dense with errors, lapses, gaffes, and so forth that one can't take them all in in just one or two sittings. The ne plus ultra of such, umm, accomplishment is probably Edward D. Wood's film *Plan 9 From Outer Space.* There really doesn't seem to be much if anything comparable in literature. Perhaps some of the poems of Julia A. Moore (the real-life model for Huck Finn's Emmeline Grangerford) qualify, but it's probably too much of a challenge to keep up the act for the time span a novel demands of a reader.
Thus in Gay Lit we have an abundance of books that aren't quite bad enough to be good; they're just bad. They can be insufferable in any number of ways: artsy-fartsy pretentious (Edmund White's *Forgetting Elena*, anyone?), or autobiographically hagiographic (Robert Ferro's *Max Desir* or, from the lesbian side, Noretta Koertge's *Who Was That Masked Woman?*), or just plain silly/weird without being interesting (James Purdy's *Garments The Living Wear*).
So what about Ben Tyler's literary virgin voyage?
Characters that would struggle to be two-dimensional if they were interested in the challenge; adjective-burdened prose that could've been cut and pasted from a collection of porn mags, and a plot, if one dares call it that, that lurches among various levels of improbability into a courtroom scene that would embarrass even the worst sitcom writer. *Tricks of the Trade* is supposed to be some kind of gay Hollywood exposé in the form of a comic novel, but this is done infinitely better by Joe Keenan (a really fine sitcom writer, by the way) in his *My Lucky Star*, which is viciously witty. *Tricks* is, well, just desolate.
Thus in Gay Lit we have an abundance of books that aren't quite bad enough to be good; they're just bad. They can be insufferable in any number of ways: artsy-fartsy pretentious (Edmund White's *Forgetting Elena*, anyone?), or autobiographically hagiographic (Robert Ferro's *Max Desir* or, from the lesbian side, Noretta Koertge's *Who Was That Masked Woman?*), or just plain silly/weird without being interesting (James Purdy's *Garments The Living Wear*).
So what about Ben Tyler's literary virgin voyage?
Characters that would struggle to be two-dimensional if they were interested in the challenge; adjective-burdened prose that could've been cut and pasted from a collection of porn mags, and a plot, if one dares call it that, that lurches among various levels of improbability into a courtroom scene that would embarrass even the worst sitcom writer. *Tricks of the Trade* is supposed to be some kind of gay Hollywood exposé in the form of a comic novel, but this is done infinitely better by Joe Keenan (a really fine sitcom writer, by the way) in his *My Lucky Star*, which is viciously witty. *Tricks* is, well, just desolate.
September 1, 2015
I heard about this book from a review in UNZIPPED Magazine that said, "****! At last, a gay Jackie Collins novel! If Aaron Spelling is reading this review, he should buy it for a series. NOW!" This is a terrific book in many ways: (1) it's impossible to put down; (2) the barrage of erotic scenes don't cheat on the heat, you may need asbestos gloves when handling these pages; (3) the Hollywood guessing game of thinly-veiled celebrities in fictional form is as entertaining at those weekly blind items on the gay gossip column ...; (4) it has a nasty, biting, bitchy sense of humor; (5) it has an honestly engrossing STORY of backstabbing ruthlessness that reminded me of ALL ABOUT EVE and SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS; and (6) when it IS made into a Showtime series (like QUEER AS FOLK, which it resembles) you can say, "Oh, I read that LAST SUMMER and the book was better!" Its the ONE book I'm recommending to ALL my friends this season.
First-time novelist Tyler stirs up an intoxicating cocktail composed of equal parts delicious name-dropping gossip, venomous Hollywood satire and steamy boy-meets-boy action.
As staff copywriter at Sterling Studios, Bart Cain is in a prime position to observe the destruction that his homophobic boss, "Scary Shari" Draper, has set in motion in her winner-take-all battle to unseat gay head honcho Owen Lucas. Blackmailed into helping her, Bart enlists the aid of friends to foil her plan. While the intrigue at work makes Bart's life miserable, he finds temporary happiness in the bed of hunky gigolo/screenwriter Rodrigo Dominguez. In an effort to help Rod's writing career, Bart escorts him to a party filled with movers and shakers at the home of TV star Jim Fallon. Unfortunately for Bart, Fallon sets his sights on the lusty Latino and steals him away with promises of producing his script. Fallon is looking for a vehicle to resurrect the career he destroyed when a homemade s&m porn video revealed a different side of TV's favorite squeaky-clean sitcom dad.
Written in cinematic, pop culture-inflected prose, this fast-paced name-dropper pulls the reader effortlessly, along like a spicy NC-17 cable miniseries.
The surprise is Tyler's multidimensional characters, who, like counterparts in Queer as Folk and Sex in the City, live in the fast lane but are filled with enough doubts, concerns and foibles to endear them to readers.
The stop-you-in-your-tracks cover art and national ad campaign will certainly grab attention, and the July release gives the book a springboard to becoming this summer's big gay beach novel, following in the footsteps of California Screaming and Sex Toys of the Gods.
First-time novelist Tyler stirs up an intoxicating cocktail composed of equal parts delicious name-dropping gossip, venomous Hollywood satire and steamy boy-meets-boy action.
As staff copywriter at Sterling Studios, Bart Cain is in a prime position to observe the destruction that his homophobic boss, "Scary Shari" Draper, has set in motion in her winner-take-all battle to unseat gay head honcho Owen Lucas. Blackmailed into helping her, Bart enlists the aid of friends to foil her plan. While the intrigue at work makes Bart's life miserable, he finds temporary happiness in the bed of hunky gigolo/screenwriter Rodrigo Dominguez. In an effort to help Rod's writing career, Bart escorts him to a party filled with movers and shakers at the home of TV star Jim Fallon. Unfortunately for Bart, Fallon sets his sights on the lusty Latino and steals him away with promises of producing his script. Fallon is looking for a vehicle to resurrect the career he destroyed when a homemade s&m porn video revealed a different side of TV's favorite squeaky-clean sitcom dad.
Written in cinematic, pop culture-inflected prose, this fast-paced name-dropper pulls the reader effortlessly, along like a spicy NC-17 cable miniseries.
The surprise is Tyler's multidimensional characters, who, like counterparts in Queer as Folk and Sex in the City, live in the fast lane but are filled with enough doubts, concerns and foibles to endear them to readers.
The stop-you-in-your-tracks cover art and national ad campaign will certainly grab attention, and the July release gives the book a springboard to becoming this summer's big gay beach novel, following in the footsteps of California Screaming and Sex Toys of the Gods.
May 7, 2011
In Gay Hollywood. It's not who you know, it's who you do.......Bart Cain hates his boss Shari Draper she rude and very homophobic towards any gay staff memebers. Bart decides to escape from his reality and find a hot guy to screw. He falls in love with Rod a lusty latino huster turned writer. There are so many back handing deals and pretty much secrets of hollywood.
May 16, 2007
Its shallow and mean and a dirty trashy cousin to 'California Screaming' but also fun if you like to play figure out the real celebs they are trash-talking.
July 9, 2011
Summer beach reading- all fluff.
April 18, 2015
Fun and maybe informative. An easy read that keeps your interest as you ride the roller coaster of the story.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews