Starred review from December 19, 2005
Benderson was wandering Budapest researching sex clubs for Nerve. com when he fell in love. Romulus, a Romanian street hustler, was a sleekly attractive, uneducated (though clever) 24-year old (significantly younger than Benderson), into soccer, TV and swapping dirty stories with his buddies. Living in a largely homophobic culture, Romulus didn't consider himself anything but heterosexual, even as he spent months having sex with Benderson. As Benderson (author of two novels, including User
, as well as some nonfiction) slid into an obsession with Romulus, he started reading about Romanians whose lives and loves seemed curiously tangential: the artist Brancusi; the novelist Istrati; the lascivious King Carol II and his Jewish lover, Lupescu. Sometimes, Benderson and Romulus drove around the Romanian countryside, exploring villages mired between pastoral paganism and socialist realism. Weaving storytelling and seduction, Benderson's tale has a deliciously Arabian Nights
flavor. His descriptions—the fat Ukrainian bartender with "fast, greedy fingers" and "predatory" hospitality—render scenes so three-dimensional, readers will be checking for their wallets. While some may be derailed by the unsafe sex and Benderson's back-to-the-closet erotics, anyone—gay or straight—who's able to read a painfully honest account of an obsessive love affair without feeling they need to judge the author will be rewarded. This Prix de Flore winner could be Benderson's American breakthrough book.
February 1, 2006
For this memoir in 2004, journalist Benderson ("Pretending To Say No") became the first American to win the Prix de Flore, one of France's most distinguished literary awards. The story begins with the author researching a story about brothels in Budapest, where he meets Romulus, a young street hustler. A complex attachment colored by social inequalities grows between the two men. Benderson's attempt to come to grips with his attraction forms the bulk of the text; he tries to find parallels in the scandalous relationships of Romanian royalty and in his relationship with his domineering mother, and he loses himself in an appreciation of Romanian pastoralism that occasionally belies rational thought. Meanwhile, he pays the bills by translating Celine Dion's autobiography. Benderson weaves a startlingly beautiful tapestry of stifling heat, street dogs, overwhelming poverty, natural beauty, East clashing with West, and the banality of a pop singer, all supported by the central thread, the analysis of a relationship. He further examines -and candidly -the concept of obsession, both as it applies to himself and in other larger contexts. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries." -Audrey Snowden, Cleveland P.L."
Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 15, 2006
"History, and my history, are part porn novels," declares Benderson halfway through this haunting memoir of his nine-month obsession with a deprived young street hustler from Romania. Enthralled by Romulus' soccer-defined legs and ill-fitting macho gestures as well as romanticized notions of barrier crossing with a poor Eastern European man who claims to be heterosexual, Benderson relishes the purity of homosexual sex that denies bourgeois notions of gayness even as his infatuation careens out of control. Romanian history and culture--especially the romantic gamble of the "playboy king," Carol II, and his Jewish lover, Lupescu, and sculptor Constantin Brancusi's modern abstractions--guide Benderson through the inscrutability of passion from the perspective of the beloved and other mysteries, the author's erotic energy bringing these subjects to life. As in his book-length essay, " Toward the New Degeneracy" , Benderson is fascinated with the sexual personae of the underclasses, but this time it's deeply personal, challenging the author to redefine his notions of love. Uncommonly prescient and provocative, the French edition made Benderson the first American to win the esteemed Prix de Flore. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)