Author: Eliot Duncan
Publisher: Footnote
Paperback
Staff Pick! Oisín says…
Ponyboy was my book of the month in May this year and I have thought about it every month since. It’s devastating auto-fiction in 3 parts - Paris, Berlin and lowa. The 3 parts are a baggy structure that Eliot Duncan puts the story inside. It's about the character [that is kind of nameless at first before kind of going by Ponyboy] moving around relationships with friends, partners, sex, sleep, family, names, countries, addiction and writing. It reads like Eliot was writing part memoir, part lucid-daydream - emailing Paul Preciado, playing Townes Van Zandt and talking to the ghost of Kathy Acker. To me, nonlinear storytelling always feels inherently queer, in this book sort of mimicking the way that the character is always getting close to and then getting away from his transness throughout.