The transformation of a gauche country boy from Pastel, Ala., into a latter-day Narcissus, circa 1978 (when to be young, pretty and gay was almost heaven), is the subject of Grimsley's new novel (after Comfort and Joy). Newell, a sweet-natured rube who has never bought a newspaper or used an umbrella, finds a room in the French Quarter. His fresh good looks attract the attention of Curtis, the manager of the restaurant where he finds a job as a busboy, but he's fired when he rebuffs his boss's advances. Luckily, he's soon hired at a pornographic book store stocked with glossy, plastic shrink-wrapped magazines relating the photogenic adventures of phallically enlarged young men and with movies that are available for group showings in curtained booths. The magazines awaken Newell to his true sexual nature, but do little to prepare him for the new erotic events in his life. Other characters include Miss Sophie, née Clarence Eldridge Dodd, New Orleans' ugliest transsexual, who cleans the place, and the owner's nephew, scary Jack, a sadist who eventually preys on Newell after Newell breaks up with Mark Duval, a Tulane grad student obsessed by the Marquis de Sade. Grimsley's attempt to capture the carnival decadence of that time and place is smoothly done through naïve Newell's gradual understanding of the milieu he has entered, but somewhat undermined by the stereotypical portrayal of the Quarter's young male habitués as campy, empty-headed schoolgirls. Some readers may be put off by the fulsome details of Newell's sexual liaisons and his enlightenment, but for others the book will be a dark reminder of the era's excesses. Author tour. (Apr.)
