Re-Animator

"RE-ANIMATOR comes at you with all the shock and surprise of a phantasmagorical horror movie, with 'edits so quick it makes the murders feel / swift,' a perfect way to encapsulate the 1980s for those of us who lived through AIDS and the absolute indifference of the Reagan administration. Reagan is re-animated here, too, as a sad and lonely clown, along with the music, movies and fashions of that decade, 'bygone Big Mac days in rooms / of erased people.' The sexiness of pop culture littered with a few Arby's bags for verisimilitude and some Pier One candles for flair lends this collection a richness of palette, the way Bob Dylan and the Pointer Sisters and Willie Nelson enriched the sound of "We Are the World." If you were alive and gay and ready for the world in the 80s, you will get it, and if you weren't, well...this book will teach you about some of what you missed. Jeffery Berg is simultaneously witty, funny, dirty, moving, eloquent and rhapsodic, like the lyrics to a really good Queen song." -D.A. Powell