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Setting
the Lawn on Fire
A Novel
Mack Friedman
Terrace Books
"Brilliant . . . A tribute
to the power of a first-class imagination to rethink what has
become a venerable genre-the coming out novel. . . . The best
gay debut novel I've read in quite a long time."—Edmund White, Out
- Winner, 2006 Publishing Triangle Edmund
White Award for Debut Fiction
- Finalist, 2006 Lambda Literary Award for
Gay Men's Debut Fiction
- Finalist, 2005 InsightOut Violet Quill
Award
Ivan, a young Jewish boy from Milwaukee,
embarks on a journey of sexual discovery that leads him from
Wisconsin to Alaska, Philadelphia, and Mexico through stints
as a fishery worker, artist, and finally a hustler who learns
to provide the blank canvas for other people's dreams. The result
is a new kind of coming-of-age story that sees passion from every
angle because its protagonist is every kind of lover: the seducer
and the seduced, the pornographer and the model, the hunter and
the prey, the trick and the john.
"Friedman is no less afraid of writing
about raw emotion than he is of writing about lust and sexual
commerce. The result is an imaginative portrait of loneliness
as powerful and disturbing as any you're likely to read."—Yale
Review
"The summer I turned
twenty I fell in love with traveling and a boy named Sean. We
lived in a tent made from plywood and pallets and stolen blue
tarpaulin. We worked the same line in an Alaskan fish factory.
We watched the river for biplanes and rock cod and swooping black
cormorants. We climbed a mountain and stashed red wine in the
snow. When we weren't working Sean would take off the only shirt
he ever wore. He was a quiet mousy boy about five-five. His mother
had recently killed herself. He never told us how. He had shiny
white canines, thin black eyebrows, a small short nose, and long
hazel eyes. His hair was fine and oily and dishwater blonde and
flopped over his face so he had to wear a hairnet when he excised
the skulls before the tops went on the cans."
—excerpt
from the book |
"Luminous and thrilling. . . . The
concise lambent quality of Friedman's prose is as sensual as
the evocative descriptions of erotic obsessions and encounters.
Profoundly moving, Setting the Lawn on Fire manages that
difficult balance of being both incredibly sexy and incredibly
sorrowful."—Alistair McCartney, The Advocate
 Mack
Friedman is author of Strapped
for Cash: A History of American Hustler Culture. His essays
have been featured at the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual
Art and the Leslie-Lohman Gallery, and his performance art has
been showcased at the Andy Warhol Museum. His stories have appeared
in the anthologies Between Men, Wonderlands,,
and Barnstorm. He has contributed
to the magazines Out Traveler and $pread, among
others. This is his first novel. He lives in Pennsylvania.
There is a press
kit available for the cloth edition of Setting the Lawn
on Fire. Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.)
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September 2007
LC: 2005005441 PS
160 pp. 6 x 9
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Cloth $21.95 t
ISBN 978-0-299-21340-4 |
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Paper $17.95 t
ISBN 978-0-299-21344-2 |
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Terrace Books is a trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press
"We meet Friedman's character in the
chaotic impulses of early childhood, watch him gallop through
the frustrated yearnings of adolescence and early manhood, and
see him sacrificed to lust, adventure, and the market for sex.
. . . Friedman has discovered the magic link between libido and
humanity, arousal and our taste for living, and he shares this
with us elegantly, never losing his honesty, humility, and respect
for others."
—Bruce Benderson, author of User and The Romanian
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