Leaving the Gay Place

Billy Lee Brammer and the Great Society

Biography & Memoir, Literary
Cover of the book Leaving the Gay Place by Tracy Daugherty, University of Texas Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Tracy Daugherty ISBN: 9781477316375
Publisher: University of Texas Press Publication: October 17, 2018
Imprint: University of Texas Press Language: English
Author: Tracy Daugherty
ISBN: 9781477316375
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Publication: October 17, 2018
Imprint: University of Texas Press
Language: English

Acclaimed by critics as a second F. Scott Fitzgerald, Billy Lee Brammer was once one of the most engaging young novelists in America. “Brammer’s is a new and major talent, big in scope, big in its promise of even better things to come,” wrote A. C. Spectorsky, a former staffer at the New Yorker. When he published his first and only novel, The Gay Place, in 1961, literary luminaries such as David Halberstam, Willie Morris, and Gore Vidal hailed his debut. Morris deemed it “the best novel about American politics in our time.” Halberstam called it “a classic . . . [a] stunning, original, intensely human novel inspired by Lyndon Johnson. . . . It will be read a hundred years from now.” More recently, James Fallows, Gary Fisketjon, and Christopher Lehmann have affirmed The Gay Place’s continuing relevance, with Lehmann asserting that it is “the one truly great modern American political novel.”Leaving the Gay Place tells a sweeping story of American popular culture and politics through the life and work of a writer who tragically exemplifies the highs and lows of the country at mid-century. Tracy Daugherty follows Brammer from the halls of power in Washington, DC, where he worked for Senate majority leader Johnson, to rock-and-roll venues where he tripped out with Janis Joplin, and ultimately to back alleys of self-indulgence and self-destruction. Constantly driven to experiment with new ways of being and creating—often fueled by psychedelics—Brammer became a cult figure for an America on the cusp of monumental change, as the counterculture percolated through the Eisenhower years and burst out in the sixties. In Daugherty’s masterful recounting, Brammer’s story is a quintessential American story, and Billy Lee is our wayward American son.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Acclaimed by critics as a second F. Scott Fitzgerald, Billy Lee Brammer was once one of the most engaging young novelists in America. “Brammer’s is a new and major talent, big in scope, big in its promise of even better things to come,” wrote A. C. Spectorsky, a former staffer at the New Yorker. When he published his first and only novel, The Gay Place, in 1961, literary luminaries such as David Halberstam, Willie Morris, and Gore Vidal hailed his debut. Morris deemed it “the best novel about American politics in our time.” Halberstam called it “a classic . . . [a] stunning, original, intensely human novel inspired by Lyndon Johnson. . . . It will be read a hundred years from now.” More recently, James Fallows, Gary Fisketjon, and Christopher Lehmann have affirmed The Gay Place’s continuing relevance, with Lehmann asserting that it is “the one truly great modern American political novel.”Leaving the Gay Place tells a sweeping story of American popular culture and politics through the life and work of a writer who tragically exemplifies the highs and lows of the country at mid-century. Tracy Daugherty follows Brammer from the halls of power in Washington, DC, where he worked for Senate majority leader Johnson, to rock-and-roll venues where he tripped out with Janis Joplin, and ultimately to back alleys of self-indulgence and self-destruction. Constantly driven to experiment with new ways of being and creating—often fueled by psychedelics—Brammer became a cult figure for an America on the cusp of monumental change, as the counterculture percolated through the Eisenhower years and burst out in the sixties. In Daugherty’s masterful recounting, Brammer’s story is a quintessential American story, and Billy Lee is our wayward American son.

More books from University of Texas Press

Cover of the book Desegregating Texas Schools by Tracy Daugherty
Cover of the book Alexander Watkins Terrell by Tracy Daugherty
Cover of the book A Political Education by Tracy Daugherty
Cover of the book The Negro and His Folklore in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals by Tracy Daugherty
Cover of the book The Florida of the Inca by Tracy Daugherty
Cover of the book Substance and Seduction by Tracy Daugherty
Cover of the book Thursday Night Lights by Tracy Daugherty
Cover of the book Woman with a Movie Camera by Tracy Daugherty
Cover of the book Poets and the Visual Arts in Renaissance England by Tracy Daugherty
Cover of the book Texas in 1837 by Tracy Daugherty
Cover of the book The Music of Brazil by Tracy Daugherty
Cover of the book Recovering Inequality by Tracy Daugherty
Cover of the book Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru, Volume 1 and Volume 2 by Tracy Daugherty
Cover of the book Rounded Up in Glory by Tracy Daugherty
Cover of the book Against the Grain by Tracy Daugherty
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy