David Evanier's The Great Kisser, a Novel-in-Stories

Click below to purchase 'The Great Kisser' Available NOW at RagerMedia.com.  FREE SHIPPING !   You do not need a Paypal account to purchase directly from us.  We will ship your order within 2 business days of placement.  Overnight shipments available at additional cost. The Great Kisser, A Novel-in-Stories Cloth 179pp. $24.95 ISBN-13: 978-0-9792091-2-3 ISBN-10: 0-9792091-2-9 Available Now! Praise for THE GREAT KISSER: “Evanier exhibits mastery in this new collection of eight stories…. Evanier’s stories boil with a satisfying sense of rage, stoked by sharp observation.” —Publishers Weekly (09/18/2006) “Rich with details that evoke a boy's life in New York in the mid-'50s: stickball in Queens, the dying breaths of vaudeville on Broadway, radio and TV shows, a growing sexual awareness....the rag-tag offices of a Jewish activist group, the orbit of Hollywood moguls and the homes of mobsters. The themes evoke those of Philip Roth's work in the '70s.”—Kirkus Reviews (10/2006) “Laced with very colorful characters and New York literary and cultural history, this is ultimately a story of new love and gratitude, powerfully told.”—The Jewish Week (09/08/2006, print edition). "There is a bloodshot intensity in these stories, a drive to get hold of the world before it all gets lost, the streets, the rooms, the feeling of the times--the 60s and 70s--when personal and public life felt so terribly urgent. Evanier writes a muscular, watchful prose, and again and again he pulls it off, surprising his characters in their existential habitat--unsettled, confused, completely caught up in the act of becoming." --Sven Birkerts "I was struck once again by what an original Evanier is. He sounds like no one else, and he has a great gift for infusing new life into material from which one would have thought all the juice had already been squeezed." --Norman Podhoretz "David Evanier deserves major attention and critical acclaim because he's among the best and most interesting and readable American writers today. THE GREAT KISSER is without question some of the best work of anybody's I've read in years; it's felt, original, and does what only he can do. So swift,each line a gem; a real rollercoaster ride of emotions. Filled with his vivid, energetic, intelligent writing. His work is clear, smart, strong,often funny and touching. Spare, specific, essential prose. He has a way of mixing sadness and humor like no one else. And his dialogue! I don't know who does it better. His style is always fast and pointed. It's a style he's held to for many years, and it always looks fresh. It's his, and a lot of writers will try to imitate him. But I know who got there first." --Stephen Dixon Praise for Other Work by David Evanier Roman Candle: The Life of Bobby Darin: “Roman Candle gives us the many lives of one of the great entertainers of all time, whose flame was extinguished way too soon. It was a pleasure to read.”—Kevin Spacey, Academy Award Winner. The One-Star Jew: “David Evanier's The One-Star Jew may be American fiction’s finest, clearest rendition of the sadness and partialness of the lives of people who work together in the same office.”—Kirkus Reviews “David Evanier commands skills considerable enough to merit our attention and wonder.”—George Plimpton “These tales are a uniquely individual record of human experience.” –Ronald Curran Red Love: “Evanier's novel is a tragicomedy of good intentions gone mad. Grade: A”—Entertainment Weekly “Amazing perception.”—Elie Wiesel “Evanier has considerable skills, namely the wickedly perceptive eye required for writing black comedy”—The Chicago Tribune “Irreverent, unflinching and almost disgracefully entertaining.”—Kirkus Reviews “The novel evokes the dreams, often shredded by sanctimonious dogma, of Americans drawn to the Communist Party from the Depression to the McCarthy era. Mr. Evanier carefully sketches idealists envisioning universal harmony in a world free from oppression and hatred."—The New York Times Book Review “Hugely entertaining autobiography…”—Booklist “This book has splendid energy, and a kind of ironical finesse that is very rare, perhaps even unique these days.”—Leonard Michaels “Red Love is a mad and marvelous mosaic—a lovingly wrought novel.”—Jay Neugeboren “Red Love represents life and is true to history, combining imagination with the documentary record, written with bite and black humor, tempered by compassion for the betrayed sacrifices, the lives lost.”—Lucy Dawidowicz

About The Great Kisser NY Times Bestseller David Evanier Photo copyright by Eamon Hickey. A whirling top most of his life, Michael Goldberg’s world changes when his dying shrink bequeaths to him the tapes of thirty years of Michael’s therapy sessions. The tapes give Michael a second chance in middle age: they unlock his life for him, as a gallery of absurd and touching characters, events and scenes spring out of his past: the shrink who cracks up and reverses roles with Michael when his wife dies and shows him naked pictures of his patients; the gay man who works for Jewish Punchers, a civil rights group, by day and the Harry Reems Defense Committee at night; a first love encountered again in desperate, ravaged middle age; a Communist Party leader who "would rather be a lamppost in Moscow than President of the United States;" a "glistening failure " of a father who is a cheerleader of Michael’s defeat ("You can fail, Michael, if you try! I did it, why can’t you?"); the fetish porn-drenched world of old Times Square; a Holocaust survivor Michael meets on September 11th who cannot confront his experience; a Hollywood of elderly Jewish moguls, scholarly and bizarre, "who seemed to have been shipped fresh to California like onion bagels or seeded bialys"-- men like Michael’s mentor, Julius Birnbach, creator of the cult classic, "The Curse of the Evil Midgets." Entering into a marriage stemming from a suicide, by the end, the marriage turns into a love story as Michael reclaims his life. The Great Kisser becomes a story of gratitude--of many kisses --by its climax. About David Evanier In more recent years, Evanier's books have included: Roman Candle: The Life of Bobby Darin [Rodale] and Making the Wiseguys Weep: The Jimmy Roselli Story [Farrar, Straus and Giroux], which was cited by The New York Times Book Review as one of the Notable Books of the Year. He was also co-author of Joe Pantoliano's (of HBO’s The Sopranos and the film The Matrix) book, Who’s Sorry Now? [Dutton/Plume], which was a New York Times Bestseller. Evanier has written for: The New York Times Sunday Magazine, New York Magazine, The New Republic, The Paris Review, The New York Times Book Review, The Village Voice, TriQuarterly, Southwest Review, The Saint Ann's Review, Dissent, The Nation, Commonweal, The New Leader, The Forward, Witness, Commentary, New American Writing, Story Quarterly, Mrbellersneighborhood.com, The Weekly Standard, Pequod, Chelsea, and scores of other publications. His work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, and Many Lights In Many Windows: Twenty Years of Great Fiction and Poetry From The Writers Community. Evanier has won the Aga Khan Fiction Prize [Other past winners of the prize include Philip Roth, David Foster Wallace, A.S. Byatt, and Michael Chabon.] He is a former Fiction Editor of The Paris Review and creative writing teacher at UCLA. Evanier is a long-time member of The Writers Room. Click here to buy this book!

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