Alvin Orloff
Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ Author
Born
in Los Angeles, The United States
Website
Twitter
Genre
Member Since
April 2007
To ask
Alvin Orloff
questions,
please sign up.
![]() |
Pills, Thrills, Chills, and Heartache: Adventures in the First Person
by
3 editions
—
published
2004
—
|
|
![]() |
Disasterama!: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997
2 editions
—
published
2019
—
|
|
![]() |
The Unsinkable Bambi Lake
by
4 editions
—
published
1996
—
|
|
![]() |
Vulgarian Rhapsody
|
|
![]() |
I Married An Earthling: A Novel
2 editions
—
published
2000
—
|
|
![]() |
Gutterboys
2 editions
—
published
2004
—
|
|
![]() |
Why Aren't You Smiling?
6 editions
—
published
2011
—
|
|
![]() |
[Why Aren't You Smiling?] [By: Orloff, Alvin] [October, 2011]
by |
|
Alvin’s Recent Updates
Alvin
rated a book it was ok
|
|
This reads like a bunch of material that wasn't quite good enough to make it into Wishful Drinking (which I loved!) and it's hellaciously repetitious to boot. There's a bit of fun celebrity gossip concerning her family, Liz Taylor, and Michael Jackso ...more | |
Alvin
rated a book it was amazing
|
|
As many disappointed reviewers have pointed out, this book is tightly focused on neither the sex cult nor the crime mentioned in the subtitle. If you're willing to accept this as a diverting romp through the insanity of mid-19th century America, thou ...more | |
Alvin
rated a book it was amazing
|
|
This epistolary novel is the unflinching character study of a deeply damaged woman. The stepmom narrator/protagonist is not only selfish but self-loathing and painfully self-aware. Her venom is so extreme it borders on the comic and at first one almo ...more | |
Alvin
rated a book really liked it
|
|
So's essays are a mixed bag: cynical, big-hearted, perceptive, pretentious, stylish, and - it must be said - a bit sophomoric. The fragments from So's unfinished novel exhibit the same qualities, but to better effect. Had he completed it, Straight Ou ...more | |
"I was worried this would be filled with junk salvaged from Veasna So's desktop after his sudden death, but it turns out this writer is as good as I thought he was after reading Afterparties. A substantial percentage of this is pieces of what I assume"
Read more of this review »
|
|
Alvin
rated a book liked it
|
|
Here and there Kincaid's prose illuminates connections and moods in a way that's quite unique and brilliant. Alas, she also wanders into realms of pure physical description as boring as listening to your boring coworker's boring dreams. The very firs ...more | |
Alvin
rated a book liked it
|
|
Florid, descriptive prose makes this feminist reclaiming of a mistreated character from Jane Eyre read like a lost classic of romanticism. Rhys displays a lot of keen insight into her characters' psyches and shines a light on the the monstrous workin ...more | |
Alvin
rated a book really liked it
|
|
Wharton's stories are quite varied. They range in tone from satiric to tragic and her subjects range from gilded age social dynamics, to family drama, to l'amour. Yet they're all full of keen psychological insights which (and this is what makes her a ...more | |
Alvin
rated a book it was amazing
|
|
Woodlawn led a wild life on the wildest fringes of midcentury America's wild bohemia. Expect lots of drugs, drag, avant garde theater, sexual promiscuity, kinky cabaret, and cocktails, cocktails, cocktails! Her escapades would be fun enough to read a ...more | |
Alvin
rated a book really liked it
|
|
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
|
|
“Reagan's going to mess everything up, cutting taxes for the wealthy and getting rid of the safety net and all that. The rich and the poor won't be able to mix socially. The rich will be afraid of getting ripped off or asked for money and the poor won't be able to afford to hang out in the same places anyway. Society's going to be divided by class and instead of expressing themselves, people are going to spend all their time advertising their status. It'll be shallow, like the Eisenhower era. Parties will suck.”
― Gutterboys
― Gutterboys
“Unlike prostitution or promiscuity, stripping was entirely public. One foot on the state would forever mark me as a disreputable character, the sort respectable people called a sleaze. On the other hand ... I didn't know any respectable people and my workday would be a mere thirty minutes long. And, I had to face it, some quirk of my psychic constitution rendered the strictures of ordinary jobs insufferable to me. Restaurant work felt like a cross between the treadmill at the gym and one of those Japanese game shows on which contestants are abused and humiliated in front of a sadistic audience. Office work was even worse, calling to mind those B movies in which some poor soul--bound and gagged, but eyes wide with terror--is slowly walled up brick-by-brick in the dungeon of some damp, rat-infested Transylvanian castle.”
― Disasterama!: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997
― Disasterama!: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977 to 1997
“I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists.”
― Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt
― Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt
“It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascismâ€� is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.”
―
―
“As for the Republicans -- how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'...) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.”
―
―
“As my mother once said: The boys throw stones at the frogs in jest.
But the frogs die in earnest.”
― The Female Man
But the frogs die in earnest.”
― The Female Man
“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
―
―

Forum for discussing/recommending queer texts, open to the idea that the definition of "queer" is still in process. Interests in all genres, fiction a ...more

Books about San Francisco. Books by Instant City authors. Discussions of literary interest in the Bay Area.

Punk Hostage Press is a not-for-profit book publishing imprint that also acts as a an outreach program to connect writers and contemporary literature ...more

Words As Works With this non-profit venture we hope to coordinate with other publishers, authors, editors, promoters, journalists and further our ef ...more
Comments (showing 1-2)
post a comment »
date
newest »

Wow, great to meet you!
Alvin