In this brilliant two-part memoir, the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Hilton Als distills into one cocktail the deep and potent complexities of love and of loss, of Prince and of power, of desire and of race. It’s delicious and it’s got the kick of a mule, especially as Als swirls into his mix the downtown queer nightclub scene, the AIDS crisis, Prince’s ass in his tight little pants, an ill-fated peach pie, Dorothy Parker, and his desire for true love.
Always surprising and stealthily—even painfully—moving, Als plumbs longing: “I inched closer to him as he danced to you, Prince. But already he was you, Prince, in my mind. He had the same coloring, and the same loneliness I wanted to fill with my admiration. I couldn’t love him enough. We were colored boys together. There is not enough of that in the world, Prince—but you know that. Still, when other people see that kind of fraternity they want to kill it. But we were so committed to each other, we never could work out what that violence meant. There was so much love between us. Why didn’t anyone want us to share it?”
BIO
The Pulitzer Prize–winner Hilton Als has been hailed as “exhilarating and audacious” (San Francisco Chronicle), “spectacular” (Bookforum), and “thoroughly wise” (Library Journal). He is a staff writer at The New Yorker and an Associate Professor at Columbia University School of the Arts. He lives in New York City.
REVIEWS
If we don’t know what love is until we look Prince in the eye and need him forever after, then maybe we’re his pinups and puppets and he’s translating for us an emotion we’ve kept so remote from our conscious minds that he has to go beneath his soul to dig it up. That is the solace of Als’s close encounters, his flash of a songbook—that it honors Prince’s commitment to being untranslatable, unsampleable. -- Harmony Holiday, Bookforum
Als has perfected the difficult art of being a discerning fan. -- Tiana Ried, Bomb
Who could be a better guide to Prince—to his polymorphous sexuality, his gleeful dismantling of the racial compartmentalization of American popular music, his seemingly effortless sprezzatura as a performer—than Hilton Als? -- Paul Scott Stanfield, Ploughshares
A triumph of loving erudition. -- Raúl Niño, Booklist
[A] world of difficult loves and lovers…What Prince had—and, by comparison, no one else has ever had—was style, by which I mean insolence, which offers its own kind of protection. He could show his ass (a high compliment). This was something Als learned to do “through language.” It was defiance through prowess. -- Blair McClendon, 4Columns
[P] New Directions Publishing Corporation / November 01, 2022
0.3" H x 7.0" L x 4.4" W (0.12 lbs) 48 pages