Floodmark presents: "Seven campus novels you could get from any competent MFA either born or working in the Midwest, but gay, because it’s genuinely so easy, you guys", by Matthew Fox Kerr.
1. A Town With No Chill
In 1971, Z___, a senior at U____, takes advantage of the college’s liberalism and creates
an independent study course on 'community organizing', which he uses to organize a
series of increasingly controversial protests against the Vietnam War. His advisor is D___, a
recently tenured poet, who specializes teaching poetry about pastoral sex. The two of
them, although focused on the anti-war movement, write endless letters to one another
about Dagny Faire, a fictional poet known for a single volume of poetry, detailing his
affairs with his private school fencing instructor, his university boxing coach and, finally,
his alienist. The letters end ambiguously and abruptly, leaving the resolution ambiguous.
2. Strange Music from Across the Grove
Ivan, a 21-year-old former violinist, has never quite gotten over the publicity of his
childhood adoption into a wealthy Franco-Persian family. In this retelling of Chekhov’s
The Cherry Orchard, he is studying abroad; his only friends are his socialite younger
sister, Ava, and small number of gay men studying abroad. He is horrified and confused
as his mother, Adrienne and his sister, Lam, arrive in Miami and announce that the two of
them most drop out of school, in order relocate as a family in Switzerland. Ivan initial
protests, especially upon learning that Adrienne believes they are less than a year away
from revolution and that his family intends to marry him off to the son of French
mobster, and must come to terms with whether or not he is truly like the rest of his
family.
3. The Baffling Bolshoi Brothers
Danny van Eyck was born in South Korea, was adopted by a white couple in
Massachusetts, and then spent the next 17 years being told he was adopted from North
Korea. This information is final straw in his decision to transfer to another school. In the
meantime, he’s just gotta spin his wheels listening to extremely Christian lectures on
science, Tolkien and advertising, acting in a royalty-free piece of Cold-War propaganda
about Chinese acrobats running away to become missionaries and practicing gay sex with
his co-star, Other Asian Danny, who’s also not Chinese.
4. Aristophanes The Frogs
Myron van Veen is excited to go to college, where he can make art and do drugs, not
necessarily in that order, but hopefully at the same time. After a disastrous first trip, he
becomes obsessed with classmate Alexander Richard Conrad Hyde, a.k.a. Connor, whom
Myron’s convinced is his 'Dark Half.' He also finds himself in a love triangle between
anonymous students, 'California', a religious woman studying mycology, and 'R*ger', a
sexually liberated boy, who excels at multiple division III sports. He produces art
prolifically but, perhaps unsurprisingly, most of it isn’t very good.
5. The Father
Beginning the morning after their celebrated scientist parents were convinced the world
was going to end, stepbrothers Sandy and Che (Singles Tennis and Intramural Lacrosse,
respectively) silently contemplate if going to the same college where their parents teach is
a good idea. The school, an unidentified Chicago school referred to as The University, at
first provides ample opportunity for them to develop their separate identities, they soon
find themselves pursuing the same man, an ethno-botany PhD and small time pot
dealer named Jack Amsterdam. As he plays them against each other, the resulting feud
results in expulsion.
6. Snakedick!
Pledging Kappa Omega Nu involves breaking into the reptile house and fucking
somebody doggy style. So Michael John-Thwarton doesn’t super get why everyone
freaked out when he just took his boyfriend. The resulting web of intrigue spans
generations and poses tough questions, about class, masculinity and anal sex. Michael is
mostly uninterested, and is much more pointedly concerned about why nobody will
answer any of his questions about the lizards.
7. Imagine the Horror
Ben and Josh are identical twins participating in a sleep study. When Ben goes to sleep,
Josh wakes up; when Josh goes to sleep, Ben wakes up. Each is living in a world where
they each drowned the other by accident as a child. When he wakes up, Stephen
Woodridge Wells discovers that he imagined both lives and remembers them in great
detail, despite being extremely unsure of his own life. That fall, he returns to a college
campus he doesn’t recognize, and discovers he lives a large house full of handsome men
his age, whose only common social connection seems to be a house-wide book club,
during which scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses are read, discussed, and, occasionally,
acted out.
[Cover sketch currently unavailable]
In his head, Matthew Fox Kerr usually refers to himself as Sludge Johnson. He previously was an extremely terrible intern at a tech review website and is working on one of these novels, but she wont tell us which one.
Cover illustrations my Matthew Fox Kerr and Vernon Meidlinger-Chin
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