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by Kirk Read Courtesy of The Letter how i learned to snap, by Kirk Read, Athens, GA: Hill Stress Press, 2001. 230 pages, paperback, $22.95. ISBN 1-58818-039-5.
Read's observations about family, community, and high school in a small Upper South town are dead-on. Occasionally slicing but never cruel, they'll be recognizable to any gay man or lesbian who's ever lived in a similar milieu. It's not easy growing up gay in an oppressive religious culture, but Read, like a clown in a nave, manages to pull it off admirably because he's so self-honest. What can you say, for example, about a boy who sings Indigo Girls songs to a bunch of elderly church ladies who haven't a clue what they're listening to, and then applaud him? We howl with delight. And what do you make of Read, a Methodist, when he forthrightly walks out of a Baptist youth group after the church demands he be baptized according to their rites? It's hard not to stand up in the middle of your living room and cheer.
Read-who's often been published in this newspaper-is certainly an endearing fellow. Peaking mischievously from behind his remarkably mature writing style is an outlook on life that's still very boyish, fresh, and bratty. Sometimes he can be too cute, as if he's trying to gain the affection of his readers with his sweetness. At other times his story bogs down in self-indulgent details that mean little to anyone besides the author. But it's easy to forgive him such brief lapses because his story is so entrancing. Read's writing is facile, natural, conversational. His zest for life comes through on every page. We don't know what part of the written world he'll travel off to next, but we feel certain in his luggage will be the same kind of infectious enthusiasm that comes through on every page of snap. Available in the region at Carmichael's, Crazy Ladies Bookstore, Out Loud Books, Out Word Bound, Pink Pyramid, Planet Proud, and other fine stores. Also in the Williams-Nichols Collection at the University of Louisville. Be sure to tell them you saw it in The Letter! An autographed copy of how I learned to snap is available: www.kirkread.com |
The latest in a growing body of work about gays and lesbians in the South is
a charming memoir of his teenage years by columnist Kirk Read, who's all of
28. how i learned to snap is a full-tilt, swaggering account that's full of
energy and elan, a kind of miniature Italian opera set in Virginia's languid
Shenandoah Valley.