dom's spotlight: 06/30/23
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It is about a gay mountain lion living underneath the Hollywood sign. Yeah, I know. It’s insane, and it’s brilliant (and somewhat accurate, in the sense that lions have exhibited queer tendencies).
And it’s not about that at all.
It’s about isolation. It’s about what it means to be human. It is about violence, and trauma. It is about male relationships. It’s about all relationships. It’s about protecting your people. It’s about denying our nature, and wondering what else is out there for us. It’s about hope and memory and relationships. It’s about man’s willingness to destroy what is beautiful and worship what isn’t. It’s about as much about a mountain lion as Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ was about pigs.
It is comic. It is tragic.
And you will read it in one sitting.
Open Throat by Henry Hoke
“I’ve never eaten a person, but today I might”
And so begins the fever dream.
Pride Month is a strange fever dream in of itself; the blinding and dripping heat, the glittering lights of the dance halls, the shouting from the rooftops and the alleys and the streets and the sidewalks. Everything is wonderfully, beautifully gay and for an entire month, it is an unabashed celebration of what and who we are, and what we want to be.
So is Open Throat by Henry Hoke.
At 156 pages, this slim wonder of a book is lightning and menace and intrigue and charm on every page. It is sparse and it is lyrical; it is equal parts e.e. cummings and Samanta Schweblin, which is to say it very much is it’s own thing, so far removed from poetry or prose that I wonder if those comparisons are even fair.
“I feel more like a person than ever because I’m
/ starting to hate myself.”