Wayne Koestenbaum Discusses My Lover, the Rabbi with Matthew Sharpe
It’s been almost two decades since celebrated, boundary-pushing writer Wayne Koestenbaum published a novel. He’s back with My Lover, the Rabbi, a book only Koestenbaum could write: hilarious, queer, obsessive, and crafted with unparalleled originality.
Koestenbaum’s mercurial rabbi is not an obvious target of romantic fixation; he’s not even the most illustrious or successful rabbi in a forgettable part of New Jersey. Still, our unnamed, erotomaniacal narrator becomes helplessly obsessed. From the start of their psychosexual relationship, the two torment, pleasure, and manipulate one another; when they’re apart, our narrator fixates on every facet of the rabbi’s being, not least, the space between his legs. Until, that is, he learns more about the rabbi's life and everything falls apart in a web of conspiracy.
As amazing as its title suggests, My Lover, the Rabbi’s borderline absurd premise slowly melts into a moving, wild story of real weight and literary accomplishment—and a cult classic in the making.
He will be joined in conversation by novelist Matthew Sharpe.
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Wayne Koestenbaum is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and comparative literature at the CUNY Graduate Center. His many books span poetry, essay collections, biography, and fiction; he is also an accomplished playwright and the librettist for the opera adaptation of his book Jackie Under My Skin. The recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, he has also been a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. His essays and poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, London Review of Books, and many other publications. A widely shown painter, he released his first album of piano and voice in 2017. He lives in New York. Photo credit Jan Rattia
Matthew Sharpe is the author of four novels, including The Sleeping Father and Nothing Is Terrible, and two collections of stories. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, Zoetrope, and other publications. He is the recipient of fellowships in fiction from the National Endowment of the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Sharpe has taught in the MFA programs at Columbia University and Bard College, and undergrad at Wesleyan University, New College of Florida, and elsewhere. For the last decade he has been an editorial consultant and writing coach.
BPL Presents programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
