The book of lies

Felice Picano

Ross Ohrenstedt, a resourceful and well-read young academic teaching a single summer literature course at UCLA, manages to get permission to examine and catalog the papers of Damon Von Slyke, a member of the infamous Purple Circle of gay writers active in the 1960s and 1970s (and roughly modeled on Picano's own literary group, the Violet Quill Club, which includes Andrew Holleran and Edmund White). Piecing together the various drafts of Von Slyke's many books, and trying to identify the handwriting in the margins, Ross eventually stumbles on a fascinating manuscript by an unknown writer--a man virtually erased from literary history--who seems to have been intimately connected to all the members of the Purple Circle.