Spreadeagle: A Novel

“Kevin Killian is the greatest unsung genius in contemporary American literature.”—Dennis Cooper

Spreadeagle: A Novel Kevin Killian

Set in present-day San Francisco, fiftyish gay novelist Daniel Isham presides over a complicated ménage financed not only by family money but by the huge success of his kitschy, feel-good “Rick and Dick” novels. His forty year old boyfriend, health care activist Kit Kramer, had once been romantically involved with another kind of writer entirely, the handsome experimentalist Sam D’Allesandro, now clinging onto the last shreds of life after several decades fighting off AIDS. The young, unstable art student Eric Avery, a fan of D’Allesandro’s, finagles a room in the vast California Street brownstone Isham and Kramer share. On the fringes of the story lurk two shady brothers—Gary Radley, a grifter who lives by selling fake anti-AIDS drugs to deluded New Age San Franciscans, and Adam Radley, a perfectionist porn director specializing in gay spanking videos. When D’Allesandro, who has lost his savings to Gary Radley, threatens to expose the racket, things turn violent.

Kevin Killian is a poet, novelist, critic and playwright. Who most recently co-edited My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer. He lives in San Francisco.