Synopses & Reviews
Adored by the likes of Amy Sedaris, Madonna (who optioned the film rights), and Gordon Lish,
Love Junkie
is Robert Plunket's cult novel of the heady heyday of gay New York at
the dawn of the AIDS epidemic: scandalously long out of print, it is now
gloriously reissued for a new generation of readers.
Mimi Smithers, a modern-day Emma Bovary, is a fortyish suburban
housewife who has an eye for décor and dreams of hosting lavish cocktail
parties. Reflecting on her time in Tehran with her Union Carbide
executive husband, she says, "In the waning months of the Shah's regime,
entertaining became more and more difficult. Hams--always a problem in
Islamic countries--were as rare as hen's teeth." After their move to
Westchester, a party she hosts for Mrs. Rockefeller goes south, and she
falls into a deep funk. But then life takes an unexpected turn when she
stumbles down into the gay rabbit hole of Manhattan and Fire Island
society and meets Joel, a porn star with a chest "as smooth as a Ken
doll." Soon she's helping him with his lucrative mail order business
(signed photographs, used underwear, "verbal abuse audiotapes"), and her
real dreams and adventures begin.
About the Author
Robert Plunket was born in Greenville, Texas in
1945, and raised in Havana and Mexico City. After an unsuccessful stint
as an actor in New York, he moved to Sarasota, Florida, where he became
Mr. Chatterbox, the gossip columnist for Sarasota Magazine. He
is now retired and has "found peace and contentment at a lovely trailer
park in Florida." New Directions also publishes his novel My Search for Warren Harding,
described by Danzy Senna in the foreword as "one of the best, and most
invigorating books I'd read in years, and certainly the funniest."