The Decade of Blind Dates: A Novel

Peter Bauman, a divorced gay painter, plunges into the personals. He first dates a Connecticut physician-a rabid Republican, and then a man who crochets lace toilet roll covers. Another tryst interrupted by his son, Peter is caught naked two-stepping with a tattooed punk. Next, he's snowbound with a geek heavier than advertised, who arrives with a bag of sex toys. Best pal Barry counsels him to look between the eyes before the legs.He takes more seriously a handsome, stern Maine woodsman, then a British aristocrat patron who declines further intimacy because of his AIDS.During a decade of sex and shenanigans, encouraged by his ex-wife, daughter, and son, Peter examines his life painting portraits and discovers his soul-mate at last.Whether you are straight or gay, Richard Alther exposes the hilarity and devastation of starting over romantically in midlife.

The Decade of Blind Dates

Literature & Fiction

Alther, Richard

Erotica

iUniverse

Peter Bauman, a forty-five-year-old divorced gay painter, plunges into the personal ads just prior to the Internet in his quest for the perfect partner. 
 He dates a colorful cast of characters from a Connecticut physician, a rabid Republican, to a Texas-two-stepping, tattooed punk. Next there's the heavier-than-advertised geek who arrives with a bag of sex toys, but Peter is more serious with a handsome, stern Maine woodsman, followed by a British aristocrat patron who declines further intimacy because of his AIDS. 
 As Peter negotiates his new gay identity, his best friend, Barry, counsels and supports him at every step, especially as Peter deals with a health crisis. During a decade of sex and shenanigans, Peter, encouraged by his ex-wife, daughter, and son, examines his life and, at last, discovers his soul mate. 
 Acclaim for The Decade of Blind Dates 
 "SPECTACULARLY WITTY...The Decade of Blind Dates is a brave novel, a remarkable work of social and personal history. It is gay life as so many Americans lived it in the last decades of the last century, an alternately glorious and confounding picaresque of the mind and heart. It is also spectacularly witty-I started writing down lines that made me laugh out loud and soon ran out of paper." --Richard Stevenson, author of the Donald Strachey series 
 "HILARIOUS...Pre-Internet personals, perseverance, and a strong swimmer's sturdy build all pay off for the narrator of this engaging episodic novel about a rural gay artist's decade-long-search, after coming out at midlife, for heart-connecting love-not just sweaty sex. Alther's word portraits of men met along the way-among them a Nordic-god New Age bodybuilder with a dull black toupee, a burly Bear with a bagful of erotic toys and a miniscule member, and a reclusive basket-weaver with magisterial forearms-are as humane as they are hilarious in a warm-hearted story." --Richard Labonte, Books To Watch Out For 
 "The Decade of Blind Dates is refreshing in its realism about what gay men experience-friends who die of AIDS, gay men who marry in an attempt to convince themselves they are straight, only to end up divorced. It's not just about hot sex but rather a very serious novel about dating. Anyone who has suffered through years of dating to find a soul mate will feel empathy and humor over Peter's situation." --Reader Views 
 "Whether you are gay or straight, Richard Alther exposes the hilarity and challenge of starting over romantically in midlife." --The Bottom Line, Palm Springs

iUniverse, Inc.

Improving garden soil with green manures: A guide for the home gardener

Garden Way Pub.

THE SCAR LETTERS The victim of a brutal hate crime, never resolved, confronts his assailants eighteen years later, courting both violence and romance...    "Beautifully written...a valuable player in the social battles today."     -Elise Wallace, The Editorial Freelancers Association    "There is certainly no question that Richard Alther's new novel, The Scar Letters, transcends the genre of gay fiction, but to label it 'literary fiction' could too easily dissuade a sensible reader from picking it up, reading a few pages, and then sitting back with a sigh of satisfaction, knowing that here is a really good book.    "The Scar Letters is narrated by Rudy Dallmann, a gay man in his forties, who was brutally attacked and raped some twenty years earlier, and has lived in semi-isolation ever since. Forced by his longtime and closest friend, Tex, to confront the issue, Rudy sets about in his own quietly determined fashion to reconcile his past with his present and hopes for the future. Rudy is not the sort to 'assert himself into everything dead-center,' but he is an honest man, with himself and others-not a small accomplishment in a gay or any other world.    "This is a very compelling story-a universal story-difficult to believe anyone could have told it better. Alther handles narrative and characters like a truly gifted film director or cinematographer. We are in Rudy's head, but the camera sweeps, darts, settles, focusing on one aspect and then another of the well-developed supporting cast. Location and action merge effortlessly into memorable scenes, and the often troubling past is filtered through the emerging present leaving narrator and reader (as Rudy says after hearing Mahler) "hushed, drained, somehow elevated." There is never an awkward sentence or a sentiment that disappoints.    "Alther intersperses his story with accounts-often just a few sentences, a full chapter in one instance-of the horrifying treatment homosexuals have encountered throughout recorded history. There is nothing heavy handed about this; it is simply there to remind the reader that it has always been there and for a variety of reasons. At this particular time, as the country grapples with the issue of same-sex marriage, Alther's calm recitation of this horrendous heritage should certainly give pause to those of us who have never lived with this kind of fear.  -Bookreview.com considers The Scar Letters a must-read."    RICHARD ALTHER'S first two novels are THE DECADE OF BLIND DATES and SIEGFRIED FOLLIES. He is also a Master's Swimmer and exhibiting painter, living in Vermont and Southern California with his husband Ray Repp.

The Scar Letters

Literary

Centaur Books

"Readers will enjoy the warm-hearted celebration of this zesty old woman savoring the hell out of her final years." - Judith Viorst, American writer, journalist, and bestselling author of I'm Too Young To Be Seventy. They meet by chance. Age doesn't matter. Having spent her life helping underprivileged women, Roxie, 88, is now content in her woodsy retreat her with her garden, yoga, and art. With his children launched, Fred, 48, has left his wife and uninspiring job to paint fulltime, shackled only with his demons of doubt. And then one day in a life drawing class, they meet by chance. Theirs is a love story that shatters orthodoxy as they discover themselves anew. As the human race leads longer and healthier lives than ever before, Roxie and Fred's love story serves as testament to fully embracing the mind, body and spirit, sexual pleasure included, without succumbing to the fears of older age.

Roxie & Fred

Romance

Contemporary

Regent Pr

<div>Bedside Matters, the fifth novel by painter and writer Richard Alther, enlivens its singular setting with an unexpected journey at life's end for one man. Walter had mastered the business world at an unaccounted cost to discover in old age and ill-health a disease that would render his body useless. Walter is a complicated man now captured in the gilded cage of his mansion, watching the world, his world, go by without him. Visitors with agendas appear to remind him of his life and responsibilities: Walter's ex-wife Polly, a voluptuous handful as he would describe her, Paula, his chip-off-the-old block all-business daughter, Gavin, his attractive and irresponsible son with a dodgy track record, and the irrepressible daydreams and memories that flood his consciousness with emotions long shunned. While Walter reads the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi's work, his inner life takes on a new shape, as his body continues to betray him and deteriorate. He says a long, reluctant goodbye while engaging a side to life that has been unexplored until now. The natural world in the garden outside his window pleasures as he battles pain. New people enter his world to invigorate his last days, including his physical therapist Tressie, a woman so enticing he counts the minutes between visits. Succession becomes an obsession with Paula as she builds her empire, and Gavin tries to start over again after another stint in rehab. Walter watches them play the game of life as he becomes a mere observer from the solitude of his stately manor, lost and found in his thoughts. For the first time, he seems to experience life as a poet would, even as the inevitable end comes closer. A cinematic non-linear take and frank examination of the promise of life, even at its end,Bedside Matters concern us all at one time or another as we ask the ultimate question: what matters most? </div>

Bedside Matters

Genre Fiction

Rare Bird Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Alther, Richard. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Alther, Richard