Out with the stars

"In this dazzling gothic comedy, one of our greatest writers tells the story of Abner Blossom, loosely based on composer Virgil Thomson, who is busy creating an opera about Cyril Vane--who's even more loosely created from the life of Carl van Vechten, the writer and photographer best remembered for his photographs of African American artists during the Harlem Renaissance. The opera is sure to be a scandal; it will reveal Vane's sexual obsessions with many of his male subjects. Vane's widow, silent screen star Olga Petrovna, is doing everything to block its production. Interspersed are half a dozen other stories, like that of Val Sturgis, Blossom's protege and a classic Purdy lost waif, who gets involved in one tragic gay love affair after another, each more gleefully mawkish than the last. Even while confronting and conflating racial and sexual stereotypes, Purdy has never been funnier." 192 pages.