Books like The Extra Man (Contemporary Classics (Washington Square Press)) by Jonathan Ames
Louis Ives, the novel’s narrator, presents himself as a dapper young gentleman influenced by F. Scott Fitzgerald. His love of women's clothing, however, results in a strange incident that costs him his teaching job at a Princeton day school. Displaced, he moves to New York and rents a room in the whirlwind apartment of Henry Harrison, a once‑promising playwright who now works as an escort for affluent widows and secretly revels in the sounds of Ethel Merman. Over time, the forty‑year age difference between the two men transforms into a mentorship that is both challenging and unexpected. While Louis spends his days with Henry, he also cultivates a secret life in the margins of Times Square’s sex‑world, a hidden passion he fears might destroy everything he has built.
First publish date: 1998
Genre: LGBTQ+ Fiction/Gay Fiction
Authors: Jonathan Ames
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