'"I'm not scared of sex. I want it like crazy. But not like that, with someone I don't even like."
'Peter is fifteen, a typical Australian boy who enjoys riding his dirt bike and want to be a photographer. In his world, a boy is considered a man only if he obeys an unwritten set of rules: he must seek out danger, talk rough, get girls — any girl. If he's different, he's labeled a "poof."
'Pressured by his peers and by society to conform to this stereotyped male image, Peter feels both confused and repelled. His confusion, and his horror, increase when he finds that he is attracted to his brother's friend David, who is gay.
'Here is a daring, exceptionally honest novel about sexuality and the need to be true to oneself. Peter shares his every muddle and perception with us, and his candor just might help us find our own way.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'All serious art breaks the rules-there can be no innovation without some form of transgression. Yet the breaking of rules is not enough to produce serious art, and while the very focus of erotic writing seems to invite transgressions, these are not necessarily liberating or creative. When transgressions lie for the most part in the subject-matter, their translation into literary break-throughs is problematic, and they can in fact be undermined by writing that is bland, conventional and predictable. Literature, it bears perhaps repeating, is not the thing itself but a representation and thus a re-creation of it. Modes of representations are always ideologically loaded and, while the contemporary period has invented very little in terms of sexual practices, it has been able to innovate significantly in terms of representational practices. It remains to be seen what kind of articulation can be found between the two.' (p 39)
'All serious art breaks the rules-there can be no innovation without some form of transgression. Yet the breaking of rules is not enough to produce serious art, and while the very focus of erotic writing seems to invite transgressions, these are not necessarily liberating or creative. When transgressions lie for the most part in the subject-matter, their translation into literary break-throughs is problematic, and they can in fact be undermined by writing that is bland, conventional and predictable. Literature, it bears perhaps repeating, is not the thing itself but a representation and thus a re-creation of it. Modes of representations are always ideologically loaded and, while the contemporary period has invented very little in terms of sexual practices, it has been able to innovate significantly in terms of representational practices. It remains to be seen what kind of articulation can be found between the two.' (p 39)
