A cult classic now back in print, this novel about sex, obsession, and art is one of the defining works of 1980s gay fiction. A classic of postmodern fiction, Robert Glück's
Jack the Modernist portrays the slow disintegration of a love affair set in the early 1980s. Bob is excited and lonely. He meets and pursues the elusive Jack, a director who is able to transform others without altering himself. Bob goes to the baths, gossips on the phone, goes to a bar, thinks about werewolves, has an orgasm, and discovers a number of truths about Jack. Out of print for decades, Glück's paean to desire and obsession explores the everyday in an idiom both intimate and lush. Sensual as well as sensational, self-conscious, but never self-serious,
Jack the Modernist is a candid and heartfelt lover's discourse unlike any other.
Author: Robert Glück
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: 10/21/2025
Pages: 176
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.81lbs
ISBN: 9781681379715
About the Author
Robert Glück is a poet, fiction writer, critic, and editor. With Bruce Boone, he founded the New Narrative movement in San Francisco. His poetry collections include Reader and, with Boone, La Fontaine. His fiction includes the story collection Denny Smith, and the novel Jack the Modernist. Glück edited, with Camille Roy, Mary Berger, and Gail Scott, the anthology Biting The Error: Writers Explore Narrative, and his collected essays, Communal Nude, appeared in 2016. Glück served as the director of San Francisco State's Poetry Center, co-director of the Small Press Traffic Literary Center, and associate editor at Lapis Press. He lives in San Francisco.
Rob Halpern is the author of
Music for Porn and
Hieroglyphs of the Inverted World. Together with Robin Tremblay-McGaw, he edited
From Our Hearts to Yours: New Narrative as Contemporary Practice, which includes his longer essay on Robert Glück's writing. Rob coordinates The Writers' Bloc, a poetry writing workshop inside Women's Huron Valley Women's Prison in Southeast Michigan, where he is Professor of Creative Writing at Eastern Michigan University. His translations of Georges Perec's early essays on culture & politics will appear with Verso in Fall 2026. He is currently working on a book of essays entitled
New Narrative and Other Gay Fictions.
