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‘They’re faggots. They’re writers—quelle surprise!’
I had to ask Gay’s the Word to order Castle Faggot in for me. I used a £7.99 discount token from their pay-it-forward scheme to buy it when it arrived, povo that I am. I spent that £7.99 on one pint at some Bloomsbury pub and read it all in one sitting, twisting the book upside down, inside out, trying to make sure every toff in a gilet could see what I was reading. This is one of the reasons the book is such a powerful object: it branded me. It’s by a faggot, for faggots. No hetero would be caught dead with it in his hands.
In the book’s afterword, Dennis Cooper says ‘It does everything it’s doing in three-dimensions.’ Castle Faggot is a real space, an orgy of dead faggots and an amusement park. It’s a scatological Disneyland and a place for faggots to die. It’s a book that at once inspired and destroyed my own work, took a real big shit on it. Derek, as I try to, leans into consumerism with joy and horror simultaneously, locates us in the products we buy and the sugary cereal we crave. It’s also totally absent of literary goop, full of human goop, faggot goop; it’s slender ninety pages make it the perfect artefact. He doesn’t mince words, but he’s a mincer. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted to be.
I hold a real space for myself in my writing and feared it came off as forced, the I character always some more handsome version of me. Derek doesn’t need to include his name for us to know what sickly disturbed fag is talking. When he does do it, it comes off as a joke. As if we didn’t already know. His input is never conceited or dishonest; he pushes out from every shit-smeared hole laughing, screaming, self-loathing. He made me better at inserting myself into my writing and inserting myself into another man.
Castle Faggot isn’t just one of the most important pieces of post-AIDS writing, it’s one of the most current pieces of post-AIDS writing. It writes to a world which, honestly, didn’t really experience that tragedy, but which is littered with its bodies. Derek McCormack saw a dead faggot and thought, I’m gonna write on this, or I’m gonna write in this, or I’m gonna write with this. The whole book is a dead faggot crying out against our century, lost in an amusement park, how is this even possible? It’s a mass grave of a book.
At some point in the book you have to flip it upside-down, be reminded you’re holding an object; but you’re also forced to read backwards, rescind into a haunted past of faggotry and debauchery. He plays physical tricks with his work that make him a sort of architect. Nothing has ever been written like it, but we need more, and that’s why this book is so important. It sets a precedent. Derek takes the faggy artists of old—the fin-de-siecle writers, or ‘fag-de-siecle’—and transforms them into post-AIDS monuments, puerile shit-filled replicas. It’s a children’s book for faggots. It’s the children’s book I always needed as a child but didn’t know I did. It’s a book that reminds us that, as faggots, we’re already dead; but in being written, existing, it encourages us to go on and create. It’s like the faggots’ nuclear bomb, our weapon of mass seduction. It’s hot enough to melt Walt Disney.
Castle Faggot is, to me, the logical progression of all faggot art, the consolidation. It’s an exhibition piece on communal existence with AIDS and a call for young faggot writers to acknowledge that they come from a lineage of shit and death, that it’s inescapable, but that there are new things to be done. It explodes traditional narrative expectations and arrives at some other end of the novel, some new territory. It faggots the writing process and the book itself is a dead fucking faggot.
When I finished reading Castle Faggot I held it the whole way home. On the tube I wore it like a band t-shirt. By this point, though, I didn’t just want to be branded, an obvious faggot where I’ve before been called ‘the straightest person’ gym bro in my art class had ever seen; I wanted to be a model for Derek’s work, for someone, anyone, some faggot, to look it up, read it, and start writing, start breaking the mould.
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Today me and my friend had a conversation about relationships, attraction etc etc. This type of conversations always takes us to "A faggot fable" featured in Larry Mitchell's book.
I will not spoil the themes since it's very short, just a paragraph (page 15 on the internet archive), and it's a must read.
But feel free to express what you felt reading it in the comments
5d ago
i read this book in early 2022. i saw it on tiktok. im admittedly not a huge reader, and books i do read seriously have to surprise me to keep me entertained. im the same with movies.
i spent months trying to track down a physical copy of this book. tiktok would never reveal too much, it really just appeared in haul videos and the comments would talk about it like a secret club. i wanted in.
i eventually gave up and read it on my phone. i wish i waited.
things have gotten worse since we last spoke is hard to explain. its the most pathetic, entrancing, and unforeseen story i have ever read. i sincerely hope someone has read this and recommends me something even more insane because ive been chasing this high ever since i read it.
the story is told over a length chatlogs shared between two women (more points for lesbians). i dont want to say much because half of the thrill of this book is discovering whats really behind those fucking emails but its a basically psychological thriller romance. dark psychological thriller romance with body horror elements but thats all im telling.
my favorite sentence ever is in from book. what have you done today to deserve your eyes? i think about it once a day. its my bio for like everything.
seriously, read this if your into the macabre. especially gay body horror stuff.
Jan 27, 2025
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1) makes me think of ketamine
2) book about downtown new york
3) book about insufferable people in the “culture industry“ of downtown new york - clout chasing during aids
4) aids literature showing the literal and metaphorical dangers of love and the risks entailed. to get close to someone is to risk contagion. the hedgehog’s dilemma. jesus and judas ‘when i kiss you i damn us both’ (another thing i’m into is poetry that draws parallels between jesus / judas and gay lovers)
5) reminds me of giovanni’s room
6) writing about getting peed on but in a beautiful way somehow
Jan 5, 2024
Top Recs from @greeneyedlocoman
Frank leaving me bereft, coiling, somehow so gay isn‘t it, wanting to stay drunk on friendship, impossibilities, language shared always shared. No more language to come here just the poem to read.
5d ago
Bob, I don’t know how you do it but my body responds in this fucked up way to your language. It’s actually one of the greatest feats in artistic history I think. I want your mind in mine and I bet you were a great fuck back in your day.
4d ago
Children are brewing. Their amniotic fluid is hostile architecture.
4d ago