Need
by Robert Thomson
Thomson
delves incisively into the varieties of need we experience —
sometimes through emotional fireworks, but more often in the
personal, quiet, sometimes funny, and painful details of daily
life. Written with visceral immediacy, grace, and wit, the sixteen
stories in this collection can be held up like mirrors to our
emotional selves.
“Full
of characters striving after the same understanding of themselves
and others that mark any piece of serious fiction. Need
succeeds...and this has everything to do with what Robert Thomson
does on the page and nothing to do with what his characters do
behind closed doors.” --
The Toronto Star
“Toronto-based
author Robert Thomson has scored a hit with Need, his second
collection of short stories centered primarily, though not
exclusively, around issues of gay male existence. His style aims
to capture and cultivate the snippets of experience — other
people’s experience — that find resonance in all of us. And
that aim is dead-on: an observation here, an insecurity there —
Need is the sum of its parts and then some.
“There
is an immediacy to Thomson’s writing, a sense that he is
capturing the fleeting thoughts which comprise the texture of
day-to-day life. The voices of his characters are cacophonic,
diverse, made coherent and unified by the common denominator of
the author’s guiding hand.
“Need
is a book that belongs on the nightstand as much as Tylenol or
condoms. Highly recommended.” -- Outlooks
From the Author
Published
on the brink of the new millennium by Riverbank Press, Need is my
second collection of short fiction. These sixteen stories mark a
transition in my life experience and hopefully reflect my growth
as a writer since 1995’s Secret Things. Friendship, family,
sexual and romantic relationships in various stages are all
examined in Need. The characters are exceptional everyday men and
women, placed under a spotlight to convey the universality of
human emotion.
An
interviewer asked me about some of the themes of Need’s stories;
the dysfunction, the loneliness, the fears and scars people carry
with them. My response was that I write what people don’t want
to talk about, as there are so many quirks and undercurrents in
gay culture that go unnoticed. I don't think that being gay or
leading "a gay life" (whatever that is) is a big shiny
wonderfully-packaged thing. Some pretend and/or act like it is,
but the truth is that underneath every lisping snap queen, muscle
boy, clone, and Joe Average, there is a complex person and a soul
struggling. This book is about things I've seen, would like to
see, and regret having seen. It's revenge, catharsis, my attempt
to be hear and understand, and to be heard and understood.
-- Robert Thomson
Secret
Things by Robert Thomson
From the Author
Independently
published in a limited print run in mid-1994, my first collection
of short fiction, Secret Things, quickly sold out. In 1995,
Immediate Press released a second edition of the book across
Canada and the United States.
The
stories deal with survival issues; how various types of child
abuse and/or neglect impact upon people in various stages of their
lives. Some autobiographic, some fiction, and some a combination
of both (which I like to call "faction"), these stories
were a way for me to make sense of thing I didn't understand...or
at least marked an attempt at understanding.
To
this day I'm not exactly sure why the subject matter of the
stories is so dark. I had been reading David Feinberg's Eighty-Sixed
and hated the book and its message and characters so much that I
said to myself: "I can do better than that." And in
three months, the first draft of Secret Things was finished. There
are, of course, some lighter, humorous pieces in the book. If you
take the time to read through some of the stories, you'll find
they're not all depressing. -- Robert Thomson
Eleven
of the twelve stories from the book can be read from Robert
Thomson's website. Click HERE.
