Boys, Lost & Found

by Charles Casillo

"Casillo's surprising and accomplished collection reveals a heartfelt observer of life's emotional emergencies and indignities told with immediacy and feeling." This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1928589332
• ISBN13: 9781928589334
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: Gival Press
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Powerfull stuff

I found "Boys, Lost and Found" completely engrossing. Charles Casillo has written a really engaging collection of short stories, interspersed with some factual first-person narratives. His writing is crisp, entertaining, and a quick read. Casillo's portraiture is always astute, whether describing a horny number in a bar, a true love object, or a group of queens at a Starbucks -- hot young guys who are growing older by the minute. The protagonists are young men. The antagonists are their older well-heeled lovers whom they crave. And, the result? Well, no spoilers here! Themes in the stories include loneliness, sex, love, self-love, self-esteem, kindness, decency, humiliation, aging, and the effect of glam lifestyles on gay relationships. At heart, though, "Boys, Lost and Found" is really about longing, in the sense of irrepressible, uncontrollable desire. Some favorite lines: "This was only sex, I tried to reason. Only another man and his body. But I couldn't help myself. I had been dead. Now I was alive." "I have a tendency to think too much. This is something that, after much thought, I've concluded is wrong." "The one you love first always makes an imprint. All the others that come after will have to, in some ways, match up to the first one."

Hitting the "Is that all there is?" wall

I have heard several writers complain that many contemporary readers believe that nothing is invented in fiction and nothing is reliable in memoirs. Charles Casillo labeled the mixture of fiction and nonficiton in his delight-filled but often poignant book BOYS, LOST & FOUND simply "Stories," so does not seem troubled by readers' confusions. I'm sure that "The Secret of Marilyn Monroe" relates to the author's own fascination with Marilyn Monroe (he is the author of THE MARILYN DIARIES) and that what he writes about "John Rechy at Home" is based on his own experiences and observations. His piece on the legendary post-WWII kept man, Denny Fouts, tells a story of Fouts that fits with what I know about Fouts from bits and pieces written by others, and another piece on kept boy-men, "The Finer Things in Life" seems to tell their stories. I think that the rest are fiction, though with varying degrees of connection to the author. A leitmotif here is a need to be desired. For Casillo's protagonists (unlike John Rechy's, like Matthew Rettemund's) the need to be desired is accompanied by a need to be loved. The first-person narrators of the opening story and the novella that close the volume are frustrated at the need for continuous novelty of men whom the narrators would like to be the one and only. I detest the turn that "Terrible Darkness" takes, though it is a genre of mystical violence that others enjoy. But that is the only one of the stories herein that I don't like. The narrators tend to be analytical (perhaps a bleeding of fiction and reportage) and similar in being handsome, thirty-something Italian-American writers or models or actors (all seeking success in highly competitive arenas) on one US coast or the othe. They are all romantics whose hearts are breaking or have recently been broken, but there is a range of other characters in their lives. I think that Casillo is a very gifted and often wry story-teller "Woods" and "The Secret of Marilyn Monroe" are my favorites of the stories he tells in this collection. I look forward to reading more of his work.

Finding a bit of myself in Boys Lost and Found

From the cover art and title, I expected a series of dark, urban, tales of the brokenhearted "tragic" city boy. I was wrong. There is more emphasis on the "found" than the "lost". I am so tired of books targeted to gay men, with shallow, steriotypical characters. They may touch your surface, but this one touched my heart and intellect. I found an emotional piece of myself in virtually every story. From my highschool days (The Secret of Marilyn Monroe)to my early dating days (Buying and Selling)..the tales were about survival, maintaing ones identity in a world where it's easy to get lost. The gift is in the Casillos' ability to capture the emotional element of it all..love, being alone, life, fear, and ambition. The author goes much deeper than I expected, and reminded me that we are all sort of connected..no matter what I wish to hide. This book made me realize I was not so alone back in the urban gay jungle after all. I love that the stories are diverse: some romantic, some humerous, but all beautifully insightful: A bit fun and spooky, this book was a bit theraputic for me. I think I will put the Marilyn Diaries on my Christmas list.

Intelligent gay lit!! AT LAST!

I don't know how many times I've tried (and given up) browsing bookshops for compelling, gay-themed books that would hold my interest at least halfway to the rear cover. Who wants to read another thin, one-dimensional romance in which the same, tired cliches are played out: guy meets guy, guy desires guy, guy tries to get guy, conflict ensues, guy gets guy somehow anyway? The predicatbility of which is blatantly apparent by chapter 3... By contrast, these short stories are what I've been looking for! Each one says and reveals more about the nuts and bolts of gay life and all that's really operating behind it than these other novels can do in 300+ pages. All the core themes of gay male life- desire, attraction, sex, isolation, loneliness, betrayal, romance and relationships- are compressed into realistic, palpable characters, settings and plots, and in these gripping portrayals, Casillo makes these archetypes collide dramatically so that between the cracks and tears, we can see down below, beneath all the hype and fantasy, what deeper forces are really operating within us all the way through. It's been said by many: real life is far more intersting than fiction. Casillo understands this intimately and his stories not only prove more potent because we can identify very closely with them, his committment to bringing us some wisdom through the experiences is resoundingly clear. Through the all the characters' respective struggles, it is as if Casillo has decided their efforts should not be in vain and he sheds a realistic light on many a dark area, imparting the same sort of whipsmart insights and conclusions we all try to carry away from our endured conflicts, if we, indeed, are the type that is interested in growing and improving.

Brilliant? Maybe....

I have heard Casillo described as "brilliant." I'm not sure he's reached that status yet, but there are some stories in this book that come pretty damn close. BOYS LOST & FOUND is crackling with passion and energy. It is full of unexpected moments of great insight and dashes of black humor and incredible wit. The qualm I have about his writing is that, at this stage, it lacks variety. Although the stories set up different characters and situations, you always basically have a "Casillo" narrator recognizable as the author's voice. He seems to have about 3 themes that he is hammering home. Loneliness sex and yearning. Yes we know that you are sensitive. Yes we know that you are lonely. Yes we know that you are hurt. And we get that you're trying to be different. It seems to me that the stories if read 1 or 2 at a time (then putting it down for several days) would be more satisfying. Reading it straight through, as I did, makes it start to lose impact. Perhaps I need more time to absorb it all. He also wrote a book about Marilyn Monroe and a literary biography of John Rechy so I'm convinced he has the ability to take on more styles and maybe this was his way of keeping the book under an umbrella theme. Certainly this is collection is worth reading, though, and the author adds a new and authentic voice to the short story arena. I'm sure this is one of the books that I'll go back to again and again finding new layers and meanings with each reading. And then I might give it 5 stars.