
The Very Heart of It
New York Diaries, 1983-1994
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Narrated by:
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Thomas Mallon
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By:
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Thomas Mallon
About this listen
From the renowned novelist and critic, an exquisite collection of journal entries from the 1980s and ’90s, tracking a young, gay author’s literary coming-of-age in New York during the AIDS crisis
In 1983, Thomas Mallon was still unknown. A literature professor at Vassar College, he spent his days traveling from Manhattan to campus, reviewing books to make ends meet and searching the city for his own purpose and fulfillment. The AIDS epidemic was beginning to surge in New York City, the ever-bustling epicenter of literary culture and gay life, alive with parties, art, and sex.
Though he didn’t know it, everything would soon change for Mallon. Riding the success of his debut, A Book of One’s Own, he became a fixture within the city’s literary scene, crossing paths with cultural giants and becoming an editor at GQ. He captured it all in his daily journals. But in some ways it was the worst possible time for a gay coming-of-age in the city. One of his lovers succumbed to AIDS, and the illness of others was both a heartbreaking reality and a constant reminder of his own exposure.
Tracing his own life day by day, Mallon evokes all that those years encompassed: the hookups, intensifying politics, personal tragedies, as well as his own blossoming success and eventual romantic happiness. The Very Heart of It is a brilliant and bewitching look into the daily life of one of our most important literary figures, and a keepsake from a bygone era.
©2025 Thomas Mallon (P)2025 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Illuminating, heartbreaking, hilarious, romantic, terrifying, thrilling, baffling, joyous—such is life! And such are the diaries of our great writer Thomas Mallon, who has preserved in The Very Heart of It one precious moment in time told in his inestimable style. I found myself reading addictively. A world opens up in these pages. What a book!" —Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Less and Less Is Lost
"While reading The Very Heart of It, I tried to discipline myself, but suddenly it was 4 AM. Thomas Mallon’s diaries, focusing on the 1980s through the early 90s, depict that era with heartbreaking accuracy, from the dread of an AIDS test to the glory of living, on cobbled-together funds, in the social and cultural capitol of New York City. His portraits of the rancorous literary scene, political ferment and his hectic love life are witty, original and sinfully entertaining (it’s a rare work that travels from Robert Mapplethorpe to Dan Quayle). Upon reaching the final page all I wanted was more." —Paul Rudnick, author of What is Wrong with You?
"Thomas Mallon’s The Very Heart of It is a big-hearted account of his life from 1983 to 1994, as he was becoming the distinguished American man of letters and man-about-town that he manifestly is now. It’s also a modern-day, Defoe-esque diary of the plague years, when AIDS swept through the country, scything its grim swath through the artist community. It’s fittingly ironic that Mallon, arguably our best living historical novelist, made his first splash with a non-fictional book about famous diarists. With this book, he joins those ranks." —Christopher Buckley, author of Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir
“Moving [and] bittersweet. . . . The many human moments (funny, sad, witty, horrible, and beautiful) populating Mallon’s diaries collectively (and vicariously) illuminate a supremely resilient community that soldiered on (and kept dancing) despite insurmountable loss and pain. An exquisitely evocative glimpse into an unparalleled era in queer history steeped in joy, sex, and death.” —Kirkus (starred review)
“Compulsively browsable. . . . Mallon’s diaries paint an arresting panorama of Reagan-era New York City, full of droll character studies. . . . [Mallon’s] prose conveys deep emotion with clear-eyed, matter-of-fact detail. It amounts to an engrossing evocation of an artist and a city in transition.” —Publisher’s Weekly
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- Unabridged
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It’s 1996, and Jeremy Atherton Lin has met the boy of his dreams—a mumbling, starry-eyed Brit—just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage Act, denying same-sex couples federal rights including immigration. The pair steals away to remote forests and vast deserts, London fashion shows and Berlin sex clubs, dinner parties, back alleys, East Village hotel rooms, and San Francisco dives. Finding no other way to stay together, they shack up illicitly among unlikely allies in a “city of refuge.”
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Tramps Like Us
- A Novel
- By: Joe Westmoreland, Eileen Myles - introduction
- Narrated by: Nick Monteleone
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Abused by his father and stifled by closeted life as a teenager in Kansas City, Joe, the wide-eyed narrator of Tramps Like Us, graduates from high school in 1974 and hits the road hitchhiking. But it isn't until he reunites with Ali, his hometown's other queer outcast, that Joe finds a partner in crime. When the two of them finally wash up in New Orleans, they discover a hedonistic paradise of sex, drugs, and music, a world that only expands when they move to San Francisco in 1979.
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Of course this story ends tragically
- By Reader X on 07-02-25
By: Joe Westmoreland, and others
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Disorderly Men
- A Novel
- By: Edward Cahill
- Narrated by: Eric Fox
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Three gay men in pre-Stonewall New York City find their fates thrown together in the police raid of a Village bar. The three men find themselves in a police wagon together, their hidden lives threatened to be revealed to the world. Blackmail, a private investigator, Gus’s disappearance, and Danny’s quest for retribution propel Disorderly Men to its piercing conclusion, as each man meets the boundaries of his own fear, love, and shame. The stakes for each are different, but all of them confront a fundamental question: How much happiness is he allowed to have . . .
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A Sneailky Relatable Book!
- By John Latona on 10-09-23
By: Edward Cahill
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Cooler than Cool
- The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard
- By: C. M. Kushins
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 20 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the course of his sixty-year career, Elmore Leonard, “the Dickens of Detroit,” published forty-five novels that have had enduring appeal to readers around the world. Revered by Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Raymond Carver, and Stephen King, his books were innovative in their blending of a Hemingway-inspired noirish minimalism and a masterful use of realistic dialogue over exposition—a direct evolution spurred by his years as a screenwriter. C. M. Kushins tells Leonard’s full life story.
By: C. M. Kushins
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The Loves of My Life
- A Sex Memoir
- By: Edmund White
- Narrated by: Joel Froomkin
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Written with White’s signature honesty, irreverence, and wit, The Loves of My Life is the culmination of a legend's life and work, a delightful and moving tour of over seventy years of being unabashedly gay and in love with love in all its forms.
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Does not compare favorably to White's other books
- By Reader X on 04-03-25
By: Edmund White
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He's to Die For
- A Novel
- By: Erin Dunn
- Narrated by: Sid Sagar
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Brooklyn 99 meets The Charm Offensive in this sparkling romantic murder mystery: it's murder cute in the first degree when a detective finds himself falling for the lead suspect in a career-making case.
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Adorable murder mystery
- By Sam Boyer on 06-22-25
By: Erin Dunn
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The Slip
- By: Lucas Schaefer
- Narrated by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Renata Friedman
- Length: 17 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Bobbing and weaving across the ever-shifting canvas of a changing country, The Slip is an audacious, daring look at sex and race in America that builds to an unforgettable collision in the center of the ring.
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HOLY WOW: BOOK AND NARRATORS
- By Dani on 07-06-25
By: Lucas Schaefer
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Parallel Lines
- A Novel
- By: Edward St. Aubyn
- Narrated by: Benedict Cumberbatch
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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From the bestselling and award-winning author of the Patrick Melrose novels, a hilarious and moving story about a group of wildly different characters whose fates are improbably yet inextricably linked—a novel about extinction and survival, inheritance and loss, written with St. Aubyn’s trademark wit and inimitable style
By: Edward St. Aubyn
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Gay Bar
- Why We Went Out
- By: Jeremy Atherton Lin
- Narrated by: Jeremy Atherton Lin
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In the era of Grindr and same-sex marriage, gay bars are closing down at an alarming rate. What, then, was the gay bar? Set between Los Angeles, San Francisco, and London, Gay Bar takes us on a time-traveling, transatlantic bar hop through pulsing nightclubs, after-work dives, hardcore leather bars, gay cafes, and saunas, asking what these places meant to their original clientele, what they meant to the author as a younger man, and what they mean now.
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Gay Bar : A Review
- By Anonymous User on 05-17-21
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The Spinach King
- The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
- By: John Seabrook
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The patriarch, C. F. Seabrook, was hailed as the "Henry Ford of Agriculture." His son Jack, a keen businessman, was poised to take over what Life called "the biggest vegetable factory on earth." But the carefully cultivated facade—glamorous outings by horse-drawn carriage, hidden wine cellars, and movie star girlfriends—hid dark secrets that led to the implosion of the family business. A compelling tale of class and privilege, betrayal and revenge three decades in the making, The Spinach King explores the author's complicated family legacy and the dark corners of the American Dream.
By: John Seabrook
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The Catch
- A Novel
- By: Yrsa Daley-Ward
- Narrated by: Yrsa Daley-Ward
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Twin sisters Clara and Dempsey have always struggled to relate, their familial bond severed after their mother vanished into the Thames. In adulthood, they are content to be all but estranged, until Clara sees a woman who looks exactly like their mother on the streets of London. The catch: this version of Serene, aged not a day, has enjoyed a childless life.
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Too obscure
- By marty reinhardt on 06-27-25
By: Yrsa Daley-Ward
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Open, Heaven
- A Novel
- By: Seán Hewitt
- Narrated by: Sebastian Croft
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in a remote village in the north of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two teenage boys meet and transform each other’s lives. James—a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old—is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced. As he is beginning to understand himself and his longings, he also realizes how his feelings threaten to separate him from his family and the rural community he has grown up in. He dreams of another life, fantasizing about what lies beyond the village’s leaf-ribboned boundaries.
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Besutiful Story Read by a Sweet Voice
- By ekell on 06-27-25
By: Seán Hewitt
It’s all so very self-absorbed and trivial about literary doings in New York from 1983 into 1994.
Yes, he conveys the impact in his personal life, but he waits until he’s 33 to go to a gay bar and constantly speaks with condescension about “ordinary” gay men and horrors like a Pride Parade. He never engages in any kind of activism or support for GMHC or ACTUP or any organization fighting against AIDS and all the attendant discrimination. It’s all dinners at upscale restaurants and cabaret life. He never has a kind word for any Democratic political figure, when those were the only ones who cared at all about AIDS and lesbians and gays.
He ghost writes Dan Quayle’s book after DQ leaves the vice presidency.
He “sobs” when Nixon dies.
Yawn
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Solitary, child free yuppie focuses on career
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