Works by
Mack Friedman
(Writer)

Fiction

• Setting the Lawn on Fire: A Novel (2005) -- Finalist 2005 Lambda Literary Gay Men's Debut Fiction Awards
  Setting the Lawn on Fire, the first novel by critically acclaimed writer Mack Friedman, trails its narrator through his obsessions with sex, drugs, art, and poison. Ivan, a young Jewish boy from Milwaukee, embarks on a journey of sexual discovery that leads him from Wisconsin to Alaska, Philadelphia, and Mexico through stints as a fishery worker, artist, and finally a hustler who learns to provide the blank canvas for other people’s dreams. The result is a new kind of coming-of-age story that sees passion from every angle because its protagonist is every kind of lover: the seducer and the seduced, the pornographer and the model, the hunter and the prey, the trick and the john. In the end, Setting the Lawn on Fire is also something rare—a fully realized, contemporary romance that illuminates the power of desire and the rituals of the body, the brain, and the heart that attempt to contain our passions.

Non-fiction

• Strapped for Cash: A History of American Hustler Culture (2003) -- Finalist 2003 Lambda Literary Award for GLBT Studies
  An inside view of American hustler culture from the 1600s to today. Male and transgendered hustlers have been a mostly -invisible part of American life for more than 400 years. Their invisibility leaves these men unprotected, victimized and at risk for sexually transmitted diseases, assault and murder. Strapped for Cash is a critical examination of sex work that serves as both a cultural analysis and a guide for those who conduct HIV/AIDS and other interventions among male and transgendered sex workers. Mack Friedman brings to this work an unusual perspective informed by both his former life as a hustler and his current work as a case manager targeting prostituted youth. Drawn from many sources, including 50 oral histories from current and former male and transgendered sex workers, details of the work of anti-vice committees, academic research and uncovered materials from archives around the country, Strapped for Cash presents the first complete picture of the evolution of hustler culture. Friedman reaches back to European hustler history to find the influences that informed male-male sex trade in the New World and carries this research forward to examine media representations, the development of male pornography and the larger social implications of male sex work. Frank and unapologetic, Strapped for Cash is a powerfully provocative study of this marginalized world.
  
  Features more than 70 black-and-white photographs.

• Wonderlands: Good Gay Travel Writing (2004)
  Living up to its title, Wonderlands comes fueled by wanderlust and features every kind of wonderland. In fact, the collection's contributors--a mix of established gay writers and the best of the new generation--don't settle for the obvious. Focusing on the sheer visceral thrill of travel, the adventure of it, they set out all over the world and always find something unexpected: love, passion, history, themselves. 
  
  The result is an anthology of dynamic writing that will motivate readers to book their next flight, or at least get them dreaming of other places. And the places are legion. Mack Friedman sets off into the deceptively butch wilds of Alaska. Robert Tewdwr Moss tracks through the back roads of Syria and his own version of Arabian Nights. Colm Tóibín discovers a Spanish Brigadoon and Edward Field drinks tea with Paul Bowles. For Wayne Koestenbaum Vienna is both a city of high low culture, and for Philip Gambone Asia becomes a place of second chances. Raphael Kadushin settles into the ethereal sun of a Dutch spring, Michael Lowenthal remembers a jarring encounter in the Scottish Highlands, and Tim Miller tallies the 1001 beds he has slept in all over the world. And Edmund White, in a classic of elegiac travel writing, recounts his harrowing drive through the Sahara with a man he loved.
  
  Contributors: Alistair McCartney, Boyer Rickel, Brian Bouldrey, Bruce Shenitz, Colm Tóibín, David Masello, Edmund White, Edward Field, J.S. Marcus, Mack Friedman, Matthew Link, Michael Lowenthal, Mitch Cullin, Philip Gambone, Raphael Kadushin, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Robert Tewdwr Moss, Wayne Koestenbaum, and Tim Miller.