In Eating Lightbulbs and Other Essays, Steve Fellner traces the seriocomic absurdities of his own mind and its obsessions with family, mental illness, film, poetry, and gay sex. His search for love finds its outlets and objects wherever it can: in an imaginary 1970s Cineplex movie theatre, at a baby shower, or in a co-ed sexual abuse support group; via a letter penned to the ghost of an environmental activist who killed himself; or in the form of the AIDS quilt, lava lamps, amoebas, and a famous queer poet who didn’t know he existed. As he charts the inherently flawed ways he—and we—live and love, Fellner is always ready to subvert victim narratives even if he has to commit a few (or more than a few) acts of betrayal along the way. Unflinching and sidelong, laugh-out-loud funny, and as sharp and unpredictable as shards of fine glass, these essays look straight at the moments in life most of us would rather forget. 

 

Steve Fellner is Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Brockport. He is the author two books of poetry and a memoir, All Screwed Up. His essays have appeared in Brevity, Mississippi Review, The Normal School, North American Review, The Sun, and Mid-American Review, among others.

I

Self-Portrait as a 1970s Cineplex Movie Theatre (An Abecedarian)

Eating Lightbulbs

On Redemption

II

No

Inside

Safe Haven

III

How to Survive a Baby Shower

On Apology

A Letter to David Buckel

Two Truths and a Lie

“I see flies, I see mosquitos, but I have never seen a gay man.”

Are You There Judy? It’s Me, Steve.

On Beauty

Self-Portrait as a 1980s Cineplex Movie Theatre (An Abecedarian)

IV

Ten Anecdotes about the Destruction of Books

Popsicles

On Insignificance

The Pencil Box

On Love, Sex, and Thom Gunn

Mad Max

Inspiration

On Fragmentation

My mother is suffering from uterine cancer and all I can think about is the ’80s.

V

On Marxism, My Mother’s Body, and the State of Creative Nonfiction

Deleted Scenes from My Unpublished Memoir

Acknowledgments