The Priapist (ePub)

An homage to Homer's Odyssey, The Priapist is edifying, erotic, and playfully absurd.

Zach Nostos, celebrated author of sex manuals for men, lives incognito on a Mediterranean island with an aging porn star. He dreams obsessively about returning home to his ancestral estate in Finland and his first love, his little cousin Penny. Zach, now in middle age, recalls the priapic rapture he experienced with her. Only later did he become fully aware of his peculiar sexual condition: he is chronically unable to achieve orgasm.

After a youthful sojourn in Paris, where he participated in a farcical Trojan War, Zach felt compelled to master all things sexual before allowing himself to return home to Penny. Thus began his odyssey of outlandish erotic adventures.

Zach delights in recounting the numerous and varied sexual encounters that provided the raw material for his sex manuals. He also enlarges upon his extensive views on creating sexually charged romance. Lastly, he reveals the year-long preternatural affair that cured his mid-life depression.

Loosely set in present times, The Priapist pursues a sense of magical timelessness, combining mythical themes and images with modern sensibilities. Readers familiar with the Odyssey will enjoy the playful retelling of the old myths and the sexy incarnations of Helen of Troy, Calypso, Scylla and Charybdis, the Cyclops, and the consummate sorceress Circe, while those less acquainted with Homer will find that the archetypal imagery increases the breadth, depth, and pure fun of Zach's erotic tale.

The Priapist exudes raw sex, but also brims with wisdom of the heart, propagating profound insights lifted liberally from the writings of Ovid, Stendhal, Proust, and the great Casanova.

"This is something beautiful. I often picture movies while reading and this text kept calling to mind Wes Anderson, the Coen Brothers-something smart and extremely well crafted."
-Sam Morgan, Right Hand of Darkness, JABberwocky Literary Agency

"In this era of simplistic shades of grey, it's reassuring to find a contemporary novel that is both literary and downright kinky. This farcical novel from J. A. Glass is also good for the mind, asserting its distinct place alongside The Story of O, Lolita, and the erotic work of Anais Nin. Like Joyce's Ulysses, The Priapist is a parody of Homer's Odyssey, and like Joyce's masterwork, it is at turns cerebral and crude; tender and silly; epiphanal and pornographic. It is an adventure of the erotic imagination, traipsing through swaths of time in a fantastical quasi-European world. Beneath the surface of this entertaining odyssey is a textbook in seduction and the highly persuasive contention that the grandest way to celebrate life comes not just through the ecstasy of love, which Glass argues to be so often illusory, but a deliciously naughty surrendering to the higher power of lust."
-Daniel R. Nearing, Writer-Director, Hogtown, Chicago Heights,
Fellow, Guggenheim Foundation,
2016-2017 Filmmaker in Residence, City of Chicago,
2016-2017 Chicagoan of the Year for Film - The Chicago Tribune

"The world continually craves novels that are articulate and erotic. The Priapist is such a novel. J. A. Glass's intelligent episodic fiction joyfully enters into the Joycean-Homeric heroic dance. The narrator's erudition invites comparison with those of Nabokov and Updike."
-Dr. Stephen W. Delchamps, Author, Civil Humor