Purple Men 2000

The next time Trent wakes up it’s 4 a.m. on Wednesday, August 4, 1993. Therapists prepare us for death and Morrissey just released his third solo album.

Trent and Daryl are a couple living together in San Francisco in the early nineties. This story follows them over the course of one day as they prepare to throw a dinner party, while dealing with— among other things—ailing pet fish, HIV, a psychotic stalker ex, annoying friends, a new job and the ennui of approaching middle age. Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, Purple Men 2000 is Robert Glück’s distinct take on the “day in the life” genre: funny, smart, uncomfortable and moving in equal measure.

“Because Glück emphatically constructs the reality he shows, his reader is always aware of the writer writing; and this translucence is, somehow, an entirely natural element in his work, rather than a conspicuous device. Glück’s authorial voice is personal and dispassionate; it is a voice whose very mildness lures one into an orgiastic wilderness without maps or compass. He is an avuncular de Sade.”

—Gary Indiana

Paperback
66 pages
6 December 2025
ISBN 9781068478826