PRAISE FOR
Selfish and Perverse

From AfterElton.com
Out comedian Bob Smith (as I remember, the first “mainstream gay comedian”) has penned his first novel, Selfish and Perverse (Carroll & Graf) and in it, one immediately recognizes his comic voice: “For the past six months … I hadn't written a word … It made me wonder how writers procrastinated in the Homeric era. Did bards of yore talk endlessly about their plans to someday tell a story?” Or “I hated when my job interfered with my real vocation: getting a boyfriend.” Finally, “My passage from childhood to adulthood was simply realizing a security blanket worked better with two people snuggling under it.”

This is funny stuff and the best line is one I can't repeat here. In fact, while reading, I folded down the corners of the pages with funny parts to read them out loud later to my boyfriend and found that I had creased nearly the entire book!... more at AfterElton.com.

From DavidMixner.com
Bob Smith makes me laugh. I have known Bob for years and throughout the struggle for civil rights for the LGBT community. He is one of the most decent human beings anyone could want to meet. But most importantly, he has always made me laugh through good times and bad. He has made many of us laugh at ourselves and at all the quirks and twists in the LGBT civil rights movement. He has brought humor and humanity to the gay experience. ... more at DavidMixner.com.

From Shelf-Awareness.com
Bob Smith's first book of comic essays, Openly Bob, won the Lambda Literary Award for humor. In September, Carroll & Graf will publish his debut novel, Selfish and Perverse, about three gay men and one lesbian in Alaska. Armistead Maupin has said about his new book, "A thoroughly seductive and satisfying read. It makes you laugh, it makes you horny, it makes you want to fish for salmon." Here Smith, who lives in New York City, answers questions we occasionally put to people in the industry: ... see Questions & Answers at Shelf-Awareness.com.

Publishers Weekly
Standup comedian and television writer Smith, who published the Lambda Award-winning memoir Openly Bob in 1997, throws his hat into the gay fiction ring with this absorbing, funny and smoldering romantic comedy. Nelson Kunker, a miserably single, mid-30s unproductive novelist and Hollywood script coordinator for late night TV's Aftertaste, is burning out: endless cat-fighting at work, a boss from hell and the nagging notion that he's either "really talented or just gay." Safeguarded by best friend Wendy (a "gigantic" lesbian), Nelson's love life finally gets a boost after a chance meeting with burly Alaskan salmon fisherman-cum-student archeologist Roy Briggs, cousin to Aftertaste's star performer Joe Benedetti. The two are immediately smitten, but Nelson gets fired for smoking marijuana with sexually ambiguous guest star Dylan Fabizak, on parole and postrehab after a drug arrest. Cut to Nelson, Roy and Dylan at Roy's home in Coffee Point, Alaska, with all the sex, danger, salmon fishing lore and sarcastic dialogue one reader could want, and an appearance from mother-hen Wendy to sort it all out. Pithy zingers, a chatty gang of likable characters, a simple yet sexy plot line and camera-ready prose combine with panache in this immensely entertaining story.

"A thoroughly seductive and satisfying read.  It makes you laugh, it makes you horny, it makes you want to fish for salmon."
-- Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City

“Selfish and Perverse is witty and hilarious, full of surprising twists, laugh-out-loud observations I wish I were smart enough to have made, and a whole lot of swarthy Alaskan fishermen. Who'd have guessed salmon could be so sexy?”
--Stephen McCauley, author of The Object of My Affection and Alternatives to Sex

"Who is this 'Bob Smith' and why is he reluctant to use his real name? He should be proud, because Selfish and Perverse is a fantastically entertaining book. Something this funny has no right to also be this beautifully written."
-- David Rakoff, author of Don't Get Too Comfortable

“Selfish and Perverse is very funny yet ineffably bittersweet, razor sharp yet fair to all. Bob Smith's highly quotable comic metaphors are also poetry."
-- Mark O’Donnell, author of Getting Over Homer

"Bob Smith fills his book with the kind of witty, insightful observations that inspire readers to repeat their favorite lines to their friends and inspire other writers to contemplate suicide. He has also accomplished the seemingly impossible task of writing a sexy book about fishing."
-- Marc Acito, author of How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater

SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
Way To Go, Smith

From Publisher's Weekly  
This second installment in gay comedian Bob Smith's autobiography (Openly Bob was published in 1997) features the occasional laugh-out-loud line and twinge of insight, but for the most part reads like a series of stand-up routines that never made it to the stage. While focusing on the minutiae of Smith's growing up, his quirky family, his coming out and his falling in love with a wonderful man named Tom, Smith's first book sustained a sprightly, entertaining tone. Here Tom and Bob have just broken up. Although Smith's humor is, as usual, tinged with rue (when his mother asks if Tom left him for another man, he notes, "Boy, did that piss me off. My mother still didn't think that I was capable of ruining a ten-year relationship all by myself"), the material is not very compelling. Smith is best when detailing small emotional moments: his descriptions of bonding with his widowed mother over being single have a resonance missing from the rest of the book. All too often, he relies on the old one-two style of comic timing, which works on the stage but feels weak on the page ("When my grandmother made sandwiches, she always buttered the bread first, which explained why she was always on a diet"). In relating his attempts at dating, his memories of his first crushes and how he finally met someone he likes, Smith captures some telling moments in the process of reclaiming one's sexual self after the loss of a relationship, but for the most part does not re-create the zest or emotional warmth of his first book.
Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Booklist
"...the chuckles expended on the zany humor are haunted by a wispy ghost of regrets for relationship potentials unrealized."

From CNN.com - November 12, 1999
"Like a conversation with an old friend."
-- review by Catherine Alexander

(CNN) -- It seems that a modern comic can not be truly established or successful unless they have written a book. Bob Smith is no different. But where other comedians-turned-authors see a book as written version of their comedy act, Smith -- known as the first successful openly gay comic to have his own HBO comedy special and to appear on the Tonight Show -- took a new approach in his 1997 book "Openly Bob." Through a series of personal essays, he set out not to make us laugh, but to make us feel. He offered insight into his life and the world around him -- his family, his companion, and problems that we could all relate to.

That style -- which won Smith acclaim and numerous awards -- is present in his new book "Way To Go, Smith." He starts by updating us on the major change in his life since the last book: The Break Up. His description of his break-up with his boyfriend of ten years is something that everyone can relate to. Gay or straight, man or women, all of us have been rejected (If you haven’t, please write a book and let the rest of us in on the secret -- I will even review it for you!). Smith discusses the division of kitchen utensils (Tom took the good serving spoon), having to change the message that Tom had recorded on the answering machine, and the loneliness that comes with soup for one.

Smith shares with us many areas of his life: His mother’s probing questions about his social life, memories of his first crush, trips to visit his grandmother, dealing with his father’s death, dating again after rejection -- all things that we can recognize in our own lives. Instead of writing for a specific audience, Smith writes for people. The honesty of his book is touching and moving without being overly dramatic.

If it sounds depressing so far, fear not. I was not able to resist a chuckle at Smith's description of his grandmother stalking Perry Como, or how "Cat in the Hat" would have turned out had it been written by the dark-natured poetess Edna St. Vincent Millay:

The Cat in the Hat is old, fat, and gray.
No! No! that poor cat does not want to play ...
That poor cat can't leap or creep and he hardly makes a peep.
I'm afraid it's time to put the Cat in the Hat to sleep.

Way to Go, Smith is like a conversation with an old friend. Though the story isn't always an easy one to tell, there is a comfort in the telling that makes you laugh, makes you think, and makes you understand what it is to be Bob for a while.

SELECTED REVIEWS FOR
Openly Bob

San Francisco Bay Times
"Makes its readers laugh out loud."

Lambda Book Report
"One of the most rewarding gay books of the year."

USA Today
"You'll laugh out loud."