Book tickets
Members' Book Club
A cult classic now back in print, this novel about sex, obsession, and art is one of the defining works of 1980s gay fiction.
A classic of postmodern gay fiction, Robert Glück's Jack the Modernist portrays the slow disintegration of a love affair set in the early 1980s. Bob is excited and lonely. He meets and pursues the elusive Jack, a director who is able to transform others without altering himself. Bob goes to the baths, gossips on the phone, goes to a bar, thinks about werewolves, has an orgasm, and discovers a number of truths about Jack.
Out of print for decades, Glück's paean to desire and obsession explores the everyday in an idiom both intimate and lush. Sensual as well as sensational, self-conscious, but never self-serious, Jack the Modernist is a candid and heartfelt lover's discourse unlike any other.
A cult classic now back in print, this novel about sex, obsession, and art is one of the defining works of 1980s gay fiction.
A classic of postmodern gay fiction, Robert Glück's Jack the Modernist portrays the slow disintegration of a love affair set in the early 1980s. Bob is excited and lonely. He meets and pursues the elusive Jack, a director who is able to transform others without altering himself. Bob goes to the baths, gossips on the phone, goes to a bar, thinks about werewolves, has an orgasm, and discovers a number of truths about Jack.
Out of print for decades, Glück's paean to desire and obsession explores the everyday in an idiom both intimate and lush. Sensual as well as sensational, self-conscious, but never self-serious, Jack the Modernist is a candid and heartfelt lover's discourse unlike any other.
Author bio
Robert Glück is a poet, fiction writer, critic, potter, and editor. In the late 1970s, he and Bruce Boone founded New Narrative, a literary movement of self-reflexive storytelling that combines essay, lyric, and autobiography in one work. Glück is the author of the story collections Elements and Denny Smith; the novels Jack the Modernist, Margery Kempe, and About Ed (all published by New York Review Books); and a volume of collected essays, Communal Nude. His books of poetry include La Fontaine with Bruce Boone, Reader, In commemoration of the Visit with Kathleen Fraser, and I, Boombox. Glück has served as codirector at Small Press Traffic, as an associate editor at Lapis Press, and as the director of the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, where he is an emeritus professor.
Book tickets
06:30 pm
Thu, 16 Apr 2026
Studio
Ticket information
- All tickets that do not require ID (full price, disabled, income support) can be printed at home or stored in email
- For aged-based concession tickets (under 25, student) please bring relevant ID to collect at the front desk before the event.
Access information
Studio
- The Studio is accessible from Carlton House Terrace via a ramp. There is not a bathroom on this floor
- If you have other access requirements, need more info, or want to contact us, go to the Access Page
This event has two ticket options:
- Book (collect in ICA shop)
- Book (postage included)
These include the price of the book, minus 10% Members' discount.
For those wishing to collect in store, please email membership@ica.art and we will reserve a copy of the book for you behind the front desk.
For those wanting the book posted to them, please email membership@ica.art to confirm your current address before we send a copy of the book to you.
If you have purchased the book outside ot the ICA Bookshop, you can RSVP for free and join the discussion by emailing membership@ica.art
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no. 236848.