Jamie Is My Heart's Desire

the long version

Alfred Chester's masterpiece, The Exquisite Corpse, was one of the literary sensations of the 1960s, a surreal, homoerotic phantasmagoria that became a cult classic. It was preceded by this, his only other novel, out of print since the late 1950s, a work more straitlaced in literary form but just as shockingly original in content. It tells the story of a cynical Brooklyn undertaker, Harry, and the object of his affection, a beautiful and deceased young man named Jamie. But does Jamie really exist, or is he merely Harry's fantasy, the illusion that makes his life endurable? Harry's friends are divided on this matter, and Chester leaves it to his readers to decide.--From publisher description