The Great Kisser Author:David Evanier A whirling top most of his life, Michael Goldberg's world changes when his dying shrink bequeaths to him the tapes of thirty years of Michael s therapy sessions. The tapes give Michael a second chance in middle age: they unlock his life for him, as a gallery of absurd and touching characters, events and scenes spring out of his past: the shrink ... more »who cracks up and reverses roles with Michael when his wife dies and shows him naked pictures of his patients; the gay man who works for Jewish Punchers, a civil rights group, by day and the Harry Reems Defense Committee at night; a first love encountered again in desperate, ravaged middle age; a Communist Party leader who "would rather be a lamppost in Moscow than President of the United States;" a "glistening failure" of a father who is a cheerleader of Michael s defeat ("You can fail, Michael, if you try! I did it, why can t you?"); the fetish porn-drenched world of old Times Square; a Holocaust survivor Michael meets on September 11th who cannot confront his experience; a Hollywood of elderly Jewish moguls, scholarly and bizarre, "who seemed to have been shipped fresh to California like onion bagels or seeded bialys"-- men like Michael s mentor, Julius Birnbach, creator of the cult classic, "The Curse of the Evil Midgets." Entering into a marriage stemming from a suicide, by the end, the marriage turns into a love story as Michael reclaims his life. The Great Kisser becomes a story of gratitude--of many kisses--by its climax.« less