Richard Alther

Richard Alther


MP3 File

 

Richard Alther was born and raised in suburban New Jersey, and a beneficiary of New York City museums and theater from grade school on. He graduated as an English major from Cornell University and pursued twin careers as a writer and painter.

After several years in Manhattan, he moved to Vermont and earned his family’s living writing extensively about vegetable gardening and homesteading. His simultaneous career as an exhibiting painter included gallery representation and one-person shows in Montreal, London, Los Angeles, Boston, Dallas, and Florida.

Richard has trained and competed nationally as a Masters Swimmer for several years. At the last Gay Games, in Chicago, he won four gold medals and a silver.

After continuous and far-flung adventures as an emerging gay man, nine years ago online he met his partner, the musician Ray Repp. They divide their time between homes in Southern California and Vermont, where their grandchildren reside.

The Decade of Blind Dates

Richard Alther
iUniverse (2008)
ISBN 9780595467297
Reviewed by Tyler R. Tichelaar for Reader Views (7/08)

Synopsis: The Decade of Blind Dates follows a divorced gay dad through sex and shenanigans, astride his painting career, until he discovers his soul mate.

Peter Pauman, 45, plunges into the personal ads just prior to the Internet, dating mismatches from a rabid Republican physician ("Straight" Laced) to a tattooed punk (The Happy Homosexual); from a gender-bending soap opera star (Male Order Bride) to an impotent Harvard poet (Emily Dick). Best pal Barry counsels him to look between the eyes before the legs. Peter is more serious with a handsome, stern Maine woodsman (Calvinist-Inclined), and a British aristocrat patron (A Man Coming Clean).

Exhibiting his abstract oils, Peter sidesteps into portraits of his closest friends, finally a self-portrait that reveals his deepest feelings and leads to his perfect partner.