Review: The Beekman Boys Bought a Farm — and Turned it into a Website, Reality Series, and Now a Memoir

It's hard to feel sorry for a debut author who writes a New York Times best-selling hit the first time out.

That was the challenge for Josh Kilmer-Purcell, the author of the new memoir The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers, about he and his partner's attempt to create their own working farm (and also the subject of their new Planet Green reality show The Fabulous Beekman Boys).

How do you top I Am Not Myself These Days, Kilmer-Purcell's terrifically entertaining debut memoir that's a love story between an outrageous drag queen and a crack addict who's also a high-price call boy? Kilmer-Purcell's follow-up novel, Candy Everybody Wants, didn't really do it. Fortunately, that hasn't kept him from trying again.

The gimmick of The Bucolic Plague is that he and his partner Brent Ridge (a former associate of Martha Stewart's) decide, on a lark, to buy a beautiful, but neglected farm in upstate New York as a weekend get-away. When Martha Stewart decides to feature some of their homemade goat's milk soap on her TV show, they impulsively decide to turn their soapmaking into a business and turn the estate into a real, working farm (while exhaustively chronicling their every move on their website).

Maybe that's the way it actually happened, but it's really hard not to think that Kilmer-Purcell saw the farm and thought, "This is it! Two gay city boys try to become farmers! This can totally be the subject of my next book!"

I mean, hey, Kilmer-Purcell also works in advertising: he's got to know a good gimmick when he sees one.

So was he right? The good news is that Kilmer-Purcell's trademark wit has survived the transfer to the country perfectly intact. When he compares himself and his life to an heirloom tomato, it's pretty priceless. And the contrast between their actual life and the online "image" they want to project to would-be customers is quite funny.

Josh (left) and Brent

The bad news is, "the gay Green Acres!" makes a terrific pitch-line, but life on a farm really isn't all that interesting — or at least it's not as interesting as life as a drag queen in love with a call-boy-crack-addict boyfriend.

Truthfully, after a very lively opening, the story doesn't really kick in until halfway through the book. That's when the luster of being "Martha-Stewart-approved" begins to fade and, due to the imploding economy, Brent loses his "day" job. Soon Josh and Brent are dealing with relationship problems as well, although, interestingly, Kilmer-Purcell doesn't really portray their relationship like the one seen in The Fabulous Beekman Boys, with all their bickering and Brent's clear neuroses. Which are the "real" Beekman Boys, the memoir or the reality show? I suspect neither are, and both memoirs and reality shows are equally artificial.

The book's other problem is that things tend to happen to Brent and Josh: their goat milk soap just happens to suddenly be anointed by Martha Stewart. Then, when things are about to implode completely, they just happen to be featured in the New York Times.

I am absolutely positive this is the way it really is with a business like this — and to some degree, this is the point of the book: work your butt off and maybe, if you're really lucky, good fortune will strike you in a completely random way. But "reality" — either on a reality show or in a memoir — doesn't always make for the most riveting drama.

But now I'm doing something Kilmer-Purcell must surely hate: comparing all his subsequent work to the rip-roaring story of I Am Not Myself These Days. The fact is, entirely on its own, the cleverly-titled The Bucolic Plague is a pleasant read. Josh and Brent's love affair is sweet, and their foibles are amusing.

And — it should be noted — the book also has a decent amount of Martha Stewart gossip and an even greater amount of Martha Stewart jokes (although no gossip so foul or jokes so mean that she couldn't read and enjoy the book — no doubt because Josh, sensing the possibilities, was angling for a blurb).

In the book, Josh talks about his and Brent's "brand." It's a little weird to be reading a book that, while it purports to be a "real" story, is obviously just another part of that brand — a little more authentic than what they portray on their website, but artificial nonetheless.

Does the difference between image and reality even matter? Not really. In fact, maybe Kilmer-Purcell can explore the conflict in a future memoir. Who knows? It might even end up being better than I Am Not Myself These Days.