Faber & Faber, 1991, hardcover, 586 pages, condition: very good.
Edmund White introduces this collection with a thoughtful and forthright description of his personal experience of gay literature and provides a fascinating historical and psychological context for the stories. Contributors include Henry James, Christopher Isherwood, Gore Vidal, David Leavitt, Paul Bowles, and others.
A distinguished anthology by 32 American and British male authors, these stories and sketches fulfill what White ( A Boy's Own Story ) calls the "twin urges" of gay fiction--"the obligation to explain and the ambition to excite." Stunningly written is Allan Gurganus's explicit "Forced Use," in which a married man who has denied his sexual orientation is ravished by a raw youth at a highway rest stop. Modern gay literature goes back to the cautious involutions of Henry James in "The Pupil," in which death resolves the bond between boy and tutor; entries by E. M. Forster, Ronald Firbank and Christopher Isherwood also tend to obliqueness. Denton Welch's "When I Was Thirteen" sensitivity depicts a bracing but innocent encounter at a Swiss ski resort. Alfred Chester pens an ode to the degraded glories of the Paris urinal in his excellent "In Praise of Vespasian." Tennessee Williams ("Two on a Party") describes an affectionate odyssey between "a female lush and a fairy." James Baldwin grows frank and reverent in "Just Above My Head." Portraits of the beloved feature in White's poignant "Skinned Alive" and Dennis Cooper's "My Mark." Motifs recur: parental showdowns, avoidance of women, haunting boyhood affairs, styles of male beauty, dress and courtship, and, more recently, AIDS. The collection offers a revealing and rewarding excursion into a subculture's language and mores.
