Between Men: Best New Gay Fiction
Edited by Richard Canning
Carroll & Graf. 368 pages, $15.95 (paper)
SHORT STORY ANTHOLOGIES are always a mixed bag, but they do serve the purpose of providing new short works by favorite authors, and/or exposing readers to new writers that engage them, and prompt further pursuit of their work. While the editor of such a collection has the unenviable task of trying to appeal to all tastes, most readers undoubtedly will go right to the entries that look most stimulating or satisfying, skipping over others.
Between Men opens with Andrew Holleran’s striking story “Hello, Young Lovers,” which relates the situations that evolve as a gay couple on their honeymoon in San Juan become fascinated by a younger, possibly gay, male couple staying at the same hotel. The tale, narrated by a friend accompanying the lovers, contains some terrific observations about gay men—their perpetual state of anxiety, for example, or what it is like the first time one falls in love—as well as some sexual tension between men that teases and produces an exquisite frisson.
There are other stories in the collection that are equally superb. John Weir’s “Neorealism at the Infiniplex” deftly charts a gay man recovering from a friend’s death by AIDS as he sinks not into despair but into various movie theaters, escaping from the reality of his life. Weir imbues his poignant story with humor—for example, by drawing parallels between Saving Private Ryan and Longtime Companion—that saves it from pathos. Weir captures an elegiac tone that avoids the obvious pitfalls of this sentiment for stories on AIDS. (The best of the stories that deal with this theme is Mack Friedman’s “A Joint and a Nice Piece of Ass,” which describes in wondrous detail how blood is taken.)
Another exceptional entry is Vestal McIntyre’s “A Good Squeeze,” which toggles between the main character’s desire to be bound up in sexual encounters, his formative years in a boarding school, and his current relationship with what might be a lover but might be just a good fuck buddy. McIntyre juggles the three episodes beautifully, and by the end of the story he has created a mosaic that gives a fully formed impression of the main character’s past, present, and future.
Curiously, what reverberates throughout the best stories are the frictions that occur between various men. In Patrick Ryan’s absorbing “Pretend I’m Here,” the friendship between a gay teen infatuated with an astronaut comes to a head; in “Marge” by Michael Lowenthal, a kid finds himself obsessed with the man in the housedress across the street. David McConnell’s “Rivals,” which charts the relationships between two teenagers—including one boy’s affair with his female teacher—bristles with a drama that is intimate and compelling. Doubtless some readers will skip to the more erotic entries—Kevin Killian’s “Greensleeves,” for example—or ones by favorite authors, which might take them to “The Piers,” by Dale Peck, or to Ethan Mordden’s disappointing “The Ballad of Jimmy Pie.”
Alas, not all of the writing in Between Men is as inspiring. The more experimental selections, Shaun Levin’s “The Big Fry-Up at the Crazy Horse Café,” Alistair McCartney’s playful “Crayons,” and Wayne Koestenbaum’s “Diary of a Quack,” are uphill climbs—not without merit, but perhaps best appreciated by those who don’t mind nonlinear plots and a complex writing style. But allowing for personal taste, and given that some unevenness is inevitable, this is a strong anthology on balance. Canning acknowledges this inevitability in his introduction and even offers a brief history of gay fiction anthologies, which is well worth reading before one plunges in.
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Gary M. Kramer is a freelance writer and film critic. He is the author of Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews.
