Since the Stonewall riots and the emergence of a vibrant, public homosexual culture, gay male fiction has been gradually coming out of the shadows and Brian Bouldrey's series Best American Gay Fiction is a fine barometer of its current state. These 21 pieces--ranging from excerpts of recently published novels to original short stories to fictionalized memoir--reflect the emotional and literary diversity of gay writing today. Bouldrey has chosen work by the already famous such as Andrew Holleran and Dale Peck, cult writers such as Kevin Killian, and up-and-coming authors such as Kolin M. Ohi and Tom House.


From Publishers Weekly
This intelligently assembled collection closes with one of the strongest stories (gay or otherwise) of the past few years. "Preservation News," by Allan Gurganus, is putatively a Southern widow's memoir of her friend Tad, a charismatic restorer and architect, who has died of AIDS. Gurganus's brilliantly impersonated narrator lets him combine technical cleverness with depth and pathos; readers may not know whether to grin or weep. It would be a Herculean labor to find 15 other new stories that good, and the editor hasn't. Still, there is more than enough here to interest and absorb readers. Cult favorite and sex-and-violence expert Dennis Cooper contributes the bristly, erotic "snuff fairy tale" "The Freed Weed"; Peter Weltner's "Buddy Loves Jo-Ann" is understated to the point of sneakiness; Andrew Sean Greer's elegantly constructed "The Future of the Flynns" brings an affable eeriness to its flashbacks and flash-forwards; and Scott Heim's moving "Deep Green, Pale Purple" expertly dodges the border of clich?. Bouldrey (Genius of Desire), who also edited the first two books in this annual series, has been careful to seek out work in both mainstream venues (like Esquire) and more marginal journals. He appends a "recommended" list of stories he couldn't fit in here. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Over the last decade production of gay fiction collections, both one-shots and annuals, has accelerated. This latest entry sets itself apart through a titular claim to contain only the highest-quality short stories and novel excerpts from the previous year. More specifically, of the 21 pieces just under half are drawn from periodicals and just over half are excised from books, either novels or other anthologies. Several credible choices stand out, including Adam Klein's "The Medicine Burns" and Bernard Cooper's "Arson." Though others are less to this reviewer's liking, most anthology readers expect variation, and because editor Bouldrey has based his selections purely on his personal taste such criticism seems pointless. Bouldrey (Genius of Desire, Ballantine, 1993) begins his introduction with a conversational riff on the pleasures of reading and putting together an anthology. But his later attempts to analyze individual stories and gay writing generally are superficial and strained. While there is nothing especially wrong with this book, neither is there anything especially right, and its claim to contain the "best" is not particularly credible. Libraries will be better served with the outstanding new His (LJ 9/1/95) and the venerable Men on Men 5 (LJ 8/94), both of which are parts of ongoing series.?Eric Bryant, "Library Journal"Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
A snappy, of-the-moment collection of 21 stories or novel excerpts from the usual gay suspects--all men--edited by Bouldrey (Wrestling with the Angel: Faith and Religion in the Lives of Gay Men, 1995). Imagine an unrisky 1996 best-of-queer-fiction list, and this anthology, the first in an annual series, is probably what would emerge: Bouldrey has Edmund White celebrating Paris (``His Biographer''), Scott Heim writing about kids in Kansas (``Don't or Stop''), Michael Cunningham on pubescent whores and wise drag queens (``Cassandra''), and Christopher Bram summarizing the nature of sexual extortion (``Posterity''). The stories of R.S. Jones (``I Am Making a Mistake'') and Jason K. Friedman (``The Wedding Dress'') are luminous, the former dealing explicitly with AIDS, the latter with a surreal event that leads to an unplanned sexual awakening. Dick Scanlan weighs in with ``Banking Hours,'' about a young man who experiences his first betrayal and begins to contemplate the inevitable flight from his straight family. Robert Glck's ``The Early Worm'' adopts an iffy experimental stance that holds few surprises in its obscure transformations (``Individual voices take big chances,'' writes Bouldrey in his windy introduction, but that's not always demonstrated here), and Jim Provenzano's ``Split Lip'' confuses brevity with incision. Adam Klein's ``The Medicine Burns,'' however, represents the collection at its finest: A boy suffering from acne gets a multifaceted education from an aesthetically ``superior'' fellow student. The multicultural contribution is supplied by Ernesto Mestre, along with the purplest prose and breathiest title (``His eyes were...the color of boiling honey'' comes from ``Monologue of Triste the Contortionist''). Joe Westmoreland, in ``The Spanking,'' offers a standard coming-of-age tale, and Michael Lowenthal covers the serious postHIV positive, postAIDS boffing (``Going Away''). A thoroughly middle-of-the-road gathering that doesn't utter the last word but still manages to canvass the year in gay scribbling. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
Following the success of last year's debut volume, this Best American Gay Fiction collection broadens the range of contributors, styles, and genres. Here is outstanding new work by such well-known writers as Andrew Holleran, Dale Peck, Michael Nava, and David Wojnarowicz alongside fresh talents who capture the full spectrum of gay life today -- African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. The impressive writing presented here -- all drawn from works published in 1996 -- reflects this diversity as well, and ranges from coming-of-age narratives to reflections on growing older, from edgy 'zine fiction to elegant tales wrought with lapidary precision.Unified only by their excellence, these twenty-one selections are resounding proof of yet another banner year for gay fiction.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Whether exploring topics unique to the gay experience, reinventing a genre from a gay perspective, or observing straight life through queer eyes, the stories in the third volume of this acclaimed anthology series offer compelling evidence that gay writers are producing some of the finest new fiction in America today. Best American Gay Fiction 3 highlights both outstanding new work by well-known writers and exciting and original stories by emerging talents.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews

Editor Bouldrey (The Genius of Desire, 1993) notes that his goals in this second installment of an annual collection were to "highlight new talent. . . showcase established writers" and to "bring attention to published work that might have had limited distribution." He accomplishes all three, producing an anthology strong on less well-known writers (including Russell Leong, Mitchell Cullin, and Karl Woelz) and venues but also featuring some effective work by such well-established figures as Andrew Holleran, Stephen Beachy, Michael Nava, and Dale Peck. Several of the most moving tales (like John R. Keene's "My Son, My Heart, My Life" and Scott Thomas's "The Main Frame") deal in fresh, powerful ways with the struggles of young men to come to grips with the nature and implications of their desires. A savvy, lively overview of current gay fiction.