From Publishers Weekly
Though the millennium frenzy may be pass?, this collection of outstanding gay fiction is anything but. The editors have amassed a bevy of literary talent (some well known, some new), and the 21 stories showcase a panoply of styles, narrative depth and personal histories. Early in the volume, M. Shayne Bell shares an unsettling vision with the futuristic, Hugo-finalist tale "Mrs. Lincoln's China," which is set in a dystopic, violent society and features a woman who has looted the White House and stolen priceless historic presidential dinnerware on which she serves her son dinner. Stories focusing on HIV and AIDS, like Bernard Cooper's surrealistic suburban nightmare "Hunters and Gatherers," show strong-willed characters who may be "whittled by the blade of AIDS," but whose narratives never become mired in the merely hopeless. The two lovers in Jamison Currier's moving "Pasta Night" reinvigorate their traumatic relationship by caring for HIV-positive babies in a hospice. Popular author Scott Heim's entry "Deep Green, Pale Purple" is a poignant tale of two loving young brothers and their abusive, menacing father at work in the family apple orchard. Brimming with novelistic potential, Heim's prose is evocative: he shows the boys camping under skies as "flimsy and thrilling as a promise." Trevor Renado displays a prickly sense of humor in the wickedly farcical "Get a Lifestyle," which hilariously nails the West Hollywood gay scene to the wall. David Vernon's spooky "Couple Kills" will satisfy the suspense/horror factions; one man's secretive nocturnal activities pique the curiosity and dread of his boyfriend, who is obsessed with the mythical Chupacabra, a Mexican bloodsucking creature. With every entry having merit, this outstanding volume serves as an important bellwether for those with any doubts about the state of gay writing at the dawn of the 21st century. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
From the editors of His2: Brilliant New Fiction by Gay Writers, this companion volume to Circa 2000: Lesbian Fiction at the Millennium lives up to its promise. It paints the array of gay experience as it canvasses both new and familiar voices in gay literature that will be heard during the first years of the next millennium. Gay bashing, internalized and politicized homophobia, ethnic gay lifeDthese and other themes are juxtaposed in what may well be an inadvertent attempt to show, once and for all, that gay people are indeed everywhere. Stylistically, the book has considerable range. It goes from Eitan Alexander's "Beneath the Planet of the Compulsives" (which has the wild-eyed point of view of Eudora Welty's "Why I Live at the PO") to David Leavitt's clever demolition of fictive form in diarylike fiction (or is it a fictionalized diary?) in "The Term Paper Artist." The stories do not hedge, nor do they sentimentalize. They have an edge to them, a sharpness that is unapologetic and authoritative. Though the 21 tales are mostly urban and ghetto in setting, a couple reach deep into rural America. Well recommended for inclusion in general and gay literature collections.DRoger Durbin, Univ. of Akron, OH Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
"Novel excerpts bump up against short stories; science fiction jostles beside literary fiction, punk sensibility elbows its way next to high camp and classically constructed stories. The end of the 20th century has been about the breaking down of fixed categories--of art forms, of culture, of gender, of sexual orientation--the blurring of borders to allow an infinite variety of options for identity and expression. We sought to feature works by those writers whom we believe will be influential in the coming millennium. There are authors included here who have been prominent in the closing decades of this current millennium: M. Shayne Bell, Bernard Cooper, Scott Heim, David Leavitt, Michael Lowenthall, William J. Mann, Christian McLaughlin, Frank Ronan, and Colm [Tibn.] There are authors whose influence is just beginning to be felt: Mitch Cullin, Jameson Currier, David Ebershoff, Thomas Glave, Russel Leong, Jaime Manrique, David Newman and David Vernon. And we've included a few writers who are at the beginning of their publishing careers: Eitan Alexander, Andy Quan, and Keith Ridgway--whose voices promise that we will be hearing a lot more from them in the decades to come. It is an idiosyncratic roster of writers. What this anthology aims to do is introduce you to--or remind you about--a selection of writers whose intelligence, style, and heart may ease our passage into the next millennium." --From the foreword by Terry Wolverton. This is the companion volume to Circa 2000: Lesbian Fiction at the Millennium.


About the Author
Terry Wolverton is the author of the novel Bailey's Beads and two collections of poetry, Black Slip and Mystery Bruise. She is the founder of Writers At Work, where she teaches workshops in creative writing. Robert Drake has worked as a literary agent since 1986. His pop-culture novel The Man rapidly developed a cult following after its release in 1995. The two editors have also worked together on the acclaimed His and Hers anthologies, and have garnered seven Lambda Literary Award nominations between them.


Excerpted from Circa 2000 Gay Fiction at the Millennium : Gay Fiction at the Millennium by Robert Drake, Terry Wolverton. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
The Rose City David Ebershoff Roland Dott-who for years had been thinking about changing his name to Roland Montague or Rolando du Brul-drove to the Pasadena Athletic Club on an October morning. He had first joined the club before it moved into its new building on Walnut, when he still went by the name of Rol, sounds like a roll of mints. There was a boy, Charlie Emily, in his class at John Muir High who used to call him that. Watcha doing after the game, Rol? Emily would ask, tugging on his ear. Oh, you know, Charlie, Roland would answer. This and that. He was always too embarrassed to call Charlie Emily "Emily" even though that's what the whole school, even the football coach, called him. Emily. With his oily dark blond hair and his sneakers squeaking against the linoleum tiles in Western Civ and his habit of picking at the tunnel of his ear. Emily, whom every girl at John Muir wanted to date, or, to be more precise, screw; whom many girls-as Roland overheard through the aluminum air vent that connected the boys' room to the girls'-already had. At the club, in the men's locker room, Roland took off his clothes and stood in front of the mirror. He kept his locker down a side aisle, where traffic was light; this allowed him to stand in front of the mirror for a long time. Once he was plucking the hairs from his nose when two men, sweaty from the squash courts, came upon him, his left nostril turned inside out. "Dig deep," one man said. The other laughed. And inside Roland, who by then had given up on the name Rol, smoldered a vicious little anger. But instead of saying anything, he fled to the steam room, hiding his face in the puff of wet heat. But today was a Friday, mid-morning, meaning the type of men who sweat abundantly on the squash court were at the office, moistening beneath their stay-stiff collars and inside their khakis. Roland stood in front of his mirror, plucking the silver-white lining of his nostril. There was also the patch of hairs, like curbgrass, between his brow. And the strays that sprouted outside the neat little tuft that grew prettily between his breasts. Pluck, pluck, pluck. Already he looked better, Roland knew. He smiled, then thought about Graham because today was Friday and they'd fallen into the habit of having lunch on Fridays. "Roland, is it you?" Graham had said when Roland literally bumped into Graham nine months ago in the cologne aisle at Bullock's. They went for a cinnamon coffee across the street in a narrow shop that used to be Huggin's Shoes. They chatted about nothing important, although Roland admitted he had checked into a fat farm outside Cathedral City a few years back, when things weren't good for him. This had caused Graham to stop, his lower lip pushing out, and it was then that Graham proposed, "We should get together every now and then. For lunch." And Roland replied, the cinnamon coffee souring his breath, "And for a laugh." He lived above a garage on Bellevue Terrace on the estate of an entertainment lawyer and his family of six. The garage apartment had sloped ceilings and windows that rattled nervously when the Santa Anas blew. It wasn't far from the club on Walnut, or from Pasadena's downtown, which was called Old Town, now that a group of concerned ladies had revitalized it and the stores specializing in casual clothes had moved in. Behind the Pasadena Civic Center was the Holiday Inn, which was there years before Old Town, and which still served a nice salad bar in its Rose City Lounge during the week. True, the booths could stand reupholstering, but the salad bar had a diet Thousand Island dressing that Roland-he told Graham every Friday-could just die for. Sometimes, during the week of the Emmy's, television people from New York stayed at the Holiday Inn and came to the Rose City for a bite. Of course, only technical people or junior costars would stay at the Holiday Inn, but Roland liked to sit in his booth, the one located behind the hostess stand, and watch the men with longish hair and horse-bit loafers come in and ask for tables for ten. A comedian who went on to win that year Roland once saw at the salad bar; he liked to think he'd seen George Clooney at the Rose City the year before he became famous, and if George Clooney had ever been fat, it was most definitely him.

SYNOPSIS

"Novel excerpts bump up against short stories; science fiction jostles beside literary fiction, punk sensibility elbows its way next to high camp and classically constructed stories. The end of the 20th century has been about the breaking down of fixed categories--of art forms, of culture, of gender, of sexual orientation--the blurring of borders to allow an infinite variety of options for identity and expression. We sought to feature works by those writers whom we believe will be influential in the coming millennium.

There are authors included here who have been prominent in the closing decades of this current millennium: M. Shayne Bell, Bernard Cooper, Scott Heim, David Leavitt, Michael Lowenthall, William J. Mann, Christian McLaughlin, Frank Ronan, and Colm [T￯﾿ﾽib￯﾿ﾽn.] There are authors whose influence is just beginning to be felt: Mitch Cullin, Jameson Currier, David Ebershoff, Thomas Glave, Russel Leong, Jaime Manrique, David Newman and David Vernon. And we've included a few writers who are at the beginning of their publishing careers: Eitan Alexander, Andy Quan, and Keith Ridgway whose voices promise that we will be hearing a lot more from them in the decades to come. It is an idiosyncratic roster of writers. What this anthology aims to do is introduce you to--or remind you about a selection of writers whose intelligence, style, and heart may ease our passage into the next millennium." --From the foreword by Terry Wolverton. The is the companion volume to Circa 2000: Lesbian Fiction at the Millennium.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Though the millennium frenzy may be pass , this collection of outstanding gay fiction is anything but. The editors have amassed a bevy of literary talent (some well known, some new), and the 21 stories showcase a panoply of styles, narrative depth and personal histories. Early in the volume, M. Shayne Bell shares an unsettling vision with the futuristic, Hugo-finalist tale "Mrs. Lincoln's China," which is set in a dystopic, violent society and features a woman who has looted the White House and stolen priceless historic presidential dinnerware on which she serves her son dinner. Stories focusing on HIV and AIDS, like Bernard Cooper's surrealistic suburban nightmare "Hunters and Gatherers," show strong-willed characters who may be "whittled by the blade of AIDS," but whose narratives never become mired in the merely hopeless. The two lovers in Jamison Currier's moving "Pasta Night" reinvigorate their traumatic relationship by caring for HIV-positive babies in a hospice. Popular author Scott Heim's entry "Deep Green, Pale Purple" is a poignant tale of two loving young brothers and their abusive, menacing father at work in the family apple orchard. Brimming with novelistic potential, Heim's prose is evocative: he shows the boys camping under skies as "flimsy and thrilling as a promise." Trevor Renado displays a prickly sense of humor in the wickedly farcical "Get a Lifestyle," which hilariously nails the West Hollywood gay scene to the wall. David Vernon's spooky "Couple Kills" will satisfy the suspense/horror factions; one man's secretive nocturnal activities pique the curiosity and dread of his boyfriend, who is obsessed with the mythical Chupacabra, a Mexican bloodsucking creature. With every entry having merit, this outstanding volume serves as an important bellwether for those with any doubts about the state of gay writing at the dawn of the 21st century. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal