a. 1909 ▼ 39
to the Stonewall riots of 1969. It covers the rise of
the gay rights movement, AIDS, and the ongoing
battle against homophobia.
The characters in this novel— and there are
many, many characters in this novel— include a
bar singer who evolves into a famous drag queen,
a closeted police officer who comes out and
becomes a pom star, a writer whose iifeis changed
forever when the aforementioned owner of Thriller
Jill’s stops to help her with a flat tire, two Mid-
West jocks struggling with their sexuality and
their feelings for each other, a serial killer, and a
Southern hustler.
The book follows these characters, and more,
from West Coast to East Coast and back again
over the span of 40-plus years. It is an ambitious
undertaking that bogs down under the weight of
so many different lives. Readers would be well-
served by a list of characters and a flow-chart
showing their connections to each other.
This book is not a quick read, and it is too
heavy to schlep through airports. Better to keep it
by the bed and read a chapter each night before
falling asleep.
How L ong H as T his B een G oing O n ? by Ethan
Mordden. Villard Books, 1995; $25 cloth.
I still appreciate a good story. The decline of
the general interest magazine in this country has
made it more difficult to find good short stories.
One has to seek them out. They don’t come in the
mail every month anymore, but the good ones are
well worth the hunt.
Edmund White is one of the most gifted writ­
ers publishing today, w
•
j
A l ­
and his new book is
Skinned Alive,
White weaves
quite a find for the
short story lover. In
tales of desire
Skinned Alive, his first
and love,
book o f fiction in
intimacy
and
seven years, W hite
distance, illness
weaves tales of desire
and loss. The
and love, intimacy and
distance, illness and
stories are often
loss. The stories are autobiographical,
often autobiographi­
and they reflect
cal, and they reflect
White ’s keen
White’s keen observa­
observation of
tion of gay life at the
end of the 20th cen­ gay life at the end
tury.
of the 20th
Most of the char­
century.
acters are Americans
living in Paris. Their lives have been forever
altered by AIDS. They seek out and then flee from
intimacy. They stumble and try to regain their
bearings in a world that has become too painfully
predictable. They struggle, with varying degrees
of success, to maintain a certain grace and style.
“Running on Empty” is the bittersweet story
of Luke, a translator dying of AIDS, who travels
from Paris to his boyhood home in Texas to visit
family. His worst fear is that he will become
critically ill during the visit and be forced to
remain with his parents, in a place he has spent a
lifetime running from.
In “Reprise” a fiftyish writer receives a call
from a man he hasn’t seen in over 40 years— the
man with whom he had his first sexual experi­
ence. They meet again in Paris, causing the writer
to remember their first encounter and wonder
“what if...? ”
White is a lyrical writer whose deft touch
keeps his stories emotionally honest.
I
pages in the back and short short stories “com­
plete on these two pages.” I liked the snapshot
nature of the short story, the way it captured just
a moment, not an entire lifetime, yet provided all
the details the reader needed.
Corbett 0 2 4 4 - 3 9 3 4
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A 01 NAN
P R E S E N T E D BY
»
ONI B R O A D W A Y
Starring
Rob
Buckmaster
Opening
night benefit:
$25
October 20 - November 11
Friday & Saturday ONLY! - 8 p.m.
A
T he W ay W e W rite N ow : S hort S tories
from the AIDS C risis edited by Sharon Oard
Warner. Citadel Press, 1995; $14.95 paper.
PRODUCTIONS!
David Drake
o o o
IDS, and the ways in which it has affected
all our lives, provides the common thread
linking the stories in The Way We Write
Now: Short Stories from the AIDS Crisis. Editor
Sharon Oard Warner has compiled these stories in
chronological order, starting with Susan Sontag’s
“The Way We Live Now,” which appeared in The
New Yorker in November 1986. The book contin­
ues with stories published through 1994. Orga­
nizing the book in this way reveals the ways our
culture has both changed and refused to change
how we view and
respond to AIDS.
These are the
These are the
stories of
stories of every­
everyone —
one— lovers, par­
ents, children, ba­
lovers, parents,
bies, doctors, pa­ children, babies,
tie n ts— touched
doctors,
by this epidemic.
patients —
C h ild ren watch
their parents die,
touched by
parents bury their
this epidemic.
children, families
are reconciled, babies are rejected, friends take
turns caring for one another.
Included in this collection are stories by Allen
Barnett, Beth Brant, Rebecca Brown, Alice Elliott
Dark, Kent Gardien, David Leavitt, Adam Mars-
Jones, Susan On thank Mates, Dennis McFarland,
Paul Monette, Lucia Nevai, Achy Obejas, Rich­
ard Selzer, Susan Sontag, Abraham Verghese and
Sharon Oard Warner.
TRIANGLE
Written by
S kinned A live by Edmund White. Alfred A.
Knopf, 1995; $23 cloth.
o o o
was first introduced to the short story by
Redbook magazine’s annual summer fiction
issue. My mother had a subscription to the
magazine and a daughter who was a compulsive
reader. Every year that special issue would arrive
filled with stories— long stories that continued on
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Ay