Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #241589 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

About the Author

Customer Reviews

Older Reader Reviews Unfairly Perhaps...
Excuse low ranking. Generation gap. Maybe seniors can't fairly review books by the young. Anhow here are my biases--insights?--outgrown today... I am old enough that in 1969 year of Stonewall, I could enter gay and other bars, but the book's editor was scarcely born. Perhaps my views of (1) literary aesthetics, (2) human interrelationships, are ancient, outmoded today?

First, aesthetics. At least 6 of the 17 selection are not short
stories but are excerpts taken from novels. Which may explain their
seeming flat, static, run-on. Today few object, but good aesthetic form demands a tight unity-within-variety creating a separate completed world. This excerpting, explains (to me anyhow) their formless, diluted quality. Replacing fiction's dynamic rise-fall action with turning on the faucet and letting it flow?

But beyond shoddy artistry, shabby behavior? The editor
states "Most of the protagonists in Between Men, I'm thrilled to
say, behave badly, argue unconvincingly, backtrack constantly,
misdescribe, misappropriate, and misbehave." I agree, though I am
not thrilled. Editor likes this bad-boy quality, I have no time for
(or interest in) it. I never sought such youthful (or lifelong?)
waywardnesses, I always aimed toward grabbing toward life's
opportunities by the double handful, responsively but responsibly.
For my own satisfaction. By contrast, one character says, "The
destiny of gays is pointlessness, just as the destiny of straights
is ugliness." Okaayyy if you say so...

So not much here for crotchety me? "Drifty males slam bam What Were You Thinking At The Time If Anything & where are you going if anywhere, insouciant care-less"... Heck, in one story, an AIDS clinic worker moves near and far from a fetching teen and Nothing Much Happens. Perhaps partly because he wishes this detachment order (call it not an attachment disorder): "There was no having with Jacob, only desire, but I guessed I wouldn't have it any other way." Heck, in a second chronicle, a boy sexes with his female teacher while a super-gay boy stands in the offing and Nothing Much Happens. Heck, in a third tale, a gay couple entertains the father of one of them and Nothing Much Happens. Oh, hints of re-finements do exist. Robert Gluck imbues things with a suave tone at times. Still...

Though ancient, I am younger in esprit. Happy in my work. Survivor of a pragmatically-perfect relationship ended only by demise of the partner who is "with me still." "When the big things are right and in place, how simple and fine it all is really," referring to attachment,
intimacy, bonding... (Another story's character said: "For some
reason, it took me decades to learn that nothing is better than sex
with someone you love." Not for us...)

And so I dissent. Generation-gap? Private cranky rigidity?
Well, I tried. Younger readers will probably enjoy these drifty characters' wanderings, free of my burdens of yesteryear?

Terrific book
I was thrilled by the book.I started reading and could't stop it. Richard Canning compilation is the best ever about gay literature.I'm glad i bought it.

Depressing and Outdated
After reading this book I never would have guessed that it was a collection of recent literature. The stories focus on themes that were popular ten to fifteen years ago, and their messages seem dated.

Also, get ready for a grand collection of depression. Every single story is filled with sadness, angst, loneliness, and will leave you with a very apparent frown.