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White has created a richly diverse anthology that explores the literary expression of male homosexuality in the American and English tradition. Contributors include Henry James, Alfred Chester, Armistead Maupin, Neil Bartlett, Allan Gurganus, and others. A Lambda Literary Award finalist. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

ON BEING NORMAL
This review is primarily an endorsement of Anna Otto's December 5, 2000 review of this book. I don't think her review could be improved upon except perhaps for one quote from Christopher Isherwood's 'Mr. Lancaster' which holds forth the promise of universality: "What I am has refashioned itself throughout the days and years, and until now almost all that remains constant is the mere awareness of being conscious. And that consciousness belongs to everybody; it isn't a particular person." Mr. Lancaster's statement is surely a promise to gay people of all ages, and to the friends and parents of gays.

ON BEING NORMAL
...I don't think her review could be improved upon except perhaps for one quote from Christopher Isherwood's 'Mr. Lancaster' which holds forth the promise of universality: "What I am has refashioned itself throughout the days and years, and until now almost all that remains constant is the mere awareness of being conscious. And that consciousness belongs to everybody; it isn't a particular person." Mr. Lancaster's statement is surely a promise to gay people of all ages, and to the friends and parents of gays.

Excellent collection
A versatile and engaging anthology of stories about gay relationships. Some author names included here will surprise you (Henry James? but his "Pupil" is one of the most amusing and engaging stories), others will delight you (W. Burroughs' "Wild Boys."). Edmund White, a prominent gay writer, thankfully included his own short story, "Skinner Alive," into this collection, and I fell in love with his lyrical style. He displays great taste in editing this collection, and provides an insightful foreword. Every story here brings an interesting nuance to the genre, and each one holds surprises for the reader. This isn't just a book for the collection of short gay and lesbian fiction... this is a book of great short fiction - no more definition needed. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

Nice addition
This book has a lot of great reproductions, it's a nice collection of Hockney's portraits from all different mediums. I would definitly recommend this book for the price and quality of images.

Maniac
Generally the portrait images were too small to really study his painting style. That is my only complaint. Interesting stories in the section describing all his sitters, famous or not. What a productive maniac he has been. 41 portraits of his dogs!!!

A Very Personal and Tender Survey of the Works of David Hockney
David Hockney is an artist whose works are familiar to everyone, whether from exposure to his many museum shows, his paintings and drawings included in every major survey of contemporary art, to his magical sets for operas such as The Magic Flute, Die Frau Ohne Schatten, The Rake's Progress, Tristan und Isolde, etc.

This current book DAVID HOCKNEY PORTRAITS is, for this reader, the most sensitive presentation of Hockney not only as an artist but also as a tender, feeling, caring human being.The book accompanies an exhibition soon to travel and includes over 250 examples of Hockney's view of his family, himself, his friends - famous and not so famous-, lovers, and pets.The result is a survey of Hockney's people-oriented works over the past fifty years.

Included are early pen and ink drawings from the 1950s, gentle and simple line portraits of his mother and father and himself, and progresses to the development of his large-scale paintings of life size portraits of family, lovers, and self-portraits.Many of the people depicted in these works are no longer alive and there is a sense of memory in some of the works that barely hides Hockney's sadness at their parting.

The book also opens the door to Hockney's experimentation with photography as an art medium, with several of his multiple view Polaroid collages of a single 'sitting' telling more stories than a movie.And after Hockney's excursion into that medium the portraits turn to painting his subjects from life.

Most of the works in this book have been published in other volumes or have become familiar to the public by other means, but it is the curatorial hand that makes his survey so fine and so immediate, a success not easily accomplished with an artist as private as Hockney: the collection is under the encouraging guidance of the artist.This is an excellent overview of a very special artist whose works continue to capture the imagination of viewers and fellow artists alike. Highly Recommended.Grady Harp, April 06
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"An extraordinary achievement of witness."--Tim Miller, author of Shirts & Skin.

When an artist dies we face two great losses: the person and the work he did not live to do. Loss within Loss is a moving collaboration by some of America's most eloquent writers, who supply wry, raging, sorrowful, and buoyant accounts of artist friends and lovers struck down by AIDS. These essayists include Maya Angelou, Alan Gurganus, Brad Gooch, John Berendt, Craig Lucas, Robert Rosenblum, and eighteen others. Many of the subjects of the essays were already prominent--James Merrill, Paul Monette, David Wojnarowicz--but many others died young, before they were able to fulfil the promise of their lives and art. Loss within Loss spans all of the arts and includes portraits of choreographers, painters, poets, actors, playwrights, sculptors, editors, composers, and architects. This landmark book is published in association with the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, a national organization that preserves art works created by artists living with HIV or lost to AIDS. Loss within Loss stands as a powerful reminder of the devastating impact of the AIDS epidemic on the arts community and as the first real survey of that devastation. Though these accounts are often intensely sad, Loss within Loss is an invigorating, sometimes even exuberant, testimony to the sheer joy of being an artist . . . and being alive. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A MAJOR COLLECTION
LOSS WITHIN LOSS is a major collection of biographical short stories:tributes to friends, lovers and colleagues who have died from AIDS.

Several of the contributing writers are quite famous:the lecturer/poet/teacher Maya Angelou,the playwright/screenwriter Craig Lucas ("Prelude To A Kiss," "Longtime Companion"), the novelist Allan Gurganus ("Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All"), the writer Andrew Solomon ("The Noonday Demon") et. al.Several of the dedicatees lived the lives of celebrities:the poet James Merrill, the film makers Derek Jarman and Howard Brookner, the writer Paul Monette.But it is not their fame which is celebrated in this book:it is their love and friendship and, most importantly, their art which is now lost to the world forever because of a disease, the deadly power of which, was and still is, underestimated.The styles of the stories are as diverse as the styles of the individual writers:some read like the poetry they are; some like straight-forward fiction and some like excruciatingly honest, almost farcical diary entries.

These are not simply sad stories; they are beautifully written, funny, charming, intelligent, very candid rememberances of lives past passed.Besides the stories, there are some photographs of the artists and their works, biographies of the writers and their subjects, a wonderful photograph by John Dugdale on the cover and an introduction by Edmund White
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Far more than a collection of elegies
LOSS WITHIN LOSS is a most appropriately titled reminiscence of the black hole AIDS blasted in our art community.Edmund White, always the sensitive observor and writer of tender memoirs, takes on the role of Editor here and has selected some very fine writers to personalize the contributions and deaths of their friends.He has also written minibiobraphies of not only the artists who have been lost but also of each of the biographers.Selecting artist/bigraphers to highlight in a review of a book of this total force seems almost incongruous, yet Chris DeBlasio is so beautifully defined by William Berger, and the polarities of the lives and deaths of Paul Monette and James Merrill who died within four days of each other are so adroitly observed by their mutual firend J.D. McClatchy, and Felice Picano's warm eulogy for Robert Ferro and all that surrounded the Violet Quill Club are all so fine that they shine especialy brightly.

The unexpected joyful aspect of spending time with this extraordinary book is discovering how much we didn't know about so many artists in every field - from poetry, to novels, to puppets, to architecture, to dance.Yes, the names ring distant bells, but when the artists are put into context with the time in which they were creating AND that they were creating knowing that their corporal time was limited, the effect is staggering. I do not find this book at all morose; if anything it is celebratory.And the method of presentation and quality of writing leaves the reader with one primary question:What if AIDS hadn't destroyed so many brilliant minds, so many unborn ideas? As a document on the effect ofa devastating disease on the arts and as a resource book of what was happening in the forefront of culture in the 1980s and 1990s, this book will be the gold standard. Highly recommended reading- on so many levels.

Astonishing & Heartbreaking
This powerful, superb book is peopled with a sampling of the great and graceful artists who have been swept into eternity by AIDS. All of the essays are moving. Especially touching is the memoir which gathers together the angelic Paul Monette and the ferocious James Merrill. Brad Gooch contributes his best writing to date in his touching remembrances of his lovely partner Howard.

This book will break your heart and make you smile at the same time. It's truly a work of art. ... Read more

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From his birth in rural Kentucky during the Great Depression to his suicide in Manhattan in 1985, Coleman Dowell played many roles. He was a songwriter and lyricist for television. He was a model. He was a Broadway playwright. He served in the U.S. Army, both abroad and at home. And most notably, he was the author of novels that Edmund White, among others, has called "masterpieces." But Dowell was deeply troubled by a depression that hung over him his entire life. Pegged as both a Southern writer and a gay writer, he loathed such categorization, preferring to be judged only by his work. Fever Vision describes one of the most tormented, talented, and inventive writers of recent American literature, and shows how his eventful life contributed to the making of his incredible art. ... Read more

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America's Best-Selling Gay Love-Making. Complete and Unabridged - Illustrated Edition with color plates and b/w illustrations. Written by gays for gays. A celebration of the sensual, the sexual, the wildly erotic and, most expecially, the love one man can feel for another. 207 pages, 7 x 10 1/4". ... Read more

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Certain to become a literary touchstone, Fresh Men collects the best new writing by emerging gay authors from around the nation. The critically acclaimed author Edmund White, chair of the Creative Writing program at Princeton and the author of more than 17 gay works, selects 20 original stories from the new crop of extraordinary writers. With equal parts sensitivity and irreverence, Fresh Men speaks to the broad range of gay experiences. From stories of coming out, coming of age, self-representation and family to sex and love in the time of AIDS, from living in the closet to loving in a post-gay world, this book highlights the complexities of gay life. This groundbreaking collection also embodies a wide spectrum of literary tastes, from works rich in experimental, transgressive elements to more conventional, traditionally crafted stories. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

The Freshmen Team Does Well
First, this new anthology of gay writing, FRESH MEN, has a clever title with at least two meanings. Secondly, the writers are all for the most part unknown. Edmund White, who selected them says that not one writer has had a book published yet. Third, they come from all areas of the United States as well as the British Isles. And they are not all Caucasian. The stories are set in a variety of locales and are not all about gay men picking up other gay men in bars. We can finally read about gay men who interact with other people besides other gay men and live outside a gay ghetto in a large city, usually New York.As you would expect from most any collection of stories, some are better than others. Some of the stories are excellent. I would put "ONJ.com," "Acqua Calda," "TV Dinner" and "Teamwork" in that category. "ONJ.com" by Vestal McIntyre, the first story in the book, is about a young woman in the world of advertising who wishes to "make a gay friend," a silly wish on its face, and gets more than she bargains for. In Keith McDermott's "Acqua Calda" a young American wrestles with how and when or if he should tell an Italian whom he is attracted to that he is HIV positive. "TV Dinner"by Reed Hearne is a funny account of a minor TV personality's filming of a day in the life of a waiter in the California Bay Area. Kevin Reardon's "Teamwork," which according to the biographical data about the authors won the 2003 Richard Hall Memorial Short Story Contest, is a great little story about proofreaders at Healthco, "a pharmaceutical advertising agency. The narrator has a crush on Todd, a perfectly drawn character, who when he gets fired over an ampersand by Gregory, a gay art director who "played for the team," responds: "'You're a bastard, man. . . I am so out of here.'" He is just so "kwel."

This is a very good collection and introduces the reader to writers he wants to read more of. Several of the selections are from novels in progress and should be available soon if not already.

Another Anthology & Largely A Good Thing Too...
These twenty stories seemed to me excellent, also okay, few deficient. I found a quarter of them to be good art.

(1)Five stories seem artistically meritorious. Plus the gay-specific content seems to universalize to general human themes.

"TV Dinner" is a romp. Set in a high-end status-snob restaurant, it serves up the real "menu" of human discomfort-food.Several "courses." The waiter's rage at being a "candy-ass bootlick," and his terrors too. The chef's self-deluded egotism. The society matron's gorging unhealthily on Status Cake. The smarmy politico mayor exposed as being a gross feeder. The cast of workers in the out-caste system, pretty petty frustrated in the all-too-subhuman jealousies and other deadly-sin ingredients. But the author is a master-wordchef who concocts up these raw materials gourmet-style with his buttercup-swirl of tall-food diction, aesthetically-nourishing word-candy, a just-desserts confection whose sauce-iness is perfectly balanced with sweet-sour imagery plus insight. This many-course tasting menu moves right along madcap but on point!

Not so shabby either is "Teamwork," about a proofreader at an advertising agency. Poignant specifically about the "beautiful young man named Todd D'Onofrio," fetching but unobtainable, the protagonist's Harlow or shepherd boy...But pointed generally about the universal human tangle of miscommunications, pettiness about font-styles, power and status issues, insecurities, insensitivities. The miscast of characters in the office seem to carry these warts and blemishes like a virus re-infecting those whose Psychological Immune Systemsare not mature enough. Solid and sprightly, madcap and satirical.

Adult men with younger or teenage males is the subject of both "Some Speculations on the Bob Uncertainty" and also "Chicken." But the former, pondering why a young hunk continues to revisit an older man, seems to do so with much enjoyable grace, verve, bemused and appreciative non-needy distance aesthetic not emotional.

"American Widow" portrays a woman inundated by giant waves of major depression. It energetically risks sentimentality in the depicting of her almost-melodramatic multiple missteps, but it does powerfully paint her pathos.

(2) A second set of stories seems (to me) more simply to simply narrate events, almost diary style.In "Aqua Calda," an American on a film shoot in Italy, scores with an Italian. Okay... In "Taking Pictures," a highschooler sees that a teacher of his takes videotapes of the guys working out. Okay...

(3) Minority perspective is represented by "Wave," His Five-Year Sentence," and "Rondo." New here is local color and representativeness I guess.

(4) Psychological insight however Politically Non-Correct I saw in three stories. "ONJ.com" shows gay man and straight woman but can candidly ask whether this man at least is as he describes gay men generally, as being "damaged, dangerous people. They feel wronged and are looking for vengeance." Refreshing anyhow to investigate. In "Advanced Soaring," why why why does moonstruck Mark keep on seeking after louche lax Luke at all? And in "The Inadvertant Headshot," the protagonist fears becoming a soiled type: "the humorless, thin-skinned gay man, the art fag, the prissy prude who trafficked in disdain" contemptuously to "rue, resent and scorn again" because feeling out of control. Something gay here; something human also. We are well past the Dark Age when a hoity (and hetero) reviewer would allude to the above dirty laundry as indicating something like "the pathology of homosexuality," blah blah. (Of course, it is still verboten now, to even reference in the same sentence, "homosexual males," and the issue of "attachment disorder" or problems-with-intimacy...)

Finally in its own category, "Ground Control" sends us home with a take-out treat. The 16-year-old gay highschooler has his problems, with self-image, self-acceptance. But his, and our, hero is his 14-year-old brother Frankie. This kid comes out to his dysfunctional family simply by drawing Star War cartoons of himself and Luke Skywalker. At the kitchen table. Just going about his business. Utterly unbugged by his sister's or anyone's reaction to his being his own true if socially-despised self so early. A universal model for us all, gay, straight, bi, or plaid...

Then six more stories I haven't mentioned. But all told, the anthology is quite valid for those interested in some quality and much variety in current gay male short fiction.

Excellent Stories of Life in the Gay Community
"Fresh Men" is a collection of twenty short stories selected by distinguished author Edmund White.All are interesting. There are stories with African-American, Hispanic, Filipino, and Asian characters, as well as the usual types.There are stories set at school, in the family, at work, at cruising, and around relationships.The variety is good, at least as it has been understood.

The last two sentences of Edmund White's introduction read: "If this anthology is thought of as a house, it's a big rooming house inhabited by every kind of client, of every age and color and background, some on their way up and some in quick descent; some of the roomers are shacking up and others are breaking up. It's a very full house."

When I look at the "About the Authors" section, the twenty stories' authors now live in or near the following places: New York City 7, Yale University 2, 1 each at Boston, San Francisco, Long Beach, Montreal, London, Austin, and 5 unknown.When I read the stories, the locations are New York City 6, coastal California 6, with additional locations in Montreal, Dublin, London, Sicily, Honolulu, New Orleans, Tucson, Florida (near the Space Center), rural Maine, and over the Atlantic {Some stories have multiple locations).There is a feel of gay cosmopolitans writing for other gay cosmopolitans.This has been a successful approach for previous anthologies.

Still, after the November elections, I have heard endless commentary on the divide between 'blue' and 'red' states, on the need to counter 'religious' criticisms, on the fear of being transferred from a state with domestic partnerships and state permission to raise children to one without.These stories do not feature material anti-gay characters or people considering marital status-related issues.The stories are personal and relationship-oriented, not political.

I do worry that writers from or directed at socially conservative areas are not part of the "new voices in gay fiction" that "Fresh Men" proclaims.One of the reasons for the setbacks in the recent elections was the inability of a large part of the Midwestern and Southern electorate to imagine a different, improved world.Having local voices is a large part of moving ahead.

This is a fine collection.I can relate to the stories.I do recommend the book highly.

An Outstanding Book
I recommend this book to anyone, gay or straight.The writing is top-notch, often hilarious, and always compelling.From beginning to end it will hold your interest and impress you.We'll be hearing from these authors in the future, I'm certain, and this is a wonderful opportunity to get in the "ground floor" of their careers.You won't be disappointed!
... Read more

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An autobiographical novel by turn naïve and cunning, funny and moving, this most recent work by Moroccan expatriate Abdellah Taïa is a major addition to the new French literature emerging from the North African Arabic diaspora. Salvation Army is a coming-of-age novel that tells the story of Taïa's life with complete disclosure—from a childhood bound by family order and latent (homo)sexual tensions in the poor city of Salé, through a sexual awakening in Tangier charged by the young writer's attraction to his eldest brother, to a disappointing arrival in the Western world to study in Geneva in adulthood. In so doing, Salvation Army manages to burn through the author's first-person singularity to embody the complex mélange of fear and desire projected by Arabs on Western culture.

Recently hailed by his native country's press as "the first Moroccan to have the courage to publicly assert his difference," Taïa, through his calmly transgressive work, has "outed" himself as "the only gay man" in a country whose theocratic law still declares homosexuality a crime. The persistence of prejudices on all sides of the Mediterranean and Atlantic makes the translation of Taïa's work both a literary and political event. The arrival of Salvation Army (published in French in 2006) in English will be welcomed by an American audience already familiar with a growing cadre of talented Arab writers working in French (including Muhammad Dib, Assia Djebar, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Abdelkebir Khatibi, and Kātib Yāsīn).

Native Agents series
Distributed for Semiotext(e) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

wonderful book to read about coming out
I have just read about this author in a magazine. The writer`s review was amazing and that encouraged me to buy it.I realize during the reading that is was a wonderful story, very wellnarrated. It made me feel in his own skin, and felt all his feelings during the process off coming out.Its a book to read in one week.

Bittersweet
The best parts of Abdellah Taia's "Salvation Army" story are largely about the challenges of being gay in a Muslim country (albeit a relatively open one--Morocco); then finding a kind of sexual liberation in Europe; finally finding another kind of isolation in being a third worlder in a first world country. Taia's autobiographical protagonist is by stages idealistic, romantic, naive and disillusioned. Not surprising as he is following his heart in Morocco into forbidden territory, which is both dangerous and ultimately futile.Age brings hope and escape to another culture where being gay is not the offense, but being foreign is.There is a happy outcome to this particular tale (implied at least) because Abdellah Taia did become a successful literary figure in France and a kind of cult figure in Morocco, where his books have been published.

This is an engaging contribution to the more general story of the modern immigrant, but with the special circumstances of an alternative sexual identity.A 3+ on the Amazon rating scale.A more extensive novel on this subject in a more mature voice is Tahar Ben Jelloun's "Leaving Tangier".

oh so unique
It is one of a kind.... I enjoyed every part of it. It was a little difficult to follow at parts but kept me interested at all times.

Morroccan desire mixed with a touch of French
As a person who generally loves the memoir genre, I was impressed at how skilled Taia shaped thoughts and stories about his life. At times he was verbose giving every last detail and at other times he leaves the reader without all of the information. Taia artfully sculpts part of his life into a cutting edge novel that spans two theatres--Morroco and Switzerland--and the conflicts deep inside Taia. Taia should be lauded for the authenticity provided in his narrative told through raw stories.

Interesting Story
Well, if I give too long of a review there'll be no reason to read the book, as it is very short andI might end up telling the whole story.Should almost be more of a paper than a book. It must have only taken an hour and a half to read it. (glad the library had it too).But I love reading gay stories about men's lives, so this was a must under any circumstance.You really have to hand it to these fellows who live in the Middle East and other 'third world' type countries where this kind of thing (coming out and being out) is not tolerated.They just have indiscriminate sexual encounters.Fortunately Abdelleh was able to leave Morocco and hence able to find himself.And for the most part he had pleasant encounters. And I think he knows it. I enjoyed the book very much. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from The Review of Contemporary Fiction, published by Review of Contemporary Fiction on September 22, 1996. The length of the article is 6089 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: Edmund White's 'Forgetting Elena' offers a mirrored portrait with tragedy underlying the comic surface. Elena and the novel's narrator live on an island whose inhabitants are chiefly concerned with beauty. The abundance of mirrors in the story ironically demonstrates that the most meaningful reflections come from other persons. Elena frees the narrator from constant scrutiny, yet the narrator gradually forgets Elena as well as most of his life.

Citation Details
Title: A valentine for Elena. (Edmund White's novel, 'Forgetting Elena.')
Author: Harry Matthews
Publication: The Review of Contemporary Fiction (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 1996
Publisher: Review of Contemporary Fiction
Volume: v16Issue: n3Page: p31(12)

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Order your own softcover black & white reprint of a previously owned high school yearbook. Whether you no longer have your own copy or want to surprise someone with a unique gift, the memories in this yearbook are sure to make someone smile! All the pages and images are reproduced as-is, which means your copy may show handwriting or effects of aging, and that certain pages, images, or other content may be omitted, missing, or obscured. Because this is a black & white print, any color images (excluding the cover) will print as gray. You can preview the color pages before you buy at www.classmates.com/yearbooks.Don't miss out! Bring home a piece of your history. ... Read more