This is one of the most interesting collections of stories I have read about gay male life in a long time. Most of these stories take place by the ocean in Provincetown and South Florida. While the ending of the South Florida gunmen's story is hard to believe, you'll die laughing when you read, "The Shih Master's Thermos" with Christian and his antics. Christian is a true Provincetown character. There's even a story about Marilyn Monroe "The Last Performance" which has a real twist to it. Its hard to put this book down, so be prepared to want to force thru to the end right away. I can't wait for Mr. Rooney's next collection.

Written by French director and rockstar Cyril Collard, this book is an engrossing confession where it is impossible to keep hope and despair apart. This largely autobiographical novel is the story of a young, gay, promiscuos man, Jean, who, after being told he's got AIDS, starts understanding the meaning of love thanks to a nervous, morbid at some times, relationship with a very young girl called Laura: whem the end comes (there is an end, actually) Jean states he's understood what love means and his farewell sounds like the triumph of life rather than of death. Collard loved life; and life, which was not unsensitive towards him, gave him the possibility to write this remarkable story, with an outstanding style that reminds of both rap music and French symbolism.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction

1. What Really Causes Homosexuality? I. The Storming of the APA II. Contemporary Explanations of Homosexuality A. Theories That View Homosexuality as Inherited 1. Genetic Theories 2. Hormonal Factors at Birth 3. Levels of Testosterone B. Theories That View Homosexuality as Acquired Behavior 1. Homosexuality as Illness

2. Homosexuality and the Law I. The "Hate Crimes" Bill II. AIDS Litigation

3. The Religious Issue I. What Orthodox People Are Being Asked to Give Up A. Biblical Authority B. The Authority of the Historical Church C. Free Will II. Homosexuals and the Established Churches Dignity Integrity Other Denominations III. The Homosexual Church IV. The Religious Dilemma V. What Can Religious People Do about Homosexuality?

4. The Politics of Homosexuality I. The Homosexual Movement: 1960 to the Present A. The Transformation of the Rhetoric 1. "Gay" 2. "Homophobe" and "Homophobic" 3. "Sexual Orientation", Formerly "Sexual Preference" 4. "Alternate Life-Style" 5. "Discovering or Exploring One's Sexuality" 6. "Family Partner" B. The Redefinition of Homosexuality C. Focusing on What They Are Rather Than What They Do D. The Organization of Public Demonstrations 1. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force 2. The Human Rights Campaign Fund E. Getting Uncle Sam to Help F. What Must Be Done to Stop the Homosexual Movement?

5. The New Sex Education: Homosexuality I. "About Your Sexuality" by Deryk Calderwood II. "Sexuality: A Divine Gift" III. "Mutual Caring, Mutual Sharing

6. AIDS and Public Policy I. Widespread Testing A. Persons Convicted of Intravenous Drug use, Prostitution, or Sexual Assault B. Persons Receiving Treatment or Services for Family Planning, Tuberculosis, Drug Abuse, or Sexually Transmitted Disease C. Premarital Applicants D. Hospital Admittees between the Ages of Fifteen and Forty-nine II. Reporting III. Contact Tracing IV. The Restoration of Laws against Sodomy V. The Rejection of Antidiscrimination Laws

Index

"The Storming of the APA" p. 24-39

"The story of how homosexuality was declared 'normal' by the American Psychiatric Association is one of the most depressing narratives in the annals of modern medicine. Indeed, it is difficult to contemplate the details without wondering if our society is not in a state of advanced deterioration. In brief, a group of homosexuals stormed the APA annual convention on successive years and with deliberately disruptive tactics actually forced the psychiatrists to accede to their demands and declare homosexuality a 'normal condition'. In effect the nature of medical opinion was altered by strong-arm tactics.

This is not an event you will see memorialized on '60 Minutes' or in the New York Times. The liberal press is silent on the subject, because, although they are embarrassed by what happened, they are pleased enough by the outcome. Thus have they condoned this politicalization of the medical profession, this defiance of the very idea of thoughtful deliberation and civilized discourse.

A few of the people who were victimized by this unprecedented activity have written on the subject, but perhaps the most detailed account of what happened is to be found in Ronal Bayer's remarkable book 'Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis' (pp. 101-54).

I say 'remarkable' because Bayer's study is a highly sympathetic narrative of these events, yet one that looks unblinkingly at the violence and irrationality that lie at the heart of the homosexual movement, its essentially anarchic impulse. If you doubt that homosexuality should have remained on the list of mental illnesses, you have only to read the account of how it was removed.

What follows is my own summary of the events, a summary derived in large part from Bayer's narrative." ...

IV. The Religious Dilemma p.105-107

Dannemeyer summarizes homosexual political message/aspirations:

"... 1. Henceforth homosexuality will be spoken of in your churches and synagogues as an 'honorable estate'.

2. You can either let us marry people of the same sex or better yet abolish marriage altogether, since it will give the lie to everything you have said and done in the past about sexuality.

3. You will also be expected to offer ceremonies that bless our sexual arrangements, whether or not you retain marriage as something to be celebrated in your churches.

4. You will also instruct your young people in homosexual as well as heterosexual behavior, and you will go out of your way to make certain that homosexual youths are allowed to date, attend religious functions together, openly display affection, and enjoy each other's sexuality without embarrassment or guilt.

5. If any of the older people in your midst object, you will deal with them sternly, making certain they renounce their ugly and ignorant homophobia or suffer public humiliation.

6. You will also make certain that all of the prestige and resources of your institutions are brought to bear on the community, so that laws are passed forbidding discrimination against homosexuals and heavy punishments are assessed. We expect and demand the same commitment to us that you made to Blacks and to women, though their suffering has not been as great as ours.

7. Finally, we will in all likelihood want to expunge a number of passages from your Scriptures and rewrite others, eliminating preferential treatment of marriage and using words that will allow for homosexual interpretations of passages describing biblical lovers such as Ruth and Boaz or Solomon and the Queen of Sheba."

"Warning: If all of these things do not come to pass quickly, we will subject orthodox Jews and Christians to the most sustained hatred and vilification in recent memory. We have captured the liberal establishment and the press. We have already beaten you on a number of battlefields. And we have the spirit of the age on our side. You have neither the faith nor the strength to fight us, so you might as well surrender now."

Would you believe a major gay book with a narrator from -- are you ready? -- Santa Fe, New Mexico! This from an author, William Maltese, who has made himself an international best-seller of gay "literaure" by writing primarily about blond blue-eyed California surfer-types (CALIFORNIA CREAMIN', SUMMER SWEAT) and/or about New York City's upper crust (his Stud Draqual mystery series).

Granted SS MANN HUNT's Brad Lexly and his fellow gay characters get plopped down, by the author, into the middle of the exotic Brazilian Amazon, but that's in order to provide a plot line far more intricate and involved (and, I think, far more interesting), than the more simplistic plot Maltese provides in his sex-lead novel WHEN SUMMER COMES. Not to say that there isn't plenty of explicit sex in SS MANN HUNT, hot and heavy enough for just about anyone, but it "hangs" on a story, a mystery, and a romance that are complex and exciting above and beyond all of the heavy breathing. The book is a well-worked departure for the author that reminds me of Alex von Mann's SLAVES, except this book has a far more satisfactory conclusion.

Everything about SS MANN HUNT is pretty enjoyable and worth the price, starting with Brad's being a gay from Santa Fe, instead of from New York City, or from Los Angeles, or from San Francisco. The Brazilian locale of the novel is exotic enough, the mystery mysterious enough, the love story romantic enough, to hold your attention. Did I mention how much I personally loved that two of the characers have a romantic homosexual history that's allowed to re-blossom within the hot-house jungle environment but can again go sour at any moment? As for the underlying Nazi (SS-thunderbolts insignia) implications, well I doubt that this particular subject matter will EVER be totally exhuasted by way of providing riveting story-telling material.

It's a great day when a great gay author of Maltese's obvious caliber, stature, and international popularity, along with his publisher, start admitting there are gays who exist in the broad heretofore pretty-much-ignored "hinterland" between the much-ballyhooed metropolitan gay areas of the U.S.'s East and West coasts. And this book deserves success for this reason alone, as well as for all of the other inherent good-read reasons that'll see it become another international classic for its author.

Bravo William!

If you've not had the pleasure of reading William Maltese's infamous Doppelmorder, his German-language short-story (not yet offered in English-language translation), that had at least one German critic label the author A Grand Master of the mystery genre ... If you have read several of Maltese's English-language books (and there are several), and you agree he's good but still aren't sure he's all that great ... Don't pass up buying THAI DIED. It may not possess the short-term visceral punch of his tour-de-force Dooppelmorder, but it certainly places the author right up there with the very best of mystery writers, gay or otherwise.

This book's mysteries (and there are more than one to be solved), its story-lines (and there are several), its character development (even the villains are multi-faceted and fascinating), weave a tapestry as complex and luxurious as any of the silk fabric the book's protagonist is in Bangkok to buy. The locale not the only thing that differentiates this book from its New York City-based predecessor, A SLIP TO DIE FOR (both books part of the author's Stud Draqual Mystery Series). This book is longer. This book has more involved and interesting plot-lines. This book offers even more chance for its hero to succumb to temptation, as he's pressured not only by a gay mercenary but also by a jaded Thai hustler. This book has a new publisher, Green Candy Press, that has done a bang-up job by way of packaging, from the Thai script and numerical chapter headings, to the flashy tie-dyed Thai silk of the cover backdrop, to the bloody fingerprints (and errant false eyelash) surprisingly found printed on the inside of the front (and back) cover.

Finally, this book has large dollops of Maltese's trademark literary sensuality.

In short, this book has everything, including intense enjoyability, to make it a classic in its genre.

For those of us who find ALL of William Maltese's right-on short stories (CALIFORNIA CREAMIN' and SUMMER SWEAT), must-reading, we have here, with WHEN SUMMER COMES, all of the good things of his shorter formats in an enjoyable, larger, bigger, genuinely enjoyable novel-length sexual romp that takes us from the east coast of Florida, to the west coast of California, and several states (including the big "T" for Texas) in between, throwing in Hawaii for good measure ... with Maltese's trademark horny hustlers and surfers, exhibitionists and voyeurs, cowboy and Indian, movie and television stars and personalities, along for the doesn't-get-much-better-than-this! ride. While I enjoyed Maltese's mainstream novel (with gay theme), A SLIP TO DIE FOR, and look forward to the rest of that Stud Draqual mystery series, there's just no denying how pleased I am that he didn't forget those of us who not only revel in his more down-to-earth and nitty-gritty erotica but who appreciate his ability to tell a great and sexy story with the occasional hearty dollop of don't-take-this-too-seriously humor. Humor often, I find, sadly lacking in the erotica of writers (who shall remain nameless) who take themselves and their work way tooooooo seriously.

If you've read the essay on Gay Man's English in "Queerly Phrased" and you want to read more, then come here to the source. Mr. Leap contributed his essay on cooperative discourse to OUP for inclusion in that anthology, and the choice was most felicitous. Here, Mr. Leap further que(e)ries the subject and adds a great deal more depth and nuance. Highly recommended!

From the onset of his story, William Cortlett brings us into the heart of his main character, Christopher Metcalfe. While summoned home upon the death of his father, the rather detached Chris returns home to deal with lost innocence and the disallusionment of a wasted life. Finding among his fathers belongings a box containing memorabilia from Chris' own days at boarding school. This prompts a moving detail of Chris' romance with an older boy at school. The author brings us the intensity of adolescent love and sexual desire, with all the abandon given to it at that age. Never once do we doubt Chris' reasons for his love, his desire is felt by the reader, as is his confusion as to it's demise. While the focus being Chris' romance with Stephen at school, the chapters of Chris' life at present brings much to the reader as well. His mother's sense of loss is not nearly as profound as one might have expected, and her life parallel's her sons in many ways. These two characters both must deal with lives wasted on denial of one's true being, following safe roads, forsaking the heart by taking the safer and more constant way through life, only to have regrets later on. There are other characters in the Now part of the story who also show us what a treacherous road are hearts can lead us to. There is also much to be said of Stephen, Chris' object of desire while in school. Stephen, for all his classic British Upper Middle classman ship, has chosen to follow his libido through life, beleiving in his own pleasure first, a direct dichotomy to Chris and his Mother. I was left with a feeling of exhilaration after reading this book. I wanted to seize the moments of my life and live each day fully and honestly, wanting no regrets at the days end. I wish to follow the intuitive heart, the sensual path, and beleive I need not worry what sort of impression I'm giving others, but what a life fully recognized has to offer.

For anyone who has ever loved and lost, gay or straight, this book speaks volumes of the emotions contained in that experience.

A fifty year old London book editor, Chris, returns to his childhood home following the death of his father, and encounters more ghosts from his past than anticipated, as he revisits his teens, and a relationship that devastated him for years to come.

The book weaves back and forth in time, between the childhood and present day of the protagonist, and his experiences then that shape his life in the 'now'.

Chris, at the private boys' school of his youth, meets and falls in love with Walker, an older student. Walker takes Chris's breath away, touches his young soul, and breaks his heart. He promises to love Chris forever, and leaves him broken and devastated for years to come.

William Corlett, the author, accurately and poignantly describes the angst and anguish of Chris as he struggles through the loss of Walker, and the devastating realization that Walker's words of love and devotion were just that, words, nothing more.

Speaking to relationships on so many levels, and the personal doubt and despair that is felt with the loss of love, this book is well crafted, and pulls all the right heart-strings.

Although there is closure for Chris at the end, that does seem a bit forced, and a bit 'cinematic' in its realization.

However, this is a very touching book, well written, easy to read, and tought-provoking in its honesty.

As a reader who speaks English as a second language, I had to keep my dictionary while reading the book to the end. From the first day I started to read the book, I couldn't stop thinking of Kit's life and his love towards Stephen. His deep, poignant and still moving love made me shiver all the time. I even felt the turbulance of his inner state while he first started to think of Stephen when he sorted out things which his father had kept in his study and encountered his past looking at the photos of his schooldays. I sometimes think that it may be my future when I get fortysomething. Even though I was not in passionate love which Chris was in. I read the book six times in order to understand completely by looking up all the difficult words in the dictionary. I cried and shared all the sadness with Chris. Hope Chris will find his true happiness and let his poinant memories behind. This novel was simply magnificient, beautifully written and moving.

Richard Burt has managed to write an academic text which is at once thorough and a pleasure to read. Dr. Burt's style is easily accessible while still offering an intellectual's view of all things Shakespearean. This book's vision of modern Shakesperiotics demonstrates just how far reaching "the Bard" can be. The depth of Burt's considerations of Queer Theory and adult films is impressive and well documented, but his real strength is the breadth of his scholarship, as he lists and discusses allusions, citations, and spinoffs found throughout American culture. This volume should not be missed by casual viewers of popular culture or interested academic followers of Shakespeare.

Combining glittery high theory with `low' culture materials, Richard Burt has written an absolutely brilliant, path-breaking study of Shakespeare in contemporary mass media, focusing mostly on film, but discussing t.v. sit-coms, comic books, and novels as well. Most of these films and other texts have never before been archived or examined by any other Shakespeare critic. What is particularly original about Burt's book is the way he views what he concedes are often trashy films, including some hardcore pornographic adaptations, from the vantage point of the critic as loser. Instead of trying to redeem mass culture `trash' as politically dissident, transgressive, or subversive material, as most critics doing cultural studies now do, Burt questions whether the trashy material he examines can be recycled, and opens up as a profound, troubling question whether criticism (avowedly political or not, high-minded or low-minded) can ever fully transcend questions concerning its own potential triviality and stupidity. This is a very sophisticated and challenging book, but is very accessible and very entertaining. Burt will soon emerge as the Stephan Greenblatt of post-millenial Shakespeare criticism. His book is a truly remarkable read!

Shakespeare is constantly present in all our lives, in films, books and songs. However, Shakespeare is more omnipresent than you first thought, as Richard Burt's book proves. By first examining direct representations of the great Bard, such as the most recent Romeo and Juliet, he then takes us on a literary journey through Hollywood and American popular culture via Shakespeare. In the last decade Shakespeare has not only become accepted, he has almost become cool, as we have seen in the wide variety of spin-offs and adaptations. Burt examines what this not only means to our culture but what it represents about our culture. From the more obvious queering of Shakespeare (indeed his sexuality has been studied , as long as literature has been studied),to his representation in pornography, and finally to the way in which he has been bastardized (bardized) in the current spate of "teen" movies. Not only do we see what this means to the youth of today, we also see how much impact Shakespeare has on our generation. All literary scholars should agree that literature relies on re-interpretation and re-examing the work which we study. Burt brings a new and refreshing light to a subject that could well have become irrelevant to American culture. This book is both fascinating and insightful, how else would I have learnt of films such as Tromeo and Juliet, which make Shakespeare what he should be, new and exciting. So to all those who doubt the validity of such a quest, i.e. redefining Shakespeare in terms of kiddie culture or queer theory, go back to you're stuffy old librarys and let the dust settle upon you. Shakespeare is back, this is the sequel, and its better than ever.

Having discovered William Gay's "The Long Home," and read his short stories, I enjoyed "The Provinces of Night" for its vivid portraiture of blood ties of real earthy people of a Tennessee backcountry trapped in a time and a place in the 1950s. Gay is a great scene-setter, threading his story with honest dialogue and episodes that move the story of crumbling loyalties and the age-old strife of the South to conclusion. His weaving of dialogue into the text without quotation marks is slightly burdensome but it worked for Charles Frazier in "Cold Mountain" and for Gay's obvious literary idol, Cormac McCarthy. Quite obviously Gay is a student of Faulkner and McCarthy and is not afraid of literary devices and metaphors too much missing in today's action-sped novels. He is truly a Southern storyteller with the ability to evoke the real world of Tennesseans by blending the past with the present. I like his sense of the natural world, describing with a rich palette.---Jesse Earle Bowden, author of "Look and Tremble: A Novel of West Florida."

"Provinces of Night" takes its name from a line in a book by Cormac McCarthy and this is likely no coincidence as William Gay resembles McCarthy stylistically, though possibly being a bit more wordy along the way. His characters here run the line of shades of gray, not merely presenting good and evil, and offer some true glimpses of human nature along the way.

The story is that of the Bloodworths, from father E.F., who left his family years ago and has now returned, through his wandering and variously afflicted boys, to his book-reading grandson, Fleming. As an abandoned young man who has been dealt life's toughest cards, it is reaffirming to see him withstand so much and still retain the will to make something good of his life.

Full of humor and insight, this is a book worth reading slowly and savoring. You'll feel like you're there as Gay paints the scenes.

Gay has been compared to Faulkner and this is not a great stretch. Though he tries too hard to make a metaphor work sometimes, it doesn't detract from the overall brilliance of this book - well worthy of all its praise!

Finding THE LONG HOME powerful and fun to read, I was excited to get my hands on this, Mr. Gay's new novel. PROVINCES OF NIGHT exceeded my expectations. Fleming Bloodworth and his grandfather E. F. make an extrodinary pair, the former finding pain and love and bursting with a desire for life (yet with enough wisdom to learn from the latter), and the old man who's come home to find...something, even he's not sure what. A host of eccentric characters round out this work, from a bitter son who casts spells on his enemies, to the funniest adolescent since Cormac McCarthy's Harrogate in SUTTREE. Having grown up with stories of the south, I found Gay's details rich and true. He seems to be writing for himself, drawing on personal stories, humorous experiences and pain and reminds me of other great writers, Cormac McCarthy and Hemingway to name two. I look for an honest voice in fiction and I have certainly found one in William Gay. He is one of the unsung heroes of southern fiction - hell, of fiction period, and he's only written two novels. Here's to many more tales told by this astonishing author.