Charles Dudley Warner appears to have lived an enviable life. He was educated when most men did not have an opportunity to become educated. He was editor and publisher of the 'Hartford Courant' and lived in Hartford next door to Samuel Clements. Warner was not only a neighbor but a good friend of Mark Twain with whom he co-authored THE GILDED AGE, and with whom he seems to have shared a sense of humor. Warner's writing is insightful and funny, but not always politically correct according to 21st Century U.S. standards. Allen Gurganus introduces the book with an overly long essay.

In MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN Warner shares 19 weeks of life in his garden (one growing season). His garden is located in Hartford at the edge of a game preserve. During the course of the summer, President Grant is in Hartford and stops by for a visit. As the men sit in Warner's yard, Grant says he can hardly wait to retire to his own garden as he is fed up with politics. Warner has been fighting pusley in his garden and he and Grant discuss the advantage of inviting immigrants who eat pusley and would soon rid the country of both problems.

Warner has various encounters with: hunters tracking quail who stray from the game preserve, one of whom claims he is looking for a lost chicken; small boys who eat berries from his vines and gather nuts from his trees; birds who attack his pea pods, the neighbor's hens who range too freely until he is looking for one to fill a pot; and the owner of a cow pastured in his yard. In spite of drought, theft, and green worms, at the end of the summer Warner is able to put aside enough vegetables to feel he has accomplished something and then his wife Polly takes credit for the work.

Of interest to me is that more than 100 years after Warner published his book, U.S. gardeners can still complain about some of the same things Warner complained about--and more. Most gardeners know that the U.S. has been infested with a whole array of pests and diseases that were not around when Warner gardened. For example, three new plagues including the Varroa mite have attacked American honey bees since the 1980s. Partly these attacks are owing to the introduction of containerized shipments that cannot be inspected and may hold verboten materials (plants, animals, insects). Partly these problems are owing to flagrant violations by individuals who believe U.S. laws concerning the transport of "foreign" plants do not apply to them. Warner's worries about green worms in his celery, witch grass in his potato hills, and pulsey seem mild in comparison.

I was intrigued by the title and sold by the exerpt. Charles Dudley Warner is fun. But skip the opening 30 pages or so. It's not that the other gentlemen don't write well, but they're not exactly fun. Besides, I didn't buy it to read a discussion of his more boring, 'professional' work in all those pages numbered with tiny Roman numerals. So go directly to Warner's first essay (which is the exerpt) on page 11.

Nicely written and witty book about the pleasures of gardening and its relationship to other aspects of life.

Although one's heart breaks for the grief these two mothers have had to endure, it seemed to me that their vision had become somewhat clouded, and their energies cry out to be used in more producive ways. By all accounts, federal spending on AIDS is far above the levels spent on several other diseases which kill many more people, and which....in the case of cancer....the causes are not even very well-known. Surely, it is only humane to assist in the care and research of these other diseases in a more equal parity to HIV/AIDS. Even Sen. Helms was misrepresented, since Mrs. Clark claims he actually said "AIDS sufferes deserve what they get"...and that is a lie. He never said such a thing...nor has anyone else who objects to the over-funding of AIDS efforts vs the funding of other diseases. He merely pointed out that what causes a person to become infected with HIV/AIDS is very well-known...exactly as we know why smokers get lung and throat cancer. So...while these two grieving mothers (and their sons who suffered) engender much-deserved sympathy, one can only wish their considerable energy could be focused more on prevention efforts, and less on sill more increased...and unfair...federal funding.

Patsy Clark and Eloise Vaughn would probably be the first persons to say that they are not professional writers; yet theirs is a story that touches our hearts. After the deaths of both their sons from AIDS, they took on Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina in an effort to upseat him. We all know they did not succeed in their efforts; nevertheless, they are winners of the highest sort. Althought the two women had led very different lives-- one was a Democrat, the other a Republican, they found they had much in common. In the words of Patsy Clark after these women's first meeting: "Both of our sons were named Mark--and that seemed huge to us. . . Both of us had led very mainstream, privileged lives. . . Each of us were widowed before our sons died, so each of us had to deal with that trauma alone. Neither of us had known that our sons were gay. . ." Another thing that they had in common was unconditional love for their sons and a consuming belief that no one, including the mighty Helms, would treat their sons as second class citizens because they were gay.

So we have another beautiful account of two ordinary women who did the right thing and we are the better for having heard their story. It is altogether fitting that Bishop John Shelby Spong, the kind and decent man also from North Carolina, should write a recommendation for this book and that Allan Gurganus should write the foreward.

A final word to "Phillojo," who wrote the next review of this book: Homophobia is homophobia, whether it is yours or the senator's. Unlike HIV, it can be cured, but only if you are a willing patient. May I remind you that for years there was precious little funding for AIDS research because of people like Helms and a president who could not bring himself to utter the word. The truth is the truth, whether you like it or not.

This heartfelt, moving book made me want to be a better person. The authors' eloquent prose made me reevalutate what is most important in life: your family and friends, and also helping to make life easier for others. This is what these two incredible, beautiful women have done. If they can do all they've done and continue to do at their age, why can't everyone try to do the same? I'm not talking about becoming an activist; I'm talking about selflessly helping others each and every day. It'll come back tenfold, if not more. Read this lovely story and you'll want to be a better person too.

I have read all of Mr. Gurganus' catalog. "The Practical Heart" being his last. I liked the book but had problems with the first novella, the book's namesake "The Practical Heart" I found it choppy with to many flashforwards and flashbacks somehow the story gets lost in all of them. "Preservation News" was wonderful about a dying gay man who saves old houses, as was "He's One To" about a gay man who is outed when he is traped in a public restroom hitting on the cheif of Police's son. "Saint Monster" stands as the best of the four novellas in depth. It is about the son of man who delivers Bibles to motels and his mother who has a motel mentality making love to the town vet while father and son are away. His search after his father dies to find out more about him and eventually how to come to terms with his mother. I found the writing in "Saint Monster" similar to one of John Irving's twisted plots and I mean that in a good way. I like John Irving.

Allan is what they call an "old soul"---someone whose compassion and wisdom seem beyond what we are capable of seeing and understanding, and make us wish to become finer and nobler induviduals. Unlike so many modern novelists, his work is void of condecension and cynicism. I hope he finds the man who 'is one too..." If not, here at least is one who understands...

In this loving, startling book, Allan Gurganus has outdone himself. I don't know of anybody writing who takes more emotional risks and who seems to know more about how very much people offer each other and the universe. There are writers who can do big crises, and there are others who specialize in the world of the everyday; but nobody can do both this well. There's a suspense you feel. I loved "Oldest Living Confederate Widow" and "White People" and also "Plays Well". Don't know why the novella form seems to work best for his talents. But each one of the works is different in tone and outlook. Each seems to have been written by another kind of writer. But, when you finish "Saint Monster", the last of the short novels, the generosity of vision, the dark humor and lighly accepted tragedy, both breaks your heart and leaves you somehow happy. Can't explain it. Both. Woody Allen claims: Tragedy plus Time equals Comedy.
In Gurganus's work, there's a willingness to let the story tell itself, to stay out of the characters' way. Not to be "Clever" or "show off", but to always brilliantly have the right word, the telling scene, the tone needed. I believe that Gurganus cares more about his people than anybody writing. He sees them, faults and all, until you feel ready to adopt him as your sponsor, or your god. This quiet funny book should win all the prizes. The day after I finished it, I looked around for something else good to read. Something somewhat like it. Then I just started The PRactical Heart again. You'll see what I mean. I think he has broken through to a different and a higher level of meaning and heart. The work is so lovingly shaped. It makes most everything else feel pulpy, like junk. This one will be read forever.

White's books are a mixed bag. His collection of essays, "The Burning Library," is an important work, and the material in "Nocturnes for the King of Naples" is handled subtly without being needlessly obscure. "A Boy's Own Story," though, is an overrated book. White includes some incredibly soft, well-done sexual scenes, but destroys any empathy for his character by making him selfish, with no caring for anyone around him. If, as some readers and critics think, this is a semi-autobiographical piece, White was an unbelievably self-absorbed adolescent; however, if autobiographical, White should be commended for writing honestly about himself, not obscuring truth for the sake of creating a "nice" image. That having been said, "A Boy's Own Story" really says nothing that has not been said before about sexuality or human nature, either now, or when it was released in the early 1980s. The subject of coming out of the closet and dealing with life has been handled rather differently, but with stronger emotional and psychological insight, in everything from the 1950s Fritz Peters novel "Finistere" to Rita Mae Brown's early 1970s "Rubyfruit Jungle." Finding any insight that makes "A Boy's Own Story" worth reading is difficult. Humans can be shallow and self-absorbed? The coming-out process is a hard row to how, especially complicated by the sexual urges and nature of the beast? This has been written before, and with better characterizations to boot. Ultimately, the book is better viewed as a widely-read example of the "coming-out novel" than as any piece of great literature.

Edmund White is an excellent prose stylist. His writing is rich and evocative, and he ranks as a leading gay author. "A Boy's Own Story," however, is not a story, but rather a series of autobiographical sketches from his childhood; there is no overarching storyline, no conflict or resolution, and there are no dynamic characters. The book is nonetheless quite worth reading: it is always enjoyable, at times humorous, at times poignant. The gay (male) reader may find something of himself in the book, and other readers might enjoy a well written perspective of the gay youth in a straight world. While it may not transcend the genre of gay fiction (other than that it is not wholly fictitious), "A Boy's Own Story" is less gratuitous and better written than the average work in this genre. Though the tone of the writing is generally light, White thankfully does not avoid exploring the deeper emotional issues of the young gay American male, focusing at various times on his own insecurities regarding masculinity and self image, as well as the stereotypical tendency of gay men towards fantasy lifestyles. He manages to do this in a meaningful and constructive way without dwelling on the negative, and it is this treatment of deeper issues coupled with White's charming narrative style that make "A Boy's Own Story" worthwhile reading for all.

This is the autobiographical story of the boyhood of this famous gay author. It tells the story of his late childhood and early adolescence. The dominant feature of White's story is his discovery of his gayness, and his coming to terms with it.

This theme is handled with great sensitivity. We the reader can feel for the boy as he travels down this rocky road of growing up. His father is a distant person, so is his mother, so the young lad is quite isolated. He is with his family, but he is not part of it. One can sense his quandry at knowing that he does not quite fit in with his family's concept of a proper son. For those who have read the later novels by White, this isolation shows its early roots.

There are some graphic yet tender sex scenes. The boy is amazed to discover that a younger lad looks up to him, and is willing and eager to serve him sexually. They pass a very pleasant, yet transient, few weeks at the summer cottage by the lake. Each boy is able to explore and learn his sexuality. Yet there is little affection, and no love.

The themes of this novel are complex, and would make good study subjects. This novel ought to be one of the texts used in teaching English Literature. No doubt homophobia would prevent this. But many a teenager would benefit from exposure to this story, if only to learn that they are not alone. That other boys have travelled, survived, and even enjoyed this journey of sexual discovery.

There are some very tender, incredible tales in this book but there are some deeply, dark disturbing stories also. The writers prose wins all around. However, this book is not for everyone.

These stories are great reading, and not as difficult as the
author's huge first novel, which I also read. The author likes to
conclude his stories with a surprise at the end, which seems to
always leave a lump in my throat. In at least two stories,
*Blessed Assurance* and *Reassurance*, this technique is
particularly effective. The preceding tales are worth the price
of the book. If you want to read the best of modern short
fiction, you can do a lot worse than this book.

Allan Gurganus is the Pope of the Prose I can say that these stories--along with every other considered expenditure of ink from Gurganus' pen--are spawned of the same glorious stuff from which his earlier materials have hailed: Equal measure of intellect and imagination, with the penetrating consciousness of a God and the compassionate and deliberate sensibilities of a Son left much alone in the world by that God. Allan Gurganus' auspicious and Herculean talents have yet to be fully reckoned by either readers or critics, and I doubt they will be in his lifetime or mine. A shame, as they soar abundant and effortless above his contemporaries, a testimoney to the very best that preceded him and a testament to those that may come after.

Ever since reading the masterly "White People" four years ago, I've periodically ransacked London bookshops looking for more work by Alan Gurganus. Imagine my pleasure earlier this year upon seeing "Plays well with Others" on the shelves. (The UK edition comes armed with a Keith Haring graphic on the cover so the casual bookbuyer is better prepared for the AIDS storyline than a purchaser of the American edition might be.) The pleasure was however more mixed than before.

"Plays Well" has moments of sheer perfection, particularly the interlude at the narrator's parents in Florida,a self-contained short story on some of the same familial themes as "White People". There's a wonderfully evocative vignette of an Austrian Jewish widow at Carnegie Hall (which Gurganus read on BBC Radio in a recent trip across the pond) and Robert's death-scene is handled with striking sureness of touch. "A perfect blond pebble skips three times across the lake's surface. Then, the next try, it skips just once. A third, in every way identical, it only sinks. But it settles right where you can - in water this clear - see it go straight down and rest upon its side there on the very very cold very bottom." The closing plot twist haunts you long after you put the book down and the novel's style, although initially offputting, and considerably more baroque than "White People", ends up dazzling you. Defoe's "Journal of the Plague Year" is deftly used to point up the parallels with earlier pandemics.

It's not all positives. The characterisation throughout is pretty thin (Robert seems to exist purely as a symbol not as a person) and the recurring metaphor of the Titanic is heavy-handed. The opening "dildo scene" works well as a piece of bravura PR but seems at odds with the tone of the rest of the book. For a book chiefly set in the pre-Aids West Village there's remarkably little sex. Hartley is more monastic than libidinous, holding up the values of friendship and solidarity while Robert screws and Angie pushes her way to the top of the art world.

"Plays Well" succeeds through accumulation. You have to read it in long concentrated sessions so as to get the full force of the author's unapologetically personal style. It's a book of symbols more than characters. I was left intrigued about the play-off between fiction and autobiography. Were these events just too recent & painful for the author to be able to sketch his own lost friends with more individuality? Was it easier to commemorate "composite icons" like Robert than to remember real losses? Or is this a failing born of over-ambition: the desire to memorialise an entire generation? Peter Cameron's "The Weekend" was, in the final reckoning, a more moving AIDS memoir, because it focussed on a single loss not the half-dozen or so of "Plays Well". I'd be fascinated to hear how other readers rate Gurganus against Cameron.

I too have been waiting for this book. I read "Oldest..." and liked it ok. Read "White People" and recommended it to everyone who I thought could appreciate his writing style. Then received "Plays well..." as a Christmas gift from my Mother before I even knew it was out. I finished it today, called my mother and my best friend only to find they had not read it yet. I needed to talk to someone else who read it and this was my only outlet. I am female heterosexual originally from the south. I admit that the first section was hard to get through - maybe too focused on a world to which I have little exposure(young artists and New York as well as the gay community)- but it was worth it to feel the love and pain and joy of the last three (including the appendix)sections. The scene over Christmas with his parents was so real to me I relived many a similar visit home. Mr. Gurganus has a talent of creating characters, emotions, 'terms of endearment' that are, although foreign in so many superficial ways, real in places inside your body (throat, stomach, lungs) that you forgot could even express emotion. I also admit his writing style can be a little challenging, but the beauty of it is that it (lots of parenthetical phrases) is the way I think.

After reading one dreadful gay-themed novel after another, all of which seem to be on either a quasi-Lolita theme or "wacky and biting" drag queen humor, at last here's one for the grown-ups. Plays Well With Others is spectacularly written, fearlessly plotted, and, oh yeah, hysterical and sad, too.

I'll admit, my heart sank a bit on reading the blurb ("Here we go again with another AIDS memoir"). Callous as that feeling was, Gurganus still manages to take well-tread ground and make it seem like the first time you've heard it. I didn't want to stop reading, especially after I had laughed out loud at the first ten pages (It involves a specific number of dildoes and has to be read to be believed). The book continues in that vein, finally culminating in a short story about angels that's one of the best short sections of writing put to paper since "Pafko At The Wall."

I've already bought this book as a gift twice, and I can't recommend i! t any higher that that.