Book Review	Book Reviews Archive

Straight?
Jack Hart
Alyson Publications
How to order An Arrow's Flight
Mark Merlis
St. Martin's Press
How to order

American Studies, Mark Merlis's 1995 award-winning debut novel, was a retelling of the life of F.O. Matthiessen, homosexual and noted literary critic, whose classic American Renaissance redefined how American literature is read and who committed suicide in 1950. American Studies was a beautifully written meditation on art and politics, history and sexuality-- an evocative re-creation of a moment of gay history and US culture. In An Arrow's Flight (St. Martin's Press, cloth, 370 pages, $24.95), Merlis has once again worked magic and produced a book that is as momentous as it is mysteriously moving. Set during the Trojan War, An Arrow's Flight recounts the story of Achilles's son Phyrrus, who was prophesied to be the soldier who conquered Troy. But Merlis's tale bears only an uneasy relationship to the standard versions of the story; here Phyrrus is a go-go boy and hustler who lives in the demi-world of the gay ghetto and resembles characters from John Rechy's City of Night more than anybody in The Collected Greek Myths.

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In its opening pages, An Arrow's Flight seems to be a clever, post-modern gag. But Merlis knows what he is doing and the novel grows into a unique, emotionally overwhelming masterpiece. Merlis's writing is both over-the-top and understated, brilliant and determinedly matter-of-fact. He has the ability to convey the complexity of his characters' lives and thoughts while maintaining their "mythic" stature, and he makes us laugh or cry, panic or feel relief by simply telling his story. This is the sort of novel that makes one realize the possibilities of fiction and art-- how far they can go, and how often they fall short in most of what we read. While never moving very far from the original story, Merlis's historical and sexual slights-of-hand are thrilling. By locating us somewhere between myth and history, fiction and fable, An Arrow's Flight shimmers and shifts before our eyes: war, male friendship, Troy, AIDS, sexual identity, Vietnam all get explored and elucidated in this novel resonating with beauty, intelligence, and empathy.

Beneath its jovial insouciance, Jack Hart's Straight? (Alyson Publications, paper, 178 pages, $14.95)-- a collection of frisky, first-person sex tales with "straight" men-- embodies a curious political and cultural collision. One of the mandates of the gay liberation movement-- which emerged after the Stonewall Riots in 1969-- was that every gay person had the responsibility to "come out." Yet, post-modern theory informs us that the very categories of "gay" and "straight" may be, well, easily constructed identities for far more complicated realities. On the surface Straight? conforms to the genre of "letters" that was pioneered by Boyd McDonald. Still, reading through Hart's book you are struck, again and again, by the naturalness and innocence of the situations.

On some level Straight? reminds you of the old joke: "Q: What is the difference between a gay man and a straight man? A: A six-pack," but so few of the stories here involving deceiving or even conniving the "heterosexual" partners into sexual activity-- for the most part, sex play here is sought-after and thoroughly enjoyed. There is a happy-sort-of pre-AIDS optimism here about sex and fucking that is refreshing and even a relief. It makes us remember a time when "sex" and AIDS-- even though most of the stories here acknowledge the epidemic-- were not linked. Straight? delivers as soft-core fantasy and a turn-on, but the underlying theme here is that the words we use to classify ourselves are, at best, inexact and often misleading, especially to our own selves.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com