High Risk 2: Writings on Sex, Death, and Subversion

An uncompromisingly truthful, unfailingly adventurous companion to the hugely successful High Risk, this daring and provocative collection of short fiction includes pieces on AIDS, urban violence, sex for money, drugs, and revenge, and suicide, among other topics, offering perverse yet profound ways of looking at the world today.

Sexually explicit writing is commonplace enough these days so that it's difficult to shock a sophisticated reader--but most authors here manage to find a way. ``What is central here is sex's relationship to death,'' the editors (who are collaborating on Serpent's Tail/High Risk Books) tell us in a brief preface. Notice, if you will, that the word ``art'' is missing. Without distinguishing between fiction and memoir, the editors have arranged this volume poorly (or deliberately) so that some of its most risqu‚ pieces appear at the start. First-person stories of male hustlers abound, culminating in Rupert Adley's graphic S&M story, ``Meet Murder, My Angel,'' and Stewart Home's story of murder-as-performance- art, ``Frenzy of the Flesh.'' Yet John Giorno, renowned for his ability to turn pornography into poem, is represented by one of his tamer pieces. Michael Blumlein's ``Bestseller,'' a serio- comic satire about a writer so impoverished he begins selling his body parts to a wealthy old man, falls somewhere between the sensitive and the repugnant. Rebecca Brown contributes an affecting story of friends sending a dying friend on vacation and pretending she'll return, but quick on its heels is a piece by Benjamin Weissman, so revolting it makes Jeffrey Dahmer seem meek. A few well-hidden gems include Gil Cuadros's fascinating story/memoir about his great-grandfather's death and the lesbian grandchild who, the family is certain, must have killed him; Suzette Partido's appealing three-pager about a Catholic schoolgirl sharing her love life's secrets every afternoon with Aunt Bee of the Andy Griffith Show; and Neil Bartlett's verbal feast, ``That's What Friends Are For,'' a conversation between a man dying of AIDS and his well-meaning father. You have to feel sorry for the few excellent writers whose work is sandwiched in among the generally lurid entries: No one would seek them out based on their presence in this collection. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In 1991, the editors first collection of "Forbidden Writing" answered the cultural right's repressive ideology with works about sexual violence and bondage. Now, when fringe writing is under pressure not so much from politics as from conventionalism, High Risk 2 offers stories, essays and poems more remarkable for sadness than for anger. These are mostly about death, real or metaphorical. In Rebecca Brown's lovely "Grief," a woman's death is fantasized as an airplane journey by friends, who dress to meet her at the airport day after day. In "Best-Seller," Michael Blumlein expertly documents the spiritual morbidity of a writer forced to sell his body parts just to survive. The chant-like poems of Diamanda Galas propose "prayer . . . not for miracles, and not for heaven. Just for silence and for mercy until the end." The uneven literary caliber of these selections, ranging from Patrick McGrath's splendid meditation to Stephen Beachy's hyperactive indulgence, is a disappointment, but the collective force lends credence to even the rawest voices. Of special merit are Darryl Pinckney's "Throwing Shade," whose street-talking narrator offers delicate wisdom, and Craig G. Harris's wrenching essay about his own decline from AIDS. Some of these pieces will break readers' hearts, others will patch them with real artistry.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.