Low Rent: A Decade of Prose and Photographs from The Portable Lower East Side

Hollander, who founded The Portable Lower East Side in 1983 and edited it throughout its 10-year history, gathers 40 of the magazine's gritty, memorable short stories, articles and photographs into an interesting, if inconsistent, collection. Hollander baldly asserts the magazine's principle political objectives in his brief introduction: to publish "work by those who are more than just writers, this is cop killers, geographers, porno stars, musicians, political dissidents, AIDS activists, transvestites, and junkies... 'outsider' writing from an insider's perspective." But the collection is best when the "outsiders" are, in fact, writers. Works by noted authors Grace Paley, Hubert Selby, Alexander Trocchi and David Wojnarowicz, as well as relative newcomers Kelvin Christopher Janes and Adrienne Tien, poignantly explore an unpredictable diversity and range of New York City's margins. Where the collection falters is in pieces of shock, rather than literary, value-the transcript of a phone-sex line, for example, or Veronica Vera's Day at the Peep Show. But for fans of New York's adamantine streets, there's more than enough good material for a satisfying fix.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A welcome opportunity for book readers to discover the pleasures of a periodical that was to the Reagan-Bush era what Evergreen Review was to the 1950s. Begun by Hollander in the mid-1980s as a photocopied and stapled bundle, The Portable Lower East Side got some unwanted national exposure in 1992, when conservatives used it as an example of the obscene and blasphemous material funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Now it can be read on its own terms. New York City's Lower East Side is as much a state of mind as a literal neighborhood: Wherever there are drugs and sex, you're likely to find some of these contributors. When Veronica Vera decided to write an article about ``the game of sex and money,'' she went to The Forty-Second Street Show World Sex Emporium, interviewed employees, and worked one of the ``booths'' herself to gain firsthand experience. Christopher O'Connell's ``Williamsburg Seizure Sites'' details epileptic seizures that, ironically, sound almost identical to the drug-induced states captured by other contributors. Some of the finest stories and memoirs present New York City as viewed by newcomers. Jack Henry Abbott, just released from prison, offers a chilling portrait of the Bowery in 1981, depicting street life that later spread throughout New York City; his increasingly staid, unflinching reactions parallel those of many city-dwellers. Guy-Mark Foster follows the man he loves to a city he knows almost nothing about (except that it's not nearly as clean or peaceful as they city they've left). Hubert Selby, Herbert Huncke, Grace Paley, and photographer Robert Frank are among the better-known contributors. Pieces by Italian, Russian, Hungarian, and Cuban immigrants--some translated from the authors' foreign-language originals--recapture the melting-pot flavor the area had 100 years ago, but with a decidedly contemporary in-your-face quality. Some will be offended, but this groundbreaking volume's artistic merit is indisputable. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This collection, culled from a decade's worth of the New York literary biannual The Portable Lower East Side, reflects that area's geographical context and emotional sensibility. While Manual Ramos Oteo's "The Point-Blank Page" echoes Plato's "Symposium," Hubert Selby's short story about a Bowery bum eulogizing his coat provides the soft touch of O. Henry. Adrienne Tien, Lynne Tillman, and Ed Vega contribute heartfelt stories and Nan Goldin and Tracy Mostovoy several witty photographs of nude men and women. A great many entries cross the line between autobiography and fiction, with varying degrees of success. Hollander, who also edits the magazine, provides a confrontational introduction that trumpets the magazine's "outsider" writing. In the end, readers may find that this anthology succeeds in making an emphatic point about down-and-out realism yet still wish for less gut-wrenching observation and more artistic shape. Recommended for literary collections, particularly for the inclusion of Selby, Tillman, Vega, George Konrad, Herbert Huncke, and Grace Paley.
Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib., New York
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.