The Penguin Book of International Gay Writing

An anthology of short stories and essays explores themes of love between men, homosexual identity, and family and friend relationships by such writers as Thomas Mann, Tony Duvert, Plato, Boccaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, and Kafka. 20,000 first printing.

Leavitt and Mitchell co-edited last year's The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories, and now Mitchell assembles 46 pieces of fiction and nonfiction in translation by 41 writers from Europe, Asia and Latin America. As before, the authors-famous and little-known, contemporary and ancient-are not necessarily gay, but do depict a broad range of homosexual experience. Many of the names are expected and welcome: Gide, Mishima, Cocteau, Puig. Wisely, Mann's "Death in Venice" is reprinted in its entirety (in a fine new translation by David Luke). By contrast, more than three-quarters of the entries are excerpts from longer works and thus suffer from a sense of incompleteness. In addition, a provocative thread running through many pieces dwells on the carnal fulfillment men find with boys, most notably in an excerpt from Tony Duvert's When Jonathan Died, about a man's physical relationship with a sexually precocious pre-adolescent. Also represented are Barthes, Balzac, Boccaccio, Yourcenar and Camus. Plato attests to the normalcy of homosexual desire. Freud deconstructs one of Leonardo's childhood memories to explore the Italian's homosexuality. Erotic responses to the martyrdom of St. Sebastian and to Christ occur several times, and an appreciation of sadomasochism is traced in several works, including the writings of the Marquis himself. Most rewarding are two short stories debuting in English: "An Angel at Orsay," by Patrick Drevet about a sensual encounter in the Musee d'Orsay, and "Mona," by Cuban Reinaldo Arenas. In the latter, Leonardo surfaces once again, this time as a lascivious Mona Lisa.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

David Leavitt's introduction calls this anthology "a riotous party . . . the party of twenty-five centuries." Its selections range chronologically from classical Greece and Rome (Plato, Petronius) through the Renaissance (Boccaccio, Cellini) to the entire two centuries-plus of the modern era (Sade through Balzac and Gide to Camus and Puig). En route there is Mann's classic novella, Death in Venice, an excerpt from Mishima's novel, Confessions of a Mask (with its image of St. Sebastian enjoying a "flicker of melancholy pleasure like music" with the arrows "about to consume his body from within with flames of supreme agony and ecstasy"), even a snippet of radical French critic Roland Barthes. In smooth and subtle translations, the 46 selections explore the relationships gay men have with friends, lovers, family members, and themselves, most controversially in the excerpt from Tony Duvert's When Jonathan Died, which portrays a man-boy affair in which, when it starts, the boy is barely seven. Altogether, they also enable readers to appreciate the shifts in social attitudes toward homosexuality over the centuries. Whitney Scott

While not wholly satisfying, this latest in a stream of recent gay fiction anthologies offers some valuable, hard-to-find works and ultimately provides informative reading. As with all anthologies, some of the choices for inclusion and exclusion are questionable. Why include an excerpt from Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain when the writer's complete Death in Venice is already given 67 pages? After all, there is only one short piece from Klauss Mann, Thomas's gay brother, and nothing from postwar gay German authors such as Hubert Fichte (The Orphanage, Serpent's Tail, 1991). Indeed, the biggest problem is that well-known and much-published authors who might simply have appeared on a suggested readings list are overrepresented here (including an inexplicable excerpt from Camus's The Plague). If this was meant to be a "great books collection," the editor should have justified his choices, placed them in context, and provided author biographies. Nonetheless, finds such as Reinaldo Arenas's newly translated "Mona" and an excerpt from Edward Limonov's out-of-print It's Me, Eddie make this book a worthy addition to most libraries.
Eric Bryant, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.