ELEVEN SHORT STORIES, all about queer characters—mostly women but some men, mostly under 40 but some older—set generally in the American present.
All eleven were well written. I found myself wondering, though, whether they were not a bit too much alike. All are written in the first person, for instance, with the exposition, conflicts, and revelations falling into place in straightforward fashion, and the narrators all adopting the same natural-sounding, educated middle class voice. Despite the volume’s title, the stories are, narratologically speaking, quite well-behaved.
The possible exception is “Gay Tale,” which has some metafictional moments. As metafiction goes, though, it is relatively mild and digestible.
So, I’m wondering...the stories are about what we could broadly call a revolutionary situation, a USA in which the landscape for out LGBTQ+ people is continually transforming, moving almost daily into new, unexplored territory, navigating the unknown, creating a new world as they go.
Should stories about a revolutionary reality be revolutionary in form?
About 85% of me thinks, “yes, of course,” but 15% of me thinks, well, maybe not...after all, it’s important that this emerging reality be represented in art, and perhaps that art should be of a traditionally realistic (and so relatively accessible) mode, should be more like a document, not an in-your-face aesthetic experiment.
But that other 85% responds, no! What about Dada, Gertrude Stein, Mayakovsky, Artaud? Wojnarowicz, Myles, Gluck?
It all goes back to the Brecht-Lukacs debate, I guess...basically unresolvable.
Ironically, I am writing this with the Dodgers game on in the background, and they just announced that “Pride Night” is coming up at Dodger Stadium, a special event for LGBTQ+ Dodger fans. Maybe the revolution has already occurred, and New Yorker suburban realism is exactly what the moment calls for? I just don’t know.
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