Customer Reviews

I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore: Tales from Gay Manhattan (Plume)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ethan Mordden's first entry in his decade-long series could easily have stood on its own as simply a collection of short stories, some of which share the same characters and continue situations. Fortunately for us, it is just the beginning, a somewhat modest introdction to his world. He lightheartedly tells of friendship and growing up and painfully yet without bitterness details the diffculty of maintaining a longterm gay relationship in a gay world that is still obsessed with sex and yet falling apart for that very reason. His characters are interesting, well drawn, and extremely well spoken always having the witty response and the snappy one-liner ready in any situation. Like real people, which no doubt they are, this group plans for the future, fears the present, and recalls its youth with fondness. I first read Ethan Mordden and "I've A Feeling We're Not In Kansas Anymore" when it was published in paperback in 1987. I was twenty and had grown up in a very rural setting and had moved to a fairly large city where here seemed to be something going on, but which I knew nothing about. I found the book at a local store and devoured it the same day having come across something I had never seen before. This wass the real life that I knew existed, but which seemed hidden and forcefully so. While it is not a book to educate the young gay male or the recently out gay male, it does tells not only of gay life in New York before AIDS, but also chronicles the universal establishment of a circle of friends that often becomes family in a most entertaining and literate fashion. Mordden is laugh-out-loud funny at times, culturally superior at times, and even lays on the line some of his great sadnesses and disappointments creating a widely multi-faceted picture of the life he knows and lives

While the title might seem a little trite, it wasn't when the book was published and the vignettes told within are certain to hook the reader into reading and following the exploits of the members of this crew of buddies as they live their lives on the Manhattan-Fire Island axis of the 1970s. I caught myself laughing out loud on the train reading these stories, especially some of the actions of Little Kiwi; the interaction between the characters is so masterful that either Mordden is an incredible chronicler of his surroundings or has one of the most amazing imaginations of any fiction writer ever. The reader can picture the events vividly and they are believable. Highly recommended, and this book will hook you into reading the other three in the series, and hunger for more when they are completed.

I read this in high school. This was one of the first peices of gay "literature" I ever read and I fell totally in love with it (and what I imagined gay culture to be). Elitist, warm, fun and fantastical. I'm re-reading it now and I'm on Amazon looking for more work by the author. I hope I find something just as good.

I loved 'How Long Has This Been Going On' I thought it was a fantastic collection of characters and an accurate and revealing look at the gay lifestyle. The same can be said for this I guess, but in the much more specific microcosm of mainly fire island.Threaded together by a narrator named Bud, the book becomes collected stories from his friends and their varied experiences in and out of love. I couldn't help but wish by the end that the book was a simple straight narrative as opposed to short stories. The problem was that while some were very entertaining, others I found boring, and 22 years after it's been published the ideas no longer resonate as fresh. I think for me, the book is best approached as a time piece of a culture that morphs as quickly as the lights on the dance floor.

I recently re-read this book for the second time after reading it when it first was published, almost 20 years ago. I find that this book is both entertaining and interminable. This is a collection of several short stories, and the first to feature stories about the "Family," which feature the characters of Bud, Dennis Savage, Carlo, and Little Kiwi (Virgil). Those stories are the finest in this book. The other stories are a mixed bag -- the final entry, "The Disappearance of Roger Ryder," I couldn't even finish (and I TRIED!). I'm looking forward to "Buddies," and eventually the rest of the books about the "Family."

After reading books by Felice Picano, Larry Kramer, and Andrew Holleran which in part take place in group houses on Fire Island, it seems that little is new. It isn't Morrden's fault necessarily since if you haven't read the other works, his would be quite fresh, and his characters do illuminate the nuances of relationships, be they gay or straight, more subtlely and more touchingly then those of most other writers. Still, one comes away yet again with the feeling that gay men can't be anything but "bitchy" although, at least, Morrden's aren't as shallow as most. Those who enjoyed Holleran's "Dancer From the Dance" shouldn't miss Morrden's version of the legend (included in this collection) of a man with god-like good looks who vanishes without a trace.