Customer Reviews

They Change the Subject

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

 

 

I guess this story collection could be seen as a "novel," or a novel-in-stories, but like Martin's first full-length "fiction" (Outline of my Lover), I think Martin continues to play with audience expectation, he seems to be pretty intent on subverting categories. I think he doesn't want you to know quite what to make of him, or his books, because he wants people to not be so quick to judge. It's like deciding to be in love, it's a leap of faith.

Unfortunately, each of the unnamed narrators of these stories (who could easily be the same boy, or easily be Martin himself) finds himself trapped a bit by what others want to make out of him. Each boy seems to be looking for that thing he can't quite find. Commitment and stability seem to be two concerns, but I think he also wants someone who could look into his mind and want him even more because of what they found there.

Admittedly, I am a fan of short, concise, and carefully crafted stories that can feel as quiet as meditative poems. Rather than a stream-of-whatever, I'd characterize Martin's prose style as spare and deceptively simple. Martin seems as equally unconcerned with easy answers or redemption or glamorizing hustler culture here as he seemed to be with counting syllables or the season in his contributions to another book, a group effort, The Haiku Year. I find him a writer of honesty before anything else.

This book was bound to find itself between a rock and a hard place--as they say down SOUTH. If you want to unproblematically turn "the other" (ie--not you; different from you; someone you can separate out from you and turn into a scapegoat for your own insecurities/inadequacies--afraid you might be boring if it's not getting you off?), this book might just slow you down. Might ask you to think. Might question you. Might not deliever everything directly to you. Just what do "we" expect to be in a date/trick? If you own a coffee table, and can afford to endlessly supply it, to keep yourself unwittingly entertained, you might not quite get just exactly where the money-shot has gone sometimes. Guess what happens when one pretends to be turned on? What if your eye candy actually had some thoughts about you you had to hear? One begins to think one might be more than that. The profound might just be what goes unsaid. Does everything have to keep being spelled OUT constantly?

I read this in one sitting. Unsentinemntal, sympathetic, emotional, honest, sparse, and evocative. Martin is a great writer, early in his career, and I think that this one bodes very well for what he might produce in the future. Certainly, it transcends genre, and sexuality. Maybe not for everyone, but for anyone who likes to think and be challenged by an author who's not afraid to leave the extraneous details out. I like to think that shows the rarest of qualities in modern fiction - respect for his reader.

I really liked this book, a collection of linked short stories that seems to flirt with memoir. The writer is smart and clear-eyed about gay desire and its side effects, and doesn't put on airs. Martin's not a virtuosic, ingratiating writer. His style is cooler and quieter, like Lydia Davis or Marguerite Duras. Another reviewer compared Martin to Dennis Cooper, which isn't quite right. If anything, this book is told from the perspective of one of Cooper's desired boys, who are often unwittingly damaged by the sexual attentions they crave. It's a kind of antidote to a Cooper novel--much sweeter, without violence or drugs abuse--told from the other side of the looking glass. (Though I should add that I totally adore Cooper's novels.)

I found the last three stories of this collection strongest. The first of these is about the inevitable unraveling of an imbalanced relationship. A young twentysomething (a kept boy) navigates the tricky social milieu of his high-profile boyfriend. The boyfriend (bisexual) begins a flirtation/friendship with a famous supermodel that makes the boy feel jealous and diminished. But also, I think, the boy registers disappointment that the older lover is so easily hooked by the model's superficial appeals. A lot of smartly handled, telling details in this piece about the way people cling to their social status and use it to manipulate/hurt others. Seems to be an extension of Outline of My Lover, Martin's first novel.

The next story recounts a gay porn photo shoot. This story is more fragmentary: the explicit (and often hilariously absurd) set-ups of these pictures are described and commented on in an almost clinical way. It was evocative, for me, of Gus van Sant's My Own Private Idaho -- the way the sex scenes between Keanu and River and their johns were always done in a kind of faux stop-action-photography style -- as if to show that sex is just posing. Like a Godard movie, this story elicits our prurience but is also critical of it.

I found the last chapter, a story about hustling, the strongest and most unsettling. Martin's tone really carries it: flat and dead but married to a kind of sweet equanimity, which keeps the deadness from being a too obvious/melodramatic commentary on the content. (As in, "Hustling is killing my soul," -- no, too easy.) You never feel like Martin has designs on his reader, like memoirists often do, trying to elicit sympathy or wonder. The flatness comes from the character's understanding that he is a total cipher to the men. Also, the narrator seems to understand that the events he's describing (i.e., exchanging your body for money, attention, whatever) are, at this point, pretty routine. In a sense, we're all hustlers. The drama is really in seeing how long this character can sustain a mild dampening of affect--for the sake of making a living--that plays against his suppressed need for connection. Lifting the story, and making it hopeful, is the character's writerly curiosity (which can't be completely dampened) about these somewhat sad but fascinating men: their odd quirks and fetishes. Even though these men aren't very nice to him, the narrator recognizes their humanity, can appreciate and even nursemaid their vulnerabilities. So writing--or the writerly instinct, the compulsion to notice what's interesting in even the most debased scenarios--carries the day.

Did not particularly care for this book. I found the entire book to be a bit shallow and very disjointed. This was more like a collection of poorly written short stories with no general direction.