The Wild Creatures brings together all the stories of Sam D'Allesandro, a young voice whose life was tragically snuffed out at age 31 at the height of the AIDS epidemic in 1988. This new collection includes all of D'Allesandro's published stories (including those first collected in the out-of-print cult classic The Zombie Pit) as well as unpublished stories found among D'Allesandro's papers years after his death by his editor, the poet and novelist Kevin Killian, who worked with the literary estate to create this extended edition of his writing. The Wild Creatures explores a strange terrain of urban legend, the power of sexual obsession, and the thin line where the too-cool becomes the too-hot. Sam D'Allesandro's focused, vivid writing is the stuff of legend: writing so powerful it drags the reader in by the neck.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Beautiful, queer, former farmboy Richard Anderson took the name Sam D'Allesandro on arriving on the West Coast—sometimes claiming he was the son of the Warhol film "superstar" Joe Dallesandro—and never looked back. Before he died of AIDS at 31 in 1988, D'Allesandro had been writing poetry and fiction, and had some stories published in literary magazines and anthologies. This compilation from Killian, who knew D'Allesandro, has the unevenness of first fiction, but contains enough gems to stand with any of the short collections published this year. It's pretty hard to beat the opening of "Nothing Ever Just Disappears," the book's first piece: "I didn't know exactly what he meant by 'accessible.' " It ends with one of the most understated, angry depictions of the loss of a lover to AIDS, ever. The best of the other 17 pieces make what is usually inarticulate in casual attraction and sex deadpan articulate; D'Allesandro also writes beautifully of women that his speaker loves, including San Francisco neighbor Judy, who searches for "effortless, perfect rhythm." The same can be said of D'Allesandro, whose refined sentences convey real grace. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
Even before his death D'Allesandro had attained icon status, and now, years later, the work still holds up--its purity and its power stun, like jewels in a tomb. --Dodie Bellamy, author of Pink Steam
This is what queer literature looks like freed from pretension and banality. --Alvin Orloff, author of Gutter Boys
The Wild Creatures is more than the resuscitation of a brilliant, out-of-print writer. It s that rarest of things: a true literary event. --K.M. Soehnlein, author of You Can Say You Knew Me When
This is what queer literature looks like freed from pretension and banality. --Alvin Orloff, author of Gutter Boys
The Wild Creatures is more than the resuscitation of a brilliant, out-of-print writer. It s that rarest of things: a true literary event. --K.M. Soehnlein, author of You Can Say You Knew Me When
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Voice Too Soon Silenced,
By Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Wild Creatures (Paperback)
Sam D'Allesandro may be just a nom de plume to those who have had the pleasure of reading his works in various magazines and quarterlies, but this young farm boy born Richard Anderson in 1957 and who migrated to the West Coast as a dreamy eyed young gay man, left a number of excellent hints of his gifts strewn about the premises and minds of his adopted state before succumbing to AIDS in 1988. This collection of all of his writings, edited in style by Kevin Killian, is at once joyous, funny, insightful, erotic, full of rage, and finally replete with resignation.
Writing in one of the most difficult decades of the past century, a time when AIDS reared its violent head tossing the world into a terror of facing an unknown entity and striking out at young men at the peak of their erotic appetites, D'Allesandro saw, heard, felt, and experienced it all. His pungent stories deal with all aspects of being young and handsome and gay in a world of fear vs denial, finding stories where least expected and written with the grace of a man of far more experience than he owned. The stories vary in length, are about 20 in number, and dive headlong into passion, fantasy, wry humor, longing, and loneliness. Just reading the titles suggests the range of his abilities of observing: Teddy Kennedy, Speed boys, The Zombie Pit, Electrical Type of things, All I Want Is to Die Famous, Nothing Ever Just Disappears. His spell is cast as he places into words the emotions of lust and desire, and it also is fragrantly perfect in his writing about women. This is an excellent body of work, not all of it is up to the highest standards of the best, but there is certainly ample evidence that had D'Allesandro lived beyond age 31 he would have been a significant writer. Killian's collection is both a delightful discovery and a sad obituary. Grady Harp, May 06
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Collection,
By Kathleen Bradean (California USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Wild Creatures (Paperback)
As I read through this collection, I kept slowing down to study it, reading it like a writer, not as a reader. I wanted to enjoy it on the reader level first, but some passages were so incredible that I caught myself re-reading them several times instead of moving on.
Teddy Kennedy is short but packed with humor. Speedboys brought me back to my summer days as a feral child. It is brief and perfect. Giovanni's Apartment is outstanding, but I can't begin to explain why. It simply is. Nothing Ever Just Disappears is heartbreaking in subtle shades that don't impact until you pull back from the story and realize the bigger picture you've been looking at. As one of the reviewer mentions, it's a pity that there isn't more, but what's there is worth reading.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thank you, Suspect Thougths Press,
By
This review is from: The Wild Creatures (Paperback)
If it had not been for Suspect Thoughts Press reprinting his collection of short stories, I would never have discovered the work of Sam D'Allesandro. His prose is spare and direct, at times darkly erotic, and auto-biographically confessional in tone. What it might lack in polish it makes up for ten fold in blunt force. His micro-fiction is especially intense, with standouts "Walking to the Ocean this Morning" and "All I Want Is To Die Famous", both pieces under three pages with the same impact as being slammed by a truck. A high recommend for readers of non-mainstream queer lit and erotica.
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