THE FABER BOOK OF GAY SHORT FICTION...

THE FABER BOOK OF GAY SHORT FICTION edited by Edmund White (Faber and Faber: $15.95; 586 pp.) and MEN ON MEN 4: Best New Gay Fiction edited by George Stambolian (Plume: $12; 403 pp., paperback original). These anthologies attempt to present a specialized genre to a wider audience, but fail to define that genre. Is “gay fiction” restricted to the work of gay authors, or openly gay authors, or does it include all fiction with homosexual themes? “The Faber Book” includes selections by an impressive array of 20th-Century British and American writers: Henry James, Tennessee Williams, Christopher Isherwood, James Baldwin. Although the book aspires to academic completeness, White omits the work of such important authors as John Rechy, Lonnie Coleman and Stanley Kauffmann, but includes Robert Gluck’s turgid “Denny Smith” and his own overwrought “Skinned Alive.” The annual “Men on Men” collection remains an important showcase for emerging talents. Luis Alfredo describes the pain of growing up on the margins of an already marginalized community in “Pico-Union,” while Raymond Luczak’s “Ten Reasons Why Michael and Geoff Never Got It On” is a sly chronicle of a failed urban romance. Not all the works reach this level of polish: After a promising opening, “The Magistrate’s Monkey” by Richard House quickly devolves into a pretentious bore; Michael Wade Simpson’s “The Finance” reads like a collection of show-biz cliches. Although both books offer some provocative reading, they ultimately leave the reader unsatisfied.