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Runaway
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February 15, 2025
"Gordon Hoban, writing as Tom Hardy, continues in this new collection of short stories, his best-selling exploration of the borders of the imagination where the erotic becomes real, and the real becomes erotic. The ferocious Mommy of 'Runaway', the tender games of 'Cat And Lion', the dark dreams in 'The Secret Room' and fourteen more stories of love and sex, fantasy and reality, may change your life." From the back cover of the 1989 paperback edition from Omnium Publications.
Before giving my review I want to explain that Tom Hardy was the nome de plume of Gordon Hoban, who is also listed on Goodreads but you need to look under both names because not all his works are listed under either name. Also I want to quote praise from the author Stan Leventhal for Tom Hardy's earlier collection 'The Green Hotel and Other Stories':
"One of the great unsung masters...Hardy is wise to the psychological nuances that rigger erotic responses...The stories of Tom Hardy hit hard. They are explicit and hover on the edge of the sexual avant garde...goes right on the top shelf alongside the works of Phil Andros, John Preston, John Coriolan and John Rechy."
Very true but I wonder how many readers today, unless they have a taste for the exploring the archeology of gay literature, will recognise any of the names quoted, aside from John Rechy? But Andros, Preston, Coriolan and Rechy were, probably, at one time on the shelves of more gay men then Edmund White or Andrew Holleran. That doesn't mean that Andros, Preston, Coriolan, Rechy or Hardy were better than White or Holleran, of course they weren't, but they are part of a gay literature that flourished before AIDS and had a great deal more to say then later 'erotic' stories and novels.
Tom Hardy, and Andros, Preston, Rechy and Coriolan, write about sex because for so long they had been told you can't write about sex, particularly gay sex. Hardy's writing is as much about freedom as sex. Of course you have to remember that when many of these stories were first published and, although there are no details given, I am sure most of them date from the 1970s or early 80s. They are the children of the 'liberation' of the 1960s which refused to have their creativity censored by 'establishment' figures and mores they did not respect. That many of the stories in this collection (far fewer then in similar ones by, for example, Phil Andros) would shock readers today doesn't mean that they were written to excuse or justify unacceptable behavior, only that in concentrating on tearing down one set of repressive shibboleths they failed to see their flaws.
But this was not unique to the writers of gay erotic fiction. Go back and read the vocal heterosexual male voices of sexual liberation and be appalled (to get a really accurate idea of the reality of 1960s misogyny and much else read the collection of Joan Didion's journalism from the 1960s 'Slouching towards Bethlehelm'). Don't allow yourself to be fooled into thinking that the voices of reaction who condemned and still condemn the 1960s are being raised in defense of the weak and exploited. They no more cared about the victims of 1960s excess than those condemning Wilde to prison cared about the young men he slept with. Repression is about control and power not morals or protection.
As for the stories in 'Runaway'? I found them delightful and fun. They were stories from a vanished world but, although I can not describe them other than as 'erotic' they are free of so many of the genre cliches that they seem almost discreet. You will find no long enumerations or descriptions of body parts, no lengths or girths, no descriptions of veins, none of the truly stultifying boring details that most 'erotic' fiction is full of. These are stories about sex involving characters who enjoy sex, they are outside conventions of behavior. This is a new world, a world that was out of the shadows and unapologetic. It is also a new world and a young world. It isn't gay, or least not in the way most people today would define gay. But they are tremendous fun and while lubricious they are charmingly naive. The world of these stories is as completely vanished as that of Chekov. Tom Hardy is no Chekov and would be appalled, I am sure, if he thought such a comparison was seriously being made. But his stories chronicle a time that is more lost than Russia's 'silver age' and more incomprehensible.
I will certainly seek out more of his story collections because they have the freshness as well as the flaws of youth and the optimism that goes with the birth of any new age.
Before giving my review I want to explain that Tom Hardy was the nome de plume of Gordon Hoban, who is also listed on Goodreads but you need to look under both names because not all his works are listed under either name. Also I want to quote praise from the author Stan Leventhal for Tom Hardy's earlier collection 'The Green Hotel and Other Stories':
"One of the great unsung masters...Hardy is wise to the psychological nuances that rigger erotic responses...The stories of Tom Hardy hit hard. They are explicit and hover on the edge of the sexual avant garde...goes right on the top shelf alongside the works of Phil Andros, John Preston, John Coriolan and John Rechy."
Very true but I wonder how many readers today, unless they have a taste for the exploring the archeology of gay literature, will recognise any of the names quoted, aside from John Rechy? But Andros, Preston, Coriolan and Rechy were, probably, at one time on the shelves of more gay men then Edmund White or Andrew Holleran. That doesn't mean that Andros, Preston, Coriolan, Rechy or Hardy were better than White or Holleran, of course they weren't, but they are part of a gay literature that flourished before AIDS and had a great deal more to say then later 'erotic' stories and novels.
Tom Hardy, and Andros, Preston, Rechy and Coriolan, write about sex because for so long they had been told you can't write about sex, particularly gay sex. Hardy's writing is as much about freedom as sex. Of course you have to remember that when many of these stories were first published and, although there are no details given, I am sure most of them date from the 1970s or early 80s. They are the children of the 'liberation' of the 1960s which refused to have their creativity censored by 'establishment' figures and mores they did not respect. That many of the stories in this collection (far fewer then in similar ones by, for example, Phil Andros) would shock readers today doesn't mean that they were written to excuse or justify unacceptable behavior, only that in concentrating on tearing down one set of repressive shibboleths they failed to see their flaws.
But this was not unique to the writers of gay erotic fiction. Go back and read the vocal heterosexual male voices of sexual liberation and be appalled (to get a really accurate idea of the reality of 1960s misogyny and much else read the collection of Joan Didion's journalism from the 1960s 'Slouching towards Bethlehelm'). Don't allow yourself to be fooled into thinking that the voices of reaction who condemned and still condemn the 1960s are being raised in defense of the weak and exploited. They no more cared about the victims of 1960s excess than those condemning Wilde to prison cared about the young men he slept with. Repression is about control and power not morals or protection.
As for the stories in 'Runaway'? I found them delightful and fun. They were stories from a vanished world but, although I can not describe them other than as 'erotic' they are free of so many of the genre cliches that they seem almost discreet. You will find no long enumerations or descriptions of body parts, no lengths or girths, no descriptions of veins, none of the truly stultifying boring details that most 'erotic' fiction is full of. These are stories about sex involving characters who enjoy sex, they are outside conventions of behavior. This is a new world, a world that was out of the shadows and unapologetic. It is also a new world and a young world. It isn't gay, or least not in the way most people today would define gay. But they are tremendous fun and while lubricious they are charmingly naive. The world of these stories is as completely vanished as that of Chekov. Tom Hardy is no Chekov and would be appalled, I am sure, if he thought such a comparison was seriously being made. But his stories chronicle a time that is more lost than Russia's 'silver age' and more incomprehensible.
I will certainly seek out more of his story collections because they have the freshness as well as the flaws of youth and the optimism that goes with the birth of any new age.
Displaying 1 of 1 review