New York Sex

by Jane DeLynn (Editor)

New York Jane New York Painted Leaf FIRST First Edition, First Printing. Not price-clipped. Published by Painted Leaf Press, 1998. Octavo. Paperback. Book is very good with shelf wear and creases. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.Seller 330307 Short Stories We Buy Books! Collections - Libraries - Estates - Individual Titles. Message us if you have books to sell!

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Jane DeLynn is the author of the novels Leash, Don Juan in the Village, Real Estate (a New York Times Book Review “Notable Book of the Year”), In Thrall, Some Do, as well as the collection Bad Sex Is Good. Authors she’s been compared to include Proust, Salinger, Jane Austen, Rabelais, Swift, Oscar Wilde, Proust, Helene Cixious, and Edgar Allan Poe, Aristophanes, Euripedes, & Woody Allen. She was a correspondent in Saudi Arabia for Mirabella and Rolling Stone during the Gulf War, and has published articles, essays & stories in a number of anthologies & magazines in the US & abroad, including The New York Times, Mademoiselle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, The Paris Review, and The New York Observer. Her musical theater works have been performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Encompass Music Theater, and Theater for the New City. . Her work has been translated into German, Norwegian, Spanish, Japanese, and French. She splits her time between New York City and Long Island.

Reviews

[Squirrel · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 1/2 stars.
I'd call this a book of literary fiction about sex rather than erotica as it was shelved at the Strand. The collection ultimately appealed to me on an aesthetic rather than a pants-feels sort of way.
On one hand, it's a relief to read about NYC without the tinge of 9/11 on it. On the other side, this anthology comes across as dated in part because it has an astonishingly large percentage of white writers for a book about New York. 32 of 34 writers are white, with the exception of Jamie Manrique and Mina Kumar who contributed solid pieces.
This collection is, however, extremely gay. I'd say about half the pieces are written by LGBTQ people. The high percentage of queer writers and the year, 1998, results in the pall of AIDS falling across the entire collection.
The work also feels dated because the vast majority of authors are relatively unknown. I only really recognized a few authors. Kate Bornstein has a very silly story about a trans woman relating details about her kinky life to some cops. Eileen Myles' story about going Upstate to hook up with a college student is very Eileen Myles-y. Michelle Tea's story about youthful attempts at unicorn hunting comes across as more cringe than enjoyable.
The rest of the stories ran the gamut of sexual experience, with most of the stories by straight guys coming off as somewhat sleazy. The only short story that I actively dislike is by Eleanor Levine; I think it's supposed to be a lighthearted work about lesbian dating but instead punches down hard against the trans lesbian character Maybelline Eyeliner who uses the protagonist's bathroom because she's afraid of restaurant transphobia and not some deeper agenda, but ends up being mocked by the protagonist to one of her friends. The whole thing just feels mean-spirited.
This collection definitely didn't wow me (for multiple definitions of wow) but it didn't completely suck. I'm not sure that I'd recommend it to friends, but if you're reading this review in a used bookstore trying to decide whether to get it, I say go ahead.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting theme - stories about and, more importantly, *around* sex - but no real standouts.