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In Another Part of the Forest: An Anthology of Gay Short Fiction
An anthology, consisting of complete short stories written by both men and women on the subject of male homosexual love. The volume brings together tales from countries as diverse as Poland, Japan, Cuba, France and Israel - it also includes work from a range of writers from different eras - from Andre Gide to Patrick Gale, Oscar Wilde to Angela Carter. As well as providing an introduction to the anthology as a whole, Manguel and Stephenson have written introductions to each story - in addition, Manguel has himself translated several of the pieces.
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First published January 1, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 1, 2021
I approach short story collections with caution, and gay fiction with double caution. Against those odds, this is possibly the best short story collection I've ever read. The key is that the stories were clearly selected based on merit, rather than the reputations or sexuality of the authors. Published in 1994, the editors do an admirable job of representing varied eras, places and experiences, and with only a few exceptions - D.H. Lawrence and Daphne du Maurier are hopelessly purple, there's just no helping it - every story in here offers surprises, insight and feeling. Editors' introductions, something I'd normally skip, focused the stories' power rather than diluting it. A real wonder.
August 6, 2007
There is some great stuff in here - some really great prose that is wrenching and that explores the breadth of gay reality. It's easy to dip in and out of this, and some of the stories I go back to again and again. The Hemingway selection is just delicious - there are pieces from Alice Munro, James Baldwin, Tennessee Williams, Ray Bradbury, Allan Gurganus, Yukio Mishima -- it's a great collection to have.
November 9, 2008
At times shocking, especially if you're a middle-aged white straight woman like me, but then I need to shake it up a bit once in a while. I enjoyed about 90% of the stories - I think an exceptional statistic for any anthology. These are stories where the subject of homosexuality (male only) is a central part of the theme. The authors(42 of them) range from Alice Munroe to Ray Bradbury and since I've never read much Science Fiction, this anthology opened my eyes to this and other fiction genres. It's long (668 pages) but a very enjoyable and enlightening read.
June 19, 2024
Update June 2024: I have decided to not simply update but remove my original review and write a new one because I no longer think it is sufficient to say if this a good or bad collection of stories (it is in fact an excellent selection) but why in the second quarter of the 21st century it is not only still worth reading but is essential reading.
The late twentieth century produced some very fine anthologies of writing by current gay authors, the Men on Men series originally edited by George Stambolian being the best known, but there also anthologies which explored the theme of male homosexuality (please see my footnote *1 below) but which included work by women and men who were not gay and attempted to include a sampling of authors from throughout the 20th century and from around the globe. 'In Another Part of the Forest' by Alberto Manguel and Craig Stephenson is probably the best and most comprehensive, certainly in terms of the country of origin of the authors, anthology of short fiction on the theme of male homosexuality. I am deliberately avoiding the term 'gay' because how that term was understood in 1994 and how it is understood now. In 1994 the idea that Gay or Homosexual men were worthy of being a theme in literature, or that they had a literary history or a tradition in any of the arts was generally dismissed. It was a time when the gayness of figures such as Thomas Mann, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Jasper Johns or Robert Rauschenberg was denied, ignored or dismissed as the theories of cranks or obsessives. Anthologies like this one provided light on a world that was still too often dismissed as pathologically abnormal or irrelevant.
This anthology includes stories about Gay men from authors from the Soviet Union (at the time of publication still in existence), China, Japan, Australia, Ireland, Canada, Argentina, France, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, New Zealand as well as strong samplings from the USA and UK. I know many of the authors are not gay and I am sure many younger readers would not find them 'Gay' in the sense that they would understand the word. Which is why anthologies like this should be read. Gay men have a history and a past and it is not one based on sufferance. Most of these stories in this anthology have been published outside of any 'gay' publication or anthology. They stand as works of literature and they tell stories that are universal and speak to all of us - unless maybe you chose not to hear.
*1 It may be hard for younger readers to understand but for a long time there was only the terms Gay and Lesbian - in the very early days of Gay Liberation attempts had been made to use Gay as an inclusive description but it never caught on and the few attempts at presenting Gay and Lesbian writing under one cover came to naught because of accusations, often justified, of tokenism. The universal use of LGBT only came in at the very end of the 1990s is probably best defined as a 21st century term.
The late twentieth century produced some very fine anthologies of writing by current gay authors, the Men on Men series originally edited by George Stambolian being the best known, but there also anthologies which explored the theme of male homosexuality (please see my footnote *1 below) but which included work by women and men who were not gay and attempted to include a sampling of authors from throughout the 20th century and from around the globe. 'In Another Part of the Forest' by Alberto Manguel and Craig Stephenson is probably the best and most comprehensive, certainly in terms of the country of origin of the authors, anthology of short fiction on the theme of male homosexuality. I am deliberately avoiding the term 'gay' because how that term was understood in 1994 and how it is understood now. In 1994 the idea that Gay or Homosexual men were worthy of being a theme in literature, or that they had a literary history or a tradition in any of the arts was generally dismissed. It was a time when the gayness of figures such as Thomas Mann, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Jasper Johns or Robert Rauschenberg was denied, ignored or dismissed as the theories of cranks or obsessives. Anthologies like this one provided light on a world that was still too often dismissed as pathologically abnormal or irrelevant.
This anthology includes stories about Gay men from authors from the Soviet Union (at the time of publication still in existence), China, Japan, Australia, Ireland, Canada, Argentina, France, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, New Zealand as well as strong samplings from the USA and UK. I know many of the authors are not gay and I am sure many younger readers would not find them 'Gay' in the sense that they would understand the word. Which is why anthologies like this should be read. Gay men have a history and a past and it is not one based on sufferance. Most of these stories in this anthology have been published outside of any 'gay' publication or anthology. They stand as works of literature and they tell stories that are universal and speak to all of us - unless maybe you chose not to hear.
*1 It may be hard for younger readers to understand but for a long time there was only the terms Gay and Lesbian - in the very early days of Gay Liberation attempts had been made to use Gay as an inclusive description but it never caught on and the few attempts at presenting Gay and Lesbian writing under one cover came to naught because of accusations, often justified, of tokenism. The universal use of LGBT only came in at the very end of the 1990s is probably best defined as a 21st century term.
February 18, 2011
An extremely good anthology of stories about gay men, from a wide range of authors, some you might expect (Yukio Mishima, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, Truman Capote) and some you might not (William Trevor, Alice Munro, Daphne du Maurier). Alberto Manguel is an expert anthologiser, mixing the familiar and the unexpected to create an illuminating range of material.
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September 18, 2022An interesting though uneven compilation, though I suppose any 700+ page anthology is bound to feature questionable choices, many of which other readers will find superb. I tended to enjoy more the stories that were more about the emotional bond of male lovers and less those focused more specifically on attaining physical satisfaction. No surprise, really.
September 15, 2018
I picked up this book because I saw it contained short stories by Yukio Mishima and Pai Hsien-Yung, gay Asian writers that I've read and thoroughly enjoyed before. I was also interested in seeing the difference in themes of queer literature in the 1990s to now. I didn't expect literally every single story being about huge age gaps, to the point where many of the younger of the relationships was still underage while the older were 40s+. It really bothers me that gay male fiction idolizes these relationships and continues to do so with novels/films like Call Me By Your Name, which just further weaponizes homophobic belief in the predatory and pedophiliac nature of queerness.
I refuse to read this book anymore, I got halfway through all the stories but I can't bring myself to keep going on when nearly every story is a let down. Onnagata by Yukio Mishima and A Sky Full of Bright, Twinkling Stars by Pai Hsien-Yung deserve to be included in a much better anthology than this one.
I refuse to read this book anymore, I got halfway through all the stories but I can't bring myself to keep going on when nearly every story is a let down. Onnagata by Yukio Mishima and A Sky Full of Bright, Twinkling Stars by Pai Hsien-Yung deserve to be included in a much better anthology than this one.
August 29, 2018
Some great writing by some well-known and not so well-known writers. A good opportunity to find new .writers to explore.
January 13, 2016
Not sure if I read all the stories in this volume..
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews