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Flesh and the Word 2: An Anthology of Erotic Writing
Since its publication, Flesh and the Word has continually topped gay bestseller lists. Now, the acclaimed editor of Hometowns and A Member of the Family has culled a whole new collection of the best gay male erotica, featuring the works of 26 writers.
432 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1993
1 person is currently reading
32 people want to read
About the author
John Preston
51 books80 followersJohn Preston wrote and edited gay erotica, fiction, and nonfiction.
He grew up in Medfield, Massachusetts, later living in a number of major American cities before settling in Portland, Maine in 1979. A writer of fiction and nonfiction, dealing mostly with issues in gay life, he was a pioneer in the early gay rights movement in Minneapolis. He helped found one of the earliest gay community centers in the United States, edited two newsletters devoted to sexual health, and served as editor of The Advocate in 1975.
He was the author or editor of nearly fifty books, including such erotic landmarks as Mr. Benson and I Once Had a Master and Other Tales of Erotic Love. Other works include Franny, the Queen of Provincetown (first a novel, then adapted for stage), The Big Gay Book: A Man's Survival Guide for the Nineties, Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS, and Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong.
Preston's writing (which he described as pornography) was part of a movement in the 1970s and 1980s toward higher literary quality in gay erotic fiction. Preston was an outspoken advocate of the artistic and social worth of erotic writings, delivering a lecture at Harvard University entitled My Life as a Pornographer. The lecture was later published in an essay collection with the same name. The collection includes Preston's thoughts about the gay leather community, to which he belonged. His writings caused controversy when he was one of several gay and lesbian authors to have their books confiscated at the border by Canada Customs. Testimony regarding the literary merit of his novel I Once Had a Master helped a Vancouver LGBT bookstore, Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium, to partially win a case against Canada Customs in the Canadian Supreme Court in 2000. Preston also brought gay erotic fiction to mainstream readers by editing the Flesh and the Word anthologies for a major press.
Preston served as a journalist and essayist throughout his life. He wrote news articles for Drummer and other gay magazines, produced a syndicated column on gay life in Maine, and penned a column for Lambda Book Report called "Preston on Publishing." His nonfiction anthologies, which collected essays by himself and others on everyday aspects of gay and lesbian life, won him the Lambda Literary Award and the American Library Association's Stonewall Book Award. He was especially noted for his writings on New England.
Although primarily known as a gay fiction writer, Preston was also hired by a local newspaper, The Portland Chronicle, to write news articles and features about his adopted hometown of Portland. He wrote a long feature about the local monopoly newspaper, the Portland Press Herald, as well as many food articles movie reviews and other writing.
In addition, Preston wrote men's adventure novels under the pseudonyms of Mike McCray, Preston MacAdam, and Jack Hilt (pen names that he shared with other authors). Taking what he had learned from authoring those books, he wrote the "Alex Kane" adventure novels about gay characters. These books, which included "Sweet Dreams," "Golden Years," and "Deadly Lies," combined action-story plots with an exploration of issues such as the problems facing gay youth.
Preston was among the first writers to popularize the genre of safe sex stories, editing a safe sex anthology entitled Hot Living in 1985. He helped to found the AIDS Project of Southern Maine. In the late 1980s, he discovered that he himself was HIV positive.
Some of his last essays, found in his nonfiction anthologies and in his posthumous collection Winter's Light, describe his struggle to come emotionally to terms with a disease that had already killed many of his friends and fellow writers.
He died of AIDS complications on April 28, 1994, aged 48, at his home in Portland. His papers are held in the Preston Archive at Brown University.
Librarian Note: There is more th
He grew up in Medfield, Massachusetts, later living in a number of major American cities before settling in Portland, Maine in 1979. A writer of fiction and nonfiction, dealing mostly with issues in gay life, he was a pioneer in the early gay rights movement in Minneapolis. He helped found one of the earliest gay community centers in the United States, edited two newsletters devoted to sexual health, and served as editor of The Advocate in 1975.
He was the author or editor of nearly fifty books, including such erotic landmarks as Mr. Benson and I Once Had a Master and Other Tales of Erotic Love. Other works include Franny, the Queen of Provincetown (first a novel, then adapted for stage), The Big Gay Book: A Man's Survival Guide for the Nineties, Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS, and Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong.
Preston's writing (which he described as pornography) was part of a movement in the 1970s and 1980s toward higher literary quality in gay erotic fiction. Preston was an outspoken advocate of the artistic and social worth of erotic writings, delivering a lecture at Harvard University entitled My Life as a Pornographer. The lecture was later published in an essay collection with the same name. The collection includes Preston's thoughts about the gay leather community, to which he belonged. His writings caused controversy when he was one of several gay and lesbian authors to have their books confiscated at the border by Canada Customs. Testimony regarding the literary merit of his novel I Once Had a Master helped a Vancouver LGBT bookstore, Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium, to partially win a case against Canada Customs in the Canadian Supreme Court in 2000. Preston also brought gay erotic fiction to mainstream readers by editing the Flesh and the Word anthologies for a major press.
Preston served as a journalist and essayist throughout his life. He wrote news articles for Drummer and other gay magazines, produced a syndicated column on gay life in Maine, and penned a column for Lambda Book Report called "Preston on Publishing." His nonfiction anthologies, which collected essays by himself and others on everyday aspects of gay and lesbian life, won him the Lambda Literary Award and the American Library Association's Stonewall Book Award. He was especially noted for his writings on New England.
Although primarily known as a gay fiction writer, Preston was also hired by a local newspaper, The Portland Chronicle, to write news articles and features about his adopted hometown of Portland. He wrote a long feature about the local monopoly newspaper, the Portland Press Herald, as well as many food articles movie reviews and other writing.
In addition, Preston wrote men's adventure novels under the pseudonyms of Mike McCray, Preston MacAdam, and Jack Hilt (pen names that he shared with other authors). Taking what he had learned from authoring those books, he wrote the "Alex Kane" adventure novels about gay characters. These books, which included "Sweet Dreams," "Golden Years," and "Deadly Lies," combined action-story plots with an exploration of issues such as the problems facing gay youth.
Preston was among the first writers to popularize the genre of safe sex stories, editing a safe sex anthology entitled Hot Living in 1985. He helped to found the AIDS Project of Southern Maine. In the late 1980s, he discovered that he himself was HIV positive.
Some of his last essays, found in his nonfiction anthologies and in his posthumous collection Winter's Light, describe his struggle to come emotionally to terms with a disease that had already killed many of his friends and fellow writers.
He died of AIDS complications on April 28, 1994, aged 48, at his home in Portland. His papers are held in the Preston Archive at Brown University.
Librarian Note: There is more th
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 2, 2024
Revised for greater Readability in April 2024).
I bought and read this anthology because I had enjoyed the first volume in the 'Flesh and the Word' series enough to give it a five star rating and a glowing review. I didn't enjoy this anthology as much and I doubt if I will buy or read the two subsequent books in the series. Why? at its simplest because although the stories in the first volume were mostly well written stories in which sex played a part in this anthology contained mostly well written stories about sex.
Let me be clear, I have no problem with sex in novels or stories, I don't care if any acts or body parts are mentioned or described, I do not believe that a work of 'art' can not arose you nor do I think there is anything wrong in being aroused by any kind of 'art'. But does anyone need, or want to read or erotic/pornographic stories in 2023?
OK, I am not stupid, I know there are online sites with erotic stories - but that only reinforces what I am about to say - now-a-days I have only to go-online and find almost any gay image that has been produced in the last fifty years - for free. The idea of reading a story, or stories, as a way of achieving sexual release seems incredibly quaint. Its like reading about all the fuss made over printing a word like 'fuck' in Lawrence's 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'.
The various essays that John Preston contributed to this volume are one of the most fascinating things about it and reminds me of how enormously 'gay' life has changed, but also of the differences between the USA and the UK at the time this anthology was published in 1993. This was the age of video and the variety and sexual freedom of what was available was comprehensive. In London material which in the USA would have been regarded as innocuous and vanilla could not be sold or distributed. Censorship was strict to the point of absurdity - when the independent UK film 'Scandal' was presented for certification the censors noticed that one of the naked actors in the background of an 'orgy scene' (which was comically free from sex, but essential to the story) had a penis which while not erect was not totally flaccid. That penis had to be cut which necessitated expensive editing and re-shoots because while the non flaccid penis was irrelevant to the story the foreground action was.
Preston's essays also reminds us that when this anthology it was the height of the AIDS epidemic and the very idea of gay sex was demonised and condemned, the use of the term 'innocent' to describe those whose infection was not of sexual origin, was not simply universal but reflected a Gnostic paradigm dividing those with AIDS into the worthy and the unworthy (although again in the UK while prejudice was just as rife it did not have reinforcement from a population of who actually believed in the Christian God or morality).
Putting the various stories into this context adds interest and relevance but does not really allow me to say that most of them are worth reading. They are well written, but the majority are stories about sex, not stories in which sex happens. Sex can be fun, but it is a matter of taste as to how much you want to consume either in the written word or even on-line.
That the stories are well written makes many of them problematic for me because so many contain so much violence, abuse and forced sex. Again let me emphasise that I am perfectly aware of the whole fantasy and role playing nature of, to put it simply, S&M but there is something discomforting, for me, in reading stories the whole purpose of which is humiliation and sexual abuse. That they are well written makes it more unpleasant for me. I can only compare it to when I have found scenes of torture and physical abuse from, usually independent or foreign (in other words non Hollywood) films, excerpted, posted and commented on about how 'hot' the scene of some naked young man with electrodes to his genitals or being sodomised with some object is.
Of course everyone in these scenes are 'acting' but they are acting in order to show the reality of the horrors of, for example, Chile under Pinochet, not in a porn scene. There is a quantitative difference between actors portraying real torture and porn performances set in dungeons, concentration camps or any other setting. The laters poor, if not risible, acting and production values clearly announce it as fantasy, and so with the printed word word. A stroke book full of stories of 'hot leather boys' learning to do their masters business can't be offensive because its contents are as insubstantial as soap bubbles and disconnected from any reality except its own hackneyed cliches. A story like 'Slave' by Aaron Travis (the pseudonym of Steven Saylor of Gordius the finder books) is for me deeply problematic. For over fifty pages a young slave is forced to endure the most brutal, demeaning and punishing physical and sexual abuse (that some would describe these events as 'cartoon' like doesn't help, I always found cartoon violence, like clowns, deeply disturbing as a child and still do). The character of the slave boy, the Roman who owns him and the setting are excellently created - they are believable enough to care about - which makes me question do I want to read fifty pages of the realistic abuse and humiliation (an almost essential part of these stories) of a slave boy? for no other reason then to vicariously enjoy the sexual brutality and humiliation and the answer is I don't and it is the quality of the writing that makes it unappealing.
I have given this anthology three stars because there are good things in it and because I am not sure that my own distaste does not actually contradict my belief that a writer should write about whatever he wants.
I bought and read this anthology because I had enjoyed the first volume in the 'Flesh and the Word' series enough to give it a five star rating and a glowing review. I didn't enjoy this anthology as much and I doubt if I will buy or read the two subsequent books in the series. Why? at its simplest because although the stories in the first volume were mostly well written stories in which sex played a part in this anthology contained mostly well written stories about sex.
Let me be clear, I have no problem with sex in novels or stories, I don't care if any acts or body parts are mentioned or described, I do not believe that a work of 'art' can not arose you nor do I think there is anything wrong in being aroused by any kind of 'art'. But does anyone need, or want to read or erotic/pornographic stories in 2023?
OK, I am not stupid, I know there are online sites with erotic stories - but that only reinforces what I am about to say - now-a-days I have only to go-online and find almost any gay image that has been produced in the last fifty years - for free. The idea of reading a story, or stories, as a way of achieving sexual release seems incredibly quaint. Its like reading about all the fuss made over printing a word like 'fuck' in Lawrence's 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'.
The various essays that John Preston contributed to this volume are one of the most fascinating things about it and reminds me of how enormously 'gay' life has changed, but also of the differences between the USA and the UK at the time this anthology was published in 1993. This was the age of video and the variety and sexual freedom of what was available was comprehensive. In London material which in the USA would have been regarded as innocuous and vanilla could not be sold or distributed. Censorship was strict to the point of absurdity - when the independent UK film 'Scandal' was presented for certification the censors noticed that one of the naked actors in the background of an 'orgy scene' (which was comically free from sex, but essential to the story) had a penis which while not erect was not totally flaccid. That penis had to be cut which necessitated expensive editing and re-shoots because while the non flaccid penis was irrelevant to the story the foreground action was.
Preston's essays also reminds us that when this anthology it was the height of the AIDS epidemic and the very idea of gay sex was demonised and condemned, the use of the term 'innocent' to describe those whose infection was not of sexual origin, was not simply universal but reflected a Gnostic paradigm dividing those with AIDS into the worthy and the unworthy (although again in the UK while prejudice was just as rife it did not have reinforcement from a population of who actually believed in the Christian God or morality).
Putting the various stories into this context adds interest and relevance but does not really allow me to say that most of them are worth reading. They are well written, but the majority are stories about sex, not stories in which sex happens. Sex can be fun, but it is a matter of taste as to how much you want to consume either in the written word or even on-line.
That the stories are well written makes many of them problematic for me because so many contain so much violence, abuse and forced sex. Again let me emphasise that I am perfectly aware of the whole fantasy and role playing nature of, to put it simply, S&M but there is something discomforting, for me, in reading stories the whole purpose of which is humiliation and sexual abuse. That they are well written makes it more unpleasant for me. I can only compare it to when I have found scenes of torture and physical abuse from, usually independent or foreign (in other words non Hollywood) films, excerpted, posted and commented on about how 'hot' the scene of some naked young man with electrodes to his genitals or being sodomised with some object is.
Of course everyone in these scenes are 'acting' but they are acting in order to show the reality of the horrors of, for example, Chile under Pinochet, not in a porn scene. There is a quantitative difference between actors portraying real torture and porn performances set in dungeons, concentration camps or any other setting. The laters poor, if not risible, acting and production values clearly announce it as fantasy, and so with the printed word word. A stroke book full of stories of 'hot leather boys' learning to do their masters business can't be offensive because its contents are as insubstantial as soap bubbles and disconnected from any reality except its own hackneyed cliches. A story like 'Slave' by Aaron Travis (the pseudonym of Steven Saylor of Gordius the finder books) is for me deeply problematic. For over fifty pages a young slave is forced to endure the most brutal, demeaning and punishing physical and sexual abuse (that some would describe these events as 'cartoon' like doesn't help, I always found cartoon violence, like clowns, deeply disturbing as a child and still do). The character of the slave boy, the Roman who owns him and the setting are excellently created - they are believable enough to care about - which makes me question do I want to read fifty pages of the realistic abuse and humiliation (an almost essential part of these stories) of a slave boy? for no other reason then to vicariously enjoy the sexual brutality and humiliation and the answer is I don't and it is the quality of the writing that makes it unappealing.
I have given this anthology three stars because there are good things in it and because I am not sure that my own distaste does not actually contradict my belief that a writer should write about whatever he wants.
February 4, 2024
Wasn’t as sharp as Volume 1, and the academic meta-narrative doesn’t feel fresh anymore. The closer, Better Safe, was really something special and reminded me of why preserving historical erotic literature is an important undertaking.
November 4, 2013
Honestly, the book is worth it for the Robert Patrick story alone, which is gorgeously written, heartbreaking, and pretty hot. The other stories in the book range from flat out porn to subtle, intricately devised erotica, and Preston's introduction and commentary throughout offer an interesting insight into the genre of literary erotica and how it has evolved in regards to the gay male community- including a particularly interesting chapter on gay erotica written by women. Definitely a worthy read for anyone interested in gay fiction and its unique place on the borders of smut, progressive, romance and social fiction, this book is really an anthology and not so much the trash literature the cover and/or title might lead you to believe.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews