The Soho Press book of 80s short fiction

Review by Booklist Review

The 1980s may prove to be the most divisive decade in American history, remembered as much for Reaganomics and Wall Street excess as for the devastation caused by the AIDS epidemic. It was a time when greed and sex became weaponized, so writes critic, novelist, now anthology editor Peck (Visions and Revisions, 2015), who lambasts the era's slow response to economic and cultural segregation. And yet, for all its faults, the 1980s produced writers who revel in irony, experimentation, and the sometimes painful liberation that can accompany sex, the lens through which the artifice of identity could be seen most clearly. These stories reflect those concerns, from Jamaica Kincaid's linguistically rich, affecting monologue of a mother instructing her child in Girl; to Gary Indiana's unflinching story of a young man seeking fulfillment in Sodomy; to Mary Gaitskill's surprisingly unsettling Secretary. The anthology includes other big names, like Amy Hempel and Raymond Carver, but also includes pieces by controversial photographer David Wojnarowicz and poet Gil Cuadros. With an emphasis on gay and lesbian authors, Peck has assembled a powerful collection that celebrates writers who found strength in the very traits that had been used to vilify them. --Báez, Diego Copyright 2016 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A new anthology of fiction explores the chaotic literary energy of the 1980s. The 1980s were a vibrant period for American fiction. On the one hand, there were the so-called "Dirty Realists": Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson. On the other, the gritty urban writers of the Lower East Side, such as Lynne Tillman, Dennis Cooper, and David Wojnarowicz. Somewhere in the middle were the literary brat packers, including Bret Easton Ellis. Add Los Angeles' Gil Cuadros and San Francisco's Kevin Killian and Dodie Bellamy, and you've got a potent mix encapsulating the tensions, aesthetic or otherwise, of the decade: AIDS, economic disruption, a disconnect between official culture (Ronald Reagan's Morning in America) and the more treacherous realities of the street. "It may be that historywhatever 'history' is anymoreremembers the '80s as the last analog moment when human beings were what we had always been, before we're fully digitized into whatever hive creature information technology is in the process of creating," editor Peck writes in his introduction to this far-reaching collection. That's an important aspect of the era, too. All these concerns, these implications, mark the 34 stories Peck has gathered, which are notable for their pointedness as well as their diversity. In "Pretending to Say No," Bruce Benderson imagines Nancy Reagan showing up at a crack house (or does she?), where she reveals a fundamental secret about herself. A.M. Homes' "A Real Doll" is narrated by a boy who doses his sister's Barbie with Valium so he can have sex with heran oddly human experience for all its transgressive fantasy. Some of the stories here (Johnson's "Work" or Carver's magnificent "So Much Water So Close to Home") are widely recognized, but others, including Eileen Myles' "Robin" and Jessica Hagedorn's "Pet Food," are lesser known. The result is a collection that avoids clich or nostalgia in favor of an unexpected and refreshingly inclusive point of view. Peck's collection masterfully evokes the range and diversity of its era. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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