As the new edition of my queer collection,
Filthy has just been released by the wonderful Renaissance/Sizzler (now called
Filthy Boys) here's a quick blast of some reviews the book has gotten.
Enjoy!
Erotica That Reads Like Literature
I
have enjoyed M. Christian’s work for a long time. His solo collection
Dirty Words and his two multiple-author anthologies co-edited with Simon
Sheppard, Rough Stuff and Roughed Up, are among my favorite volumes of
erotica.
Which
brings me to Filthy: Outrageous Gay Erotica, a new collection of gay
erotic stories by M. Christian. To say this is a great book is an
understatement. It runs the gamut of emotions, from anger to sadness to
ecstasy to envy.
Here are capsule reviews of some of my favorite stories from Filthy…
“The
Greener Grasses” in one short story captures the entire paradox of
trying to reconcile a leatherfetish lifestyle into the humdrum world of
9-to-5 jobs and dishes to be washed more than volumes of scholarly
non-fiction ever has.
“Flyboy”
is a wistful tale of a man who has two lovers, one flesh and blood and
one as big as all outdoors. Guess which one gets him in the end. You
might be surprised.
“Love”
reads as a tender valentine to all the gay men, imaginary or otherwise,
who have inspired the author over the years to create his amazing tales
of erotica.
“Suddenly, Last Thursday” is a haunting, harrowing riff on Tennessee Williams’s play Suddenly, Last Summer.
And “Friday Night at the Calvary Hotel” is an amazing tale that gets my vote for one of the top ten best short stories ever.
Filthy transcends its genre of erotica and enters the realm of literature.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
#
What makes a good short story? Felice Picano, in his forward to
Filthy
offers
some of the more traditional takes: a deft handling of voice, of place,
of character. But really, what makes a good short story - what makes a
great short story - is a truly good idea.
Luckily for Christian – and luckily for us – truly good ideas are not in short supply in this collection.
A
perfect example comes in "Sunset Boulevard," one of many tales that
puts a queer twist on an old story. Christian, riffing brilliantly on
the campness of the original movie, recasts the central fading screen
siren as an aging gay porn star. And it might seem risible to allow the
gloriously queeny Norman Desmond to intone, "I am big. It's porno that
got small," but Christian pulls it off.
Christian
isn't shy of a little shameless genre straddling with his startlingly
imaginative ideas either. In "The Hope of Cinnamon" we enter a future
world in which gay men have mastered the art of time travel in order to
save their queer brothers from oppressive regimens of the past. But this
tale is also a good example of how the short story format can be
frustrating for the reader when presented with such a dazzling concept
as this one. The idea is simply too big for the form. The problem
presented – that the rescued men cannot cope with a life in nirvana –
isn’t so much explored as thrown at us before we are hustled away for
the next story.
This
is where the book wears thin. The stories in this book are short,
averaging ten pages of in-out wham-bam. After a while it starts to feel
like Christian is torturing his readers, deserting his unsatisfied
readers for fresh thrills before they have quite achieved emotional
climax. Too much is left undone and unsaid. This collection could have
featured just the five best ideas – including the wonderfully disturbing
quasi-religious "Friday Night at The Calvary Hotel" – and served up
five wonderful novellas.
In
the final story – the most enjoyable of the whole collection –
Christian once again attempts a daring feat and pulls it off neatly as
he spins us a tale of a young gay reader so besotted with an author of
outrageous gay erotica he takes a pilgrimage to his grave. Angered by
his discovery en route that his hero was in fact in a relationship with a
woman, he means to urinate over the author's last resting place, but
ends up recalling too many of the author's purplest passages and doing
something entirely different. It is no surprise when Christian reveals
the name on the headstone of this soiled grave.
While Filthy is
a wonderful book, and just the thing if you are in the mood for an
enjoyable quickie (or twenty), it's not the place to turn if you are
more in the mood for a story that can go all night.
– Mathilde Madden, Reflection's Edge
#
I
read a guide to reviewing books recently. It said a reviewer should be
impartial. I can see that point of view; the work should be judged on
its own merit. However, it's impossible for me to pick up a book by M.
Christian and not have expectations that are based on previous works
I've read. So I guess it's only fair to begin this review with full
disclosure: I'm a fan.
I'm torn over the idea of erotica as a distinct genre, and M. Christian's work is fuel for this internal debate. In The Hope of Cinnamon,
a future society rescues gay victims from Nazi death camps and brings
them forward in time to a sanctuary. Gen, one of the Helpers who works
to integrate the Rescued into their new home finds out that few of the
Rescued successfully survive the transition. He decides to travel back
in time to experience the death camps for himself so that he will have a
better understanding of why the Rescued fail to thrive in a society
that fully accepts them. While this story does touch on sex and
sexuality, it is a great example of speculative fiction that prompts
further examination of our time and how current and future gay
generations need to be aware of the history of gay culture and see it in
proper historical perspective instead of viewing it, and judging,
through hindsight.
As much as I hate the term coming-of-age tale, Utter West is
a near-future story that shows a character coming of age, and more.
Pony is the narrator's hero, the one who escaped their suburban hell and
went beyond it to something wonderful and mystical - or so the narrator
wants to believe. Unaware that he's destroying the beautiful myth
that's grown around his disappearance, Pony comes back as an ordinary
adult, prompting the narrator to break free and take the journey Pony
failed to make into the beyond of the Utter West.
If noir is more your style, enjoy M. Christian's homage to Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood Boulevard, or sink into the corner pocket of the night world of pool hustlers in The Hard Way. That Sweet Smell is
really the scent of corruption, but keep telling yourself it's success,
because in this story, that delusion is all the narrator has to cling
to.
Moby is
purely tall tale, told with the flair of real yarn-spinner. Could
anyone stink that much, be that cussedly mean, or be that hung? It's all
in the telling - joyously and outrageously over the top.
Or maybe you're in the mood for bittersweet romance and love. Flyboy is the soaring romance we all long for, crashed down to earth by the military's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. And Love is
a writer's story, about how much it means to us when our stories are
wanted, and how hard it is to separate the pure love of acceptance from
the physical.
And then there's horror. Friday Night at the Calvary Hotel is
the hardest story to read in this collection for it's intense mix of
sadism, masochism, religious imagery and sex. Stories like that cling to
you long after you've put the book down. You decide if that's a good
thing or a bad thing, but I like that. Suddenly, Last Thursday is
horror of a different stripe - lush and gothic, where you might have to
read a line several times before your brain accepts what it's telling
you. That slow dawning of realization is delicious and shivery.
In
the movie Sunset Boulevard, Joe Gillis says, "Sometimes it's
interesting to see just how bad bad writing can be." Yes, but it's
gratifying to see just how good good writing can be too. It's
unfortunate that erotic writing has a reputation for bad writing, but
sit down with this collection and let M. Christian change that
prejudice.
– Kathleen Bradean
#
“Filthy”
is subtitled “Outrageous Gay Erotica”, it could also be called “the
book that stole my Saturday”. It arrived in the mail and I intended to
slot it into my reading queue after several other books that have been
waiting patiently for my attention. I flicked over the somewhat dry
preface to the first story and it was all over.
In
'The Greener Grasses' M. Christian shows us immediately that this is
not a collection to be trifled with, picked up and put down. I was
thrust immediately us into the point of view of a real flawed, sexual,
vulnerable protagonist. The sexuality is always frank but blended with
charming love stories like 'Heart in Your Hand' or '2+1' or folksy
fables like 'Moby'. The writer’s skills are perhaps best shown in the
apt blending of sexuality with darker threads such as in 'Bitch' where
one man’s bitterness and hate escapes his control or 'Friday Night at
the Calvary Hotel' with its queasy look at the blend of sadism and
sexuality in religious symbolism. I found the homage stories 'Hollywood
Blvd' and 'Suddenly, Last Thursday' just a little heavy handed but still
engaging reading.
The
stand-outs for me were simple stories, but perfect in their parts.
'Oroborous' uses a botched tattoo to contrast the pain and trouble of
“fixing” what is “wrong” about us (not what we would choose) with the
joys of embracing it what we are. After reading it I had one of those
moments staring at the wall and letting it sink in. And there were
actually tears in my eyes at the end of the tragic love story of
'Flyboy'. The speculative stories are also strong: 'Utter West' gives a
new meaning to the youthful desire to get out of a dead-end town and
'The Hope of Cinnamon' shows a far future gay community that rescues
persecuted gay men from the past and is shown, through their eyes, what
may be missing from their apparent utopia.
All
of the stories have a strong concept as well as explicit sexual
content. I would quibble at calling it “erotica”. Erotic, yes, but not
quite in the step-by-step manner intended for one handed reading. It’s
one of those oft-quoted phrases that our biggest sex organ in our brain;
I’m willing to bet that author M. Christian would agree. Almost every
story in this collection is perfectly constructed for the intellect: set
up, satisfaction and pay off within a few short pages. Some stories are
unapologetically erotic and others nostalgically sensual, only
obliquely erotic at all or proudly a little perverse—but the erotic is
there to serve the story in the manner and amount the narrative
requires.
If
you are looking for sexually-charged fiction that also has heart and
intelligence “Filthy” is the collection for you—just don’t pick it up
until you have the free time to read it from cover to cover.
– Emily Veinglory
