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From Publishers Weekly A first short-story collection by novelist-poet Cooper ( Frisk ; The Tenderness of Wolves )， this book is relentlessly unpleasant if skillfully written. Cooper's obsessions--serial killers， drugged-out male hustlers， abusive gay relationships--run through the collection like the chorus of a particularly nihilistic rock song. Characters--a Jeffrey Dahmer-type murderer of teenage boys， the members of a semi-pro rock band called Horror Hospital--recur intermittently， but situations are repeated incessantly. With its reduction of gay life to an endless round of rough sex and drugs bracketed by violent death， Cooper's work is a tawdry throwback to a time before AIDS. He has an uncanny eye for the nasty metaphor: "A boy's shaved head was just visible inside one end of a rolled-up carpet like the fruit of a Chapstick." Cooper's craftsmanship is undeniable， although he could be talking about himself when he has the narrator of "Square One" observe that "the sharpest new writers tend to appropriate either the language or sheen of pornography." His is a profoundly disturbing book， as much for its detached tones and sense of ennui as for the acts it so graphically depicts. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information， Inc. From Library Journal It is hard to imagine two more disparate books produced by the same man. As the editor of Discontents， a wide-ranging collection of stories by 56 queer writers， Cooper melds a flourish of often harsh and always autonomous voices into a coherent if not melodic whole. In Wrong， however， his own soft voice is singularly focused， using a minimum of themes and characters. As in Cooper's longer prose ( Frisk ， 1991; Closer ， 1989; both Grove)， violent death and loveless sex are examined as a last means to understanding life--with ambiguous results. Describing the characters as victims and perpetrators seems almost too concrete， given their universal hollowness and longing. Though the stories are not uneventful， the reader remembers best the haunting tableaux created by the characters' haziness and lack of direction. Similarities aside， these stories do not merely rehash themes Cooper has investigated over ten years， but a couple are weak alongside the rest. In "Introducing Horror Hospital，" for instance， Cooper's undercutting of Trevor's nihilistic pose seems almost trite. Yet the skillful conflation of two narrators in "Dear Secret Diary" alone makes this essential for all literary collections. In his one-paragraph introduction， Cooper calls Discontents "ultra-literary at the one extreme and post-literate at the other." Indeed， no commonality exists beyond the writers' unapologetic queerness. For the first time in a fiction collection a "queer aesthetic" is apparent， as distinct from the oft-cited but equally hard to define "gay aesthetic." In this new aesthetic， sex and sexuality are a given; the critique of and separateness from societal norms (both gay and straight) are prized; and multiculturalism is displayed at its best--not as politically correct conformity but as the empowerment of individuals by their individuality. Some of these writers have appeared in large-circulation gay magazines or have previous books to their credit， but most come from the fertile grounds of self-published magazines called "zines" (over 200 of which were represented at a recent conference in Los Angeles). Recommended for contemporary fiction collections and all academic libraries.- Eric Bryant， "Library Journal"Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information， Inc. See all Editorial Reviews