First Love/Last Love

This is the second anthology of gay fiction culled from the pages of Christopher Street magazine. While it displays an interesting array of writers' styles and themesincluding those of David Leavitt, Jane DeLynn, Perri Klass, Eleanor Lerman, Jane Rule, David Plante, Andrew Holleran, James Purdy and Robert Ferrothe basic premise of the collection as a sampling of a particularly significant minority literature fails to hold up against the grating provincialism and insular self-absorption demonstrated by many of the characters. Such statements as ""I don't care about the other suckers. I care about my own depressing minority,'' depress the reader as well. With few exceptions, these stories offer little moral or emotional sustenance; neither do they succeed as diversion. November 18