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Rating: 
Summary: The Certainty of Good Fiction
Review: This is Patrick Franklin's only published book - to my knowledge - a collection of short stories culled mainly from such high-profile "men's magazines" as Advocate Men and Blueboy. With that as the original market for these tales, it is not surprising that the plots of the stories very often end in scenes of explicit sex ("Splendor and Black Wool", the story of a nun's brush with harmonic glory which her superiors mistake as blasphemy, defies that generalization). But Christopher Street, for years the preeminent gay literary journal, also published at least one of Franklin's stories earlier, and that accounts for the consistent literateness of the writing. Franklin, who published work under various pseudonyms, displays a welcome variety and originality here. This is not pornography, although the stories are genuinely erotic. There is science fiction here, humor, nostalgia, and whimsy (e.g., the mischieveous gay leprechaun in "The Luck of the Irish"). The book opens with "Stale Beer and Flowers", a marvelous evocation of the narrator's Kentucky boyhood, in which he learns a lot about life and love. Franklin gets the details right here and elsewhere. He describes with unfailing sharpness: we get a clear picture of whatever he presents us. "Love Under Glass" has a bizarre (though not entirely improbable) concept that works because of Franklin's skill. "Catalytic Converter", one of the book's two longest stories, is simply knockout erotic; you'll twitch and squirm as you read it. "New Clothes" has an O. Henry-type twist, and the title story features revenge as its central theme, and it is a finely orchestrated tale. Patrick Franklin has apparently disappeared from the scene. I hope he is stashed away in some room somewhere writing more entertaining stories, perhaps under another of those numerous pen names he adopted over the years. If not, he can rest with assurance that he left the world of writing with a most accomplished little book of stories.
Rating:
Summary: The Certainty of Good Fiction
Review: This is Patrick Franklin's only published book - to my knowledge - a collection of short stories culled mainly from such high-profile "men's magazines" as Advocate Men and Blueboy. With that as the original market for these tales, it is not surprising that the plots of the stories very often end in scenes of explicit sex ("Splendor and Black Wool", the story of a nun's brush with harmonic glory which her superiors mistake as blasphemy, defies that generalization). But Christopher Street, for years the preeminent gay literary journal, also published at least one of Franklin's stories earlier, and that accounts for the consistent literateness of the writing. Franklin, who published work under various pseudonyms, displays a welcome variety and originality here. This is not pornography, although the stories are genuinely erotic. There is science fiction here, humor, nostalgia, and whimsy (e.g., the mischieveous gay leprechaun in "The Luck of the Irish"). The book opens with "Stale Beer and Flowers", a marvelous evocation of the narrator's Kentucky boyhood, in which he learns a lot about life and love. Franklin gets the details right here and elsewhere. He describes with unfailing sharpness: we get a clear picture of whatever he presents us. "Love Under Glass" has a bizarre (though not entirely improbable) concept that works because of Franklin's skill. "Catalytic Converter", one of the book's two longest stories, is simply knockout erotic; you'll twitch and squirm as you read it. "New Clothes" has an O. Henry-type twist, and the title story features revenge as its central theme, and it is a finely orchestrated tale. Patrick Franklin has apparently disappeared from the scene. I hope he is stashed away in some room somewhere writing more entertaining stories, perhaps under another of those numerous pen names he adopted over the years. If not, he can rest with assurance that he left the world of writing with a most accomplished little book of stories.
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