SOURCE: Van Leer, David. “Beyond the Margins.” New Republic (12 October 1992): 50-3.

In the following review, Van Leer discusses the problematic categorization of gay literature and offers a tempered review of Discontents, which he praises for its subversive angle but criticizes for its inclusion of banal experimentalism.

Homosexuality in literature takes many forms. A teacher suspects his motives for wishing to separate a pupil from his parents. A black American sees his affection for a bisexual African as a kind of economic exploitation. A transvestite dishes the writer Brett Easton Ellis and teases the nipples of the rock star Adam Horovitz. The diversity of these stories might lead some to wonder whether there is such a thing as “gay literature.” Indeed, the meaning of the category is the subject of a vigorous if implicit debate in the new anthologies promoting gay fiction. (In recent years the anthology has become...