The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Fetish: An Anthology by John YueAmy Havel
John Yau, ed. Fetish: An Anthology. Four Walls Eight Windows, 1998. 318 pp. Paper: $15.95.
In his introduction, John Yau explains his hopes for this compilation of short pieces, that he wanted to “satisfy [his] desire for an anthology that would neither replicate previous anthologies nor settle for an already defined category.” With that in mind, Yau solicited some favorite writers to contribute and therefore, some of the writing is appearing for the first time. The range of authors and topics is vast—Cris Mazza’s “first” bra to Charles Bukowski’s mannequin, Wang Ping’s crush to Ben Marcus’s resuscitated wife—but they are conveniently separated here by fetish code: I-You, I-It, and Us-Them. Each section has at least one story that stands out in originality and presents surprising relationships among the characters and their need-things or the unspoken desires that exist between them: Jonathan Lethem’s “The Spray,” Michael Brodsky’s “The Son, He Must Not Know,” and Shelley Jackson’s “Jominy” particularly make the anthology worthwhile. The lesser-best are the cringeworthy recognizables: the fun-with-excrement fable, torture devices as plot necessities, minor porno scenes that do not deviate from their expected results, etc. Surprisingly, Gordon Lish shows up to chat about John Yau’s feet and ask why no one except for Gordon Lish is “looking truth square in the eye.” I’d have to argue with his judgment; every writer here is definitely looking truth “square in the eye.” The believability of that truth’s reflection is what sometimes falters. [Amy Havel]