I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore (1987)

I have two quibbles with outofit's review. One is that he doesn't tell you how nice the people in this book are. They can be very catty queens, but underneath, they're genuinely nice people who are trying to make things better for everyone. The second is the issue of erudition. There is no question that Mordden is erudite. Is he talking down to his readers? I didn't get that impression. I think there's a difference between assuming your readers know (or can know) all the nifty things that you know and assuming that anyone who doesn't know what you do should get their act together in order to read your wonderful prose. I thought the stories were really about the characters, with the erudition served up on the side, to be admired or ignored as the reader chose. ( )

This is the first book of inter-related short stories in what the author calls the "Buddies Cycle" which also includes Buddies, Everybody Loves You, Some Men Are Lookers and How's Your Romance? Originally it was a trilogy (he said THE END rather firmly at the conclusion of the third volume, then a few years later published a fourth volume, which ended on a cliff hanger, paving the way for the fifth book, which is again billed as THE END...will he really stop now?)

The stories center around the lives of Bud, the narrator, his best friend and upstairs neighbor Dennis Savage, the latter's lover, Virgil Brown, who is called Little Kiwi in the early years and later becomes simply "J" and their super-circuit-hunk friend Carlo.

The setting is a mid-town Manhattan apartment building. The timeline in the earliest stories is the 1970's. The stories in this volume deal largely with issues of coming out and the development of the "Stonewall social set".

Mordden's writing is crisp and polished and can be quite a joy to read, though sometimes he appears to mistake this very particular milieu for All gay life, which can be a bit off-putting to those of us who were never a part of that drugs, dish and disco world but have nonetheless lived very gay lives. Occasionally he also has a tendency to crank his erudition up to a degree that he is talking down to the rest of us.

These minor flaws aside, I've A Feeling... is a masterful portrayal of gay life in a particular place and time and a very satisfying read. ( )