The Body and Its Dangers & Other Stories

By Allen Barnett

Book Overview

Allen Barnett saw this collection of short stories published in 1991, the same year as his death due to AIDS-related illness at the age of 36. The Body and Its Dangers and Other Stories won a Ferro-Grumley Award and a Lambda-Literary Award and is widely regarded as a classic of American literature.

"Allen Barnett knew how to plait the somber and the sardonic. His work is as light as it is dark, as funny as it is heart-breaking. I met him only once at a gay literary conference in San Francisco and, with that instant mixture of sincerity and intimacy for which we Americans are famous, he said to me, "I wish I didn't have to die so young. There's still so much I want to write." Every page is as fresh and immediate as the day he wrote it; we can only prize the masterful stories in this collection and regret there aren't many others." -Edmund White, A Boys Own Story and Genet: A Biography
"Allen Barnett's fiction is true. That is, even when the writing is elegant it is also incisive, heated and revelatory. Each phrase, whether describing alienation or loss, desire or that which is unknowable, lands with a trembling resonance; a graceful touch which can never be forgotten. I'm grateful that his 'fully human' stories have lived to amaze a new generation."-Jewelle Gomez, The Gilda Stories
"Of all the vibrant literature - fiction, memoirs, reporting, criticism, histories - that emerged in the United States during the height of the AIDS epidemic Allen Barnett's The Body and Its Dangers stands out as a dazzling example of how personal and social tragedy can produce brilliant art. Each of these stories deftly and brilliantly exposes the desires, fears, love, and untimely the terrors of being a human and being alive. Barnett's prose is seductive and alluring even as - or especially when - he is gently exposing those the daily disruptive and unsettling realizations that to be human is to be mortal, and to be mortal is to acknowledge the power and beauty of the body."-Michael Bronski, A Queer History of the United States and co-editor of Invisible History: The Collected Poems of Walta Borawski

"Inspiring truth-telling through acute perceptions of the connection between language and life. Allen had the courage to make literature expand to reflect the AIDS experience, the talent to make the petty an intrinsic part of the profound. He knew when to look away and when to look."-Sarah Schulman, Let the Record Show: A Political Historyof ACT UP New York, 1987-1993

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1608642968
• ISBN13: 9781608642960
• Release Date: December 2023
• Publisher: Library of Homosexual Congress
• Length: 246 Pages
• Weight: 0.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

The Loss(es) are almost impossible to bear.

There have been many talented gay writers who we have lost in the AIDS epidemic...or pandemic, really. If I had to choose one, Allen Barnett would be that man. His stories are just incredibly beautiful, and painful, to read. What might he have produced had he lived? A question that could be asked of so many others as well. Read this book; see how it was almost twenty years ago.

The best book I read last year

I was very impressed with the quality of writing in this book, and the extraordinary compassion of the author that is evident even in the less likeable characters.The metaphors in the book are richly woven into the stories, especially the two dealing with the friends from the Jesuit college whose lives are profoundly affected by their relationships. I hope this book gets a wider reading public than gay men as several themes explored in the book- illness, breast cancer, finding the father figure, sexuality and sensuality, loss of traditional spirituality- are issues facing many men and women in society. I was distressed to learn that Mr Barnett himself had died of AIDS shortly after the book was published. He was a very gifted writer of perception and depth, and I mourn this loss to the literary world.

Sensitive and Powerful!

A most sensitive and yet powerful collection of short stories with 'The Body...' being the best of the lot. With this expressive power how come we didn't hear more from (and on) this VERY talented writer ???

The best work of American fiction from the AIDS pandemic

Put simply, Barnett's "The Body and Its Dangers" is the best work of American fiction to come out of the AIDS pandemic--its beautiful prose, its rich and fierce vision. The long story "The 'Times' As It Knows Us" alludes to and is finally equal to Joyce's "The Dead": it's a story as large as the complexities and sorrows it describes.

Elegant Stories

Allen Barnett won a Lambda Literary Award for these six short stories that convey the human experience of love, loss, and our ability to cope -- with spare, emotional and intelligent writing.