FRIENDS AND LOVERS

Twenty-four grimly earnest essays about gay affections, most of which fail to substantiate the subtitle's premise that some larger issue is at stake. Anthologist Preston (Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong, 1991, etc.), who died last year of AIDS, writes in his introduction that ``gay men can see the nuances of `family' with the clarity of outsiders.'' This vague editorial conceit is not, unfortunately, borne out by most of the work here. Perhaps a quarter of the contributors have something substantial to say about what constitutes ``family'': Adam Levine writes about how he inadvertently became the caretaker of a garden in a Philadelphia vacant lot and earned his neighbors' trust and affection; Jesse G. Monteagudo discusses his conversion to Judaism from the homophobic Catholicism of his Cuban childhood; the anonymous Michael L. talks about his recovery from alcoholism via ``Gay AA.'' These authors and a few others present the discovery of new familial bonds, not as the goal of their respective endeavors, but as an unexpected gift, and their essays consequently have a narrative drive and resonance that is wanting elsewhere. Michael Bronski reflects unpersuasively on a Boston gay bar's '70s clientele as family; Andrew Holleran meditates in his usual hangdog tone about what AIDS does to friendships. Some reminiscences are simply inert: Essays by Michael Rowe, Eric Latzky, Alan Bell, and Preston himself, for instance, serve mostly as testimony to the authors' capacity for companionship—nice for them, but hardly gripping reading. Steven Saylor's ``A Marriage Manual'' stands out as virtually the only selection to betray a sense of humor. Although it showcases a handful of very good writers, the inexorably heartfelt collection leaves one with the sense of being trapped in a Sunday magazine supplement.