Rent Boy

Gary Indiana is a great writer without much of a discernible readership. He writes about predominately gay characters, but without the PC-endorsed viewpoint very often required by the gay community when portraying gay characters. In other words, these aren't the kind of gay people that make you think, "Oh if only the whole world were gay what a wonderful, loving, utopia it would be." No--this is gay people as really just another species of Homo Miserables. Fact is, Indiana doesn't portray anyone in a very sympathetic light, being of that rare class of unrelentingly misanthropic authors, among whom I proudly number myself, who don't have a lot good to say about human beings period. Almost any Gary Indiana novel is good reading...*Gone Tomorrow,* *Do Everything in the Dark,* *Resentment,* *Depraved Indifference*...you could pick up anyone and not go wrong. Each offers Indiana's scathing indictment of the greed, envy, lust, betrayal, hypocrisy, and murderous impulses that flesh--hetero or homo--is unfortunately heir to. *Rent Boy* recommends itself in particular for its brevity--about 120 pages--and its sordid subject matter: male prostitution...seedy, perverted, and ultimately deadly. Although some reviewers have sort of spilled the beans on the plot in reviews south of this one, I'll refrain from going into specifics, except to say, that the "plot," per se, is not really what you're reading for here. Still, *Rent Boy* offers a solid, classic noir set-up with a chilling payoff in the closing pages. In *Rent Boy* we follow the autobiographical exploits of "Danny"--a young male hustler who is writing letters to the presumed "author" of this book. Danny is a character type that readers might be familiar with from encountering his likes in the works of another much-maligned "gay" author--Dennis Cooper--as well as the Bret Easton Ellis of *American Psycho* and *Glamorama.* That being the good-looking, morally bereft, vacuous, upwardly mobile, status-seeking youth of today obsessed with sex, drugs, clothes, clubs, cash, and the state of his abs. In pursuit of the top of the line in all of the preceding, a lot of bad choices will be made. Well, not "choices" exactly. Characters like Danny don't really make choices. They just kind of drift into bad situations with little or no resistance. What might go overlooked in all the mayhem is that Gary Indiana is a very fine and careful prose stylist. Sentence by sentence, image by image, he builds a vivid and disturbing view of the world that is as beautifully rendered as its very often unpleasant to see. He transmutes the gritty and disgusting into a dark poetry that is often comic, often perversely beautiful. His psychological autopsy of human nature and American pop culture is as incisive as a razor. He is a master satirist, every bit the equal of Ellis, who draws more of a fan base because his killers are heterosexual and his victims primarily female. I'd say that I can't say enough good things about Gar

why is everyone coming down so hard on this book? it was the first indiana book i read and lead me on to read his other books, and then on again to dennis cooper. "rent boy" is not entirely about plot, or reality, or relivance to the real world. it's a ficticious glimpse, a set of scenes from a world that either could be or is. it doesn't make a difference if this world "is" or "is not" because what's brilliant is the observation and the writing, the concept.