Introduction / Dale Peck -- Weird fucks / Lynne Tillman -- Girl / Jamaica Kincaid -- So much water so close to home / Raymond Carter -- Aphrodisiac / Christopher Bram -- From pet food / Jessica Hagedorn -- Sex story / Robert Glück -- In the cemetery where Al Jolson is buried / Amy Hempel -- Spring / Brad Gooch -- Sodomy / Gary Indiana -- The history of the world / Jim Lewis -- The angel / Patrick McGrath -- River of names / Dorothy Allison -- How soft, how sweet / Suzanne Gardinier -- Secretary / Mary Gaitskill -- Wrong / Dennis Cooper -- From after Delores / Sarah Schulman -- Work / Denis Johnson -- Debbie's barium swallow / Laurie Weeks -- Giovanni's apartment / Sam D'Allesandro -- Lust / Susan Minot -- Pretending to say no / Bruce Benderson -- A real doll / A.M. Homes -- Days without someone / Dodie Bellamy -- Spiral / David Wojnarowicz -- Ceremonies / Essex Hemphill -- Robin / Eileen Myles -- The cat who loved la traviata / Jaime Manrique -- From annotations / John Keene -- The secrets of summer / Bret Easton Ellis -- Letting go / Gil Cuadros -- Sight / Gil Cuadros -- Chain of fools / Kevin Killian -- Hobbits and hobgoblins / Randall Kenan -- A good man / Rebecca Brown.

"In The Soho Press Book of '80s Short Fiction, editor Dale Peck offers readers a fresh take on a seminal period in American history, when Ronald Reagan was president, the Cold War was rushing to its conclusion, and literature was searching for ways to move beyond the postmodern unease of the 1970s. Morally charged by newly politicized notions of identity but fraught with anxiety about a body whose fragility had been freshly emphasized by the AIDS epidemic, the 34 works gathered here are individually vivid, but taken as a body of work, they challenge the prevailing notion of the '80s as a time of aesthetic as well as financial maximalism. Formally inventive yet tightly controlled, they offer a more expansive, inclusive view of the era's literary accomplishments. The anthology blends early stories from writers like Denis Johnson, Jamaica Kincaid, Mary Gaitskill, and Raymond Carver, which have gone on to become part of the American canon, with remarkable and often transgressive work from some of the most celebrated writers of the underground, including Dennis Cooper, Eileen Myles, Lynne Tillman, and Gary Indiana. Peck has also included powerful work by writers such as Gil Cuadros, Essex Hemphill, and Sam D'Allesandro, whose untimely deaths from AIDS ended their careers almost before they had begun. Almost a third of the stories are out of print and unavailable elsewhere. The Soho Press Book of '80s Short Fiction is a daring reappraisal of a decade that is increasingly central to our culture"--