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language: English
country: USA
year: 1992
form: short fiction
genre(s): literary, erotica
dates read: 20.10.22
David Wojnarowicz’s Memories That Smell Like Gasoline is a short (61 pages including art) collection of four short stories — two about cruising, one about sexual assault, and one about the protagonist’s alienation from his surroundings as he watches a friend dying from AIDS in a hospital and deals with his own AIDS diagnosis.
the stories were engaging — they’re written in a vaguely stream-of-consciousness style that took a few pages to get used to, but once I got a feel for it they’re fast-paced and simultaneously pensive and sharp. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite short story collection, but “Into the Drift and Sway” (the first story, about cruising at a truck stop) and “Spiral” (the last, about alienation) were great, and in particular the conclusions of each story were excellent. very much a book of vibes.
the other highlight is the art — sketches and ink drawings, some of which are accompanied by little two- to three-sentence vignettes, a mix of dreams, memories of sexual encounters (from moments presumably drawn from Wojnarowicz’s experience as a child sex worker to scenes caught in passing on the street), a glimpse of a friend in the hospital. some of them are troubling (it’s a book that’s interested in transgression, not — it didn’t seem to me, anyway — (just) to be shocking but both as a confession and because it’s trying to hold onto something real in the face of the dissolution of self in “Spiral”; violence — physical assault, pedophilia, the impersonal violence of poverty — is, unfortunately, very real), some are hot, some are funny. I’m kind of obsessed with this one:
anyway. it was an interesting, quick read. I’m not particularly interested in any of Wojnarowicz’s other writing, but I’m glad I read this.
moods: dark, grimy, horny, polemic, reflective, tense