Jack the Modernist

_Jack the Modernist_. When I found this novel by Robert Gluck on the shelves of my local gay bookstore, it was originally the title that seduced me. What about this book, I wondered, warrants the inclusion of the word "modernist" in the title? Tired by the omnipresent coming-out novel, the promise of homoerotic literature marked with modernist experimentation was infinitely enticing. Gluck certainly did not disappoint. Almost from the first page, one is seduced by his viciously beautiful style. The short pages are filled with an intensely dense imagery that appeals alternately to sight, sound, and taste. The narrator's walk with his dog on page three becomes a virtual orgy of the senses. A visit to the movies at the end of the novel becomes a visual and philosophical adventure. Sex between the characters is so vivid that one can virtually feel it. One is consistently confronted by metaphors so strikingly unusual, by language so sonorously melodic that one cannot help but read it aloud and tremble. Gluck is modern not just in his intense bombardment of imagery but his use of "found art" -- images that the author has collected and has included in the text to illustrate certain metaphors or points. The book literally becomes a multimedia experience. Meanwhile, Gluck blurs the traditional lines of fiction and non-fiction by assigning the narrator his own name and by revealing that certain elements of the plot do not match his actual experience with "Jack," the title character. Gluck also experiments with the narrative form itself by occasionally breaking into dramatic form, marking each character's dialogue with a name and a colon. Such characteristics are almost unheard of in the relatively naturalistic world of gay fiction, save perhaps in the recent works of Jeanette Winterson. Ultimately, it is the marvelous, unique style is in the end that elevates this work so far above many works of gay interest. To all interested in either gay literature or narrative experimentation, this book is a must