“I read this so fast I got blisters turning pages.
THE RED SHOES is so astonishingly good, original, beautiful and amazing . . . it’s like a sumptuous meal with all flavors—salty, bitter, sweet, hot.
I was riveted—John Stewart Wynne writes such brilliant back and forth dialogue. I love the Gothic feeling of terrible impending doom, and the counterbalancing elements of light. I am really astounded at the way Wynne writes about sex—how deep it can go, the different ways it can satisfy.
His writing is free of compromise, fear . . . he never pulls his punches. And his voice really doesn’t sound like anyone else’s. He has an almost hyperreal quality, the rare ability to write on a plane floating just above life, or below it, to stay with what is happening just beyond the actions and conversations of his characters. I feel as if I have been given a special line into the narrator’s soul.
THE RED SHOES is so pure and beautiful and real and I am entranced by it. I think it is a great work of art.” (Kate Christensen, 2008 PEN/Faulkner Best American Work of Fiction Award for THE GREAT MAN)
“John Stewart Wynne’s THE RED SHOES, set in contemporary New York City, is a beautifully dark queer re-visioning of the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale of the same title. Wynne immediately engages the reader with finely detailed descriptions, nuanced character development, and an air of mystery that makes the 428-page text read like a novella.
John Laith, immersed in grief as a result of the death of his boyfriend of eleven years, Frank, helps a young man who has been the victim of a brutal rape. To repay Laith for providing clothing, shelter, and a bus ticket, the young man gives Laith the only thing he has, a pair of red shoes, and thus Laith’s journey into obsession, lust, and uncertainty commences. Wynne takes the reader on the erotic emotional and psychological journey endured, and sometimes enjoyed, by the protagonist. Laith searches for a relief from grief and leaves no stone unturned—even those that should have been left unexplored.
With the support of friends, Laith senses that he is beginning to move on from his grief, not realizing that the process is being driven by a far darker force with a darker purpose than one of healing. Laith distances himself from his old friends and the grievance group to which he belongs and instead begins to keep company with the likes of Silvio, a retired law enforcement officer; Crewe, a married multimillionaire who lives in a penthouse overlooking Central Park West with his wife and daughter; Maxo, the owner of a nightclub; Bailey, a bouncer at Maxo’s nightclub. Venturing throughout New York City, Laith mingles with the rich in Gatsby-like decadence in Manhattan and drug-addicted ‘sleazeballs’ in dilapidated apartments alike.
THE RED SHOES is rife with allusions to Geoffrey Chaucer, William Blake, and John Milton, to name only three of the infamous figures referenced. Readers who are familiar with Blake’s writings will likely note Wynne’s integration of Blake’s mythology into the re-visioning of the THE RED SHOES. Such allusions seem to work to situate the novel amongst the long tradition of story (re)telling. This arguably postmodernist move helps to highlight the many intersections between the characters in the novel. That which is seemingly happenstance is revealed to be part of a darker plan. Good and evil become a matter of choices and the company one keeps. With each new person he meets, Laith encounters new desires and obsessions. Laith notes at one point that he ‘felt [he] was rejoining some part of the world [he’d] lost, a world of abundance where [he] now felt totally present.’ The question is, is this presence a good thing?
Wynne elegantly blends spirituality, sensuality, obsession, lust, drug (ab)use, as well as interspersed social and cultural commentary in THE RED SHOES. Despite the beauty of Wynne’s language throughout the novel, there are many scenes that are not for the faint of heart, including the aforementioned rape of the young man and several interactions between Laith and other characters in the novel. Some of the explicitly visceral sections in the novel led me to take a break from reading. The intricacy and intrigue of the story, however, brought me back.” (Jamie Jones, Lambda Literary Review)
“The narrator is as fully realized and endearing a character as I’ve ever known. The first person worked so well here. The novel is cohesive, charming, sad and a true achievement. It’s really very grand.” (Ben Schrank, LOVE IS A CANOE)
“I loved the mysteriousness of everything and everybody in THE RED SHOES which gripped my attention throughout and had me mesmerized. I loved the way the novel’s preoccupations with loss, danger and safety would loom in and out of view in the surreal fog of drugs, sex and dark humor. I found it quite haunting and didn’t want it to end.” (Stephen D. Adams, author of THE HOMOSEXUAL AS HERO and JAMES PURDY)
THE OTHER WORLD
“If there is a bright spot at all to this country’s history of puritanical repression, it is in its tradition of ‘outsider’ art, art fueled by feelings of otherness that have been shared by certain artists [such as] Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, and Truman Capote . . . And now there’s John Wynne, whose first collection of stories, THE OTHER WORLD, is among the most remarkable books I have ever read.
Wynne’s perspective is dark and terrifying, and is made all the more so by his stark, vivid descriptions of contorted states of mind and, strangely, by his beautiful, at times lyrical, use of language. His style is disorienting.
There are six stories in THE OTHER WORLD and at least three are masterpieces, as good as anything written recently.
This is disturbing stuff, but lovely as well, haunting and powerful. John Wynne deserves a wider audience, for his is a unique vision. THE OTHER WORLD is one of the best books of the decade.” (The James White Review)
“With so much tepid and sentimental fiction coming out, John Wynne’s stories in THE OTHER WORLD are like a plunge in cold water. With a near-Brechtian intensity of focus and an infallible ear for dialogue, Wynne casts a laser eye on the things we say, so different from what we mean. Sometimes the world is as other as Hieronymous Bosch, sometimes as other as simply being queer. People on the edge, the margins of love. How exciting it is to experience the flowering of Wynne’s early promise. A book to handle with asbestos gloves, but well worth the walk through fire.” (Paul Monette, National Book Award for BECOMING A MAN)
“The other world is the dark underside of human lives and compulsions . . . This walk on the wild side of human nature can be startling, outrageous, frightening, and sometimes even funny, but Wynne’s smooth, commanding style keeps the shocks in these stories from becoming mannered or numbing.” (Booklist)
“In this short story collection, the other world is ours and John Wynne shows it to us through the pitiless eyes of characters tightroping over twisted personal histories . . . Wynne’s prose is chiseled and precise. And in pages that tremble with beauty, Wynne gracefully reveals the darker side of human possibilities.” (Details)
“The hidden, seamy underbelly of lives that appear civilized and rational is the obsession of these stories by an author known for his fascination with the dark side . . . Whether set in the Midwest, the Upper East Side, Times Square or the South, Wynne (CRIME WAVE) manages relentlessly to tap into people’s unconscious urges.” (Publishers Weekly)
“The other world John Wynne describes in these stories is terrifying. And it is breathlessly, horribly recognizable as ours. This is an incredibly powerful book.” (Rebecca Brown, Lambda Literary Award for THE GIFTS OF THE BODY)
“CRIME WAVE, John Wynne’s first novel, is a disturbing and well written book. An impressive work for those with strong stomachs. Its genre is Manhattan lumpen Gothic and the imagery of its terrain, crab-lice and vomit, prostitution, rape and Yamahas. Or as Stewart, the destructive mechanic, puts it: ‘You can fuck everybody over and they won’t say shit.’ It wanders through psychopathic dreams of electrocuted babies and brothels with one-legged tarts, but the book has a compelling and terrible beauty.” (Barbara Trapido, The Spectator)
“CRIME WAVE is about personal and social sado-masochism. The plot allows John Wynne to describe several relationships demonstrating different combinations and proportions of dominance and subordination . . . The author’s challenging aim seems to be to show that there is no such thing as ‘mindless violence,’ whether directed towards the self or towards others. Each aggressive act is the result of a long cycle of action and reaction, continued through generations. CRIME WAVE is an ambitious first novel.” (Jenny Uglow OBE, The Times Literary Supplement)
“I strongly urge anyone with an interest in gay fiction to read John Wynne’s recent chapbook, THE SIGHTING. There is nothing else quite like it, for no other writer has experimented with gay experience in the context of our adolescence in straight America in such a direct, sensual and imaginative manner.” (Gordon Montador, Body Politic)
“THE SIGHTING is absorbingly disconcerting, using the supernatural—or surreal—with a discretion that is particularly successful. The story ‘s 1950s Middle West small town teenage setting—full of randy high school adolescents racing their jalopies to drive-in movies, whose coarse normality is contrasted with a sensitive youth’s realization that he is attracted to other boys—is gradually invaded by elements from another realm of experience—or, perhaps, another kind of literature. There are sightings of a flying saucer above the town, Bela Lugosi in person appears, and at the climax these two interventions are bizarrely and violently counterpointed against a celebration of sensual love between two boys. The juxtaposition of the surreal and the naturalistic in the denouement is oddly satisfying and miraculously unsentimental in its endorsement of the ‘abnormal’ relationship.” (Charles Palliser, Literary Review)
“John Wynne is obviously an exciting talent . . . I hope THE SIGHTING finds the audience it deserves.” (Hubert Selby Jr. , author of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM)
“Beautifully done . . . most effective.” (James Purdy)
“An impressive achievement . . . I like THE SIGHTING for its strictness, the way it uses facts, its humanity.” (Yves Navarre, winner of the Prix Goncourt for LE JARDIN D’ACCLIMATATION)
