“Two men lost in a snowstorm, a forensic psychiatrist and the man who stabs him, a well-adjusted music student and a sexually repressed tennis player, a former college quarterback and the twin of his former lover, a handsome escort and the client who hires him, a murderer and his trick, a music professor and a student with a foot fetish, a chicken hawk and a suicidal hillbilly, as well as the crazy crowds at Mardi Gras in New Orleans these are just some of the exotic colours in the rainbow of characters arcing through this provocative psychological study. When you live in a cold world, one character says, you have to build your own fire. Right? See who can strike the spark in The Statue of Pan.”

Come again? And this is the essential problem with this collection of short stories/novella/play, it’s so varied and all encompassing it has multiple personality disorder. It’s not so much that the book is bad, it’s just it’s gone so full-pelt for the high concept, cover all bases approach it’s ended up neither one thing or the other. There’s no definitive meaty idea to sink your gnashers into.

For instance, the opening story, ‘Snowbound’, despite containing the most excretible simile in the history of homo-lit comparing first-time gay sex to a Caesarean (huh?), is actually a well-crafted, involving portrait of an anonymous sexual encounter that eschews the usual, well-thumbed clichés about the coldness of strangers finding comfort in each others’ arms and shows the possible tenderness that can come from a chance encounter.

Set in 1960 small town America, the story is knitted around Gun and Tommy who happen upon each other during a snow storm; Gun is running away from some redneck homophobes in the local bar who want to lynch him for not fancying one of the female number and Tommy is just driving through Gun’s hometown when the bad weather hits and he takes shelter in his car until the snow clears. Gun hides in Tommy’s car to escape his pursuers and the pair end up sharing a night of intimate passion.

The great success of this story is its evocative exploration of how two disparate souls meet through fate and connect on such a deeply visceral level the heat between them could set fire to asbestos. The problem here is the same problem that’s mirrored throughout the book: the ideas just aren’t taken far enough. Just as Anderson is warming to his subject, he abruptly puts the brakes on and lamely leaves the reader with a sort of ‘And they lived happily ever after…’ cop-out when what he needed to do was develop the interestingly quirky story into a full-blown novel. As it is, it reads like unfinished business, like a treatment for a blockbuster film that’s never made.

Elsewhere, the book lurches wildly between avant-garde esotericism and read it all before cliché with the usual roll-call of repressed closet cases, older unfulfilled gay men hankering after long-gone youthful love and tricking prozzies with hearts of gold that people the narratives of queer fiction the world over. Granted they are universal themes of gay-lit that convey universal truths of gay life, but Anderson doesn’t really say anything new or bring anything consistently innovative to the table.

Ultimately, The Statue Of Pan is a muddled hybrid of a book that lacks cohesion and coherence, which is a shame because you sense there’s a truly great book amidst all the confusion fighting to get out.

The Statue Of Pan, by Ken Anderson
Published by: Starbooks
Released: 8 November 2007
ISBN: 1934187143

Buy The Statue Of Pan, by Ken Anderson, online and make your own mind up about this ambitious collection. Want more? Then why not get his earlier novel, Hasty Hearts: A Collection of the Best Fiction.