November 23, 1997
TOUCH AND GO
By Eugene Stein
Eugene Stein has followed his first novel, ''Straitjacket & Tie,'' with this uneven
but sometimes inspired collection of short stories, absurdist sketches and incomplete,
high-concept improvisations. One of the best stories, ''Close Calls,'' is narrated by an
executive in comedy development at a television network who has a highly developed talent
for mixing drugs. In other stories, as in much contemporary fiction, AIDS is a recurring
-- though often unstated -- presence. (The lead character in ''Death in Belize,'' for
example, is seized by the sexually transmitted ''Lima Plague.'') Several other stories
explore sexual identity: in ''Mixed Signals,'' when a high school student is gently told
by a friend of his older brother's that it's all right to admit that he's gay, the
teen-ager replies: ''How do you know about me? I don't even know about me.''
