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The Wild Creatures
The Wild Creatures brings together all the stories of Sam D'Allesandro, a young voice whose life was tragically snuffed out at age 31 at the height of the AIDS epidemic in 1988. This new collection includes all of D'Allesandro's published stories (including those first collected in the out-of-print cult classic The Zombie Pit) as well as unpublished stories found among D'Allesandro's papers years after his death by his editor, the poet and novelist Kevin Killian, who worked with the literary estate to create this extended edition of his writing. The Wild Creatures explores a strange terrain of urban legend, the power of sexual obsession, and the thin line where the too-cool becomes the too-hot. Sam D'Allesandro's focused, vivid writing is the stuff of legend: writing so powerful it drags the reader in by the neck.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 12, 2008
I don't understand people giving this 3 stars! THIS BOOK IS PURE GENIUS! It deserves MORE THAN FIVE STARS! Ever since reading the earlier version of this collection THE ZOMBIE PIT it's been clear to me that we lost an important queer writer. These stories destroy the senses with their sincere craving of 1980s America. For those of us too young to SEE his world, Sam gives it up for us. HATS OFF TO Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian for editing this marvelous collection of lost treasures!
CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com
CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com
October 20, 2025
This is at least the fourth time I have read this collection, I only read it the first time because I was hoping that somewhere in London library there might be a copy of Kevin Killian's novel Artic Summer. There wasn't, all they had was this collection edited by Kevin Killian.
I read it back in 2006 and further three times, the collection is not long, and each time I searched the stories for some indication of why they attracted the attention of so many of the writers associated with the West Coast 'New Narrative' movement, amongst them, Kevin Killian. It is unfair, but I couldn't help thinking of my reaction to reading 'My Mark' by Dennis Cooper. I knew I had read something special and that I wanted, no had, to read more of his work. The images, phrases, scenes from that story remained with me, embedded in my imagination. None of Sam D'Allesandro's brief oeuvre, even after four readings, has made even a tiny dent in my memory.
What I do remember about Sam D'Allesandro is his looks, or at least other writers reminiscing about his good looks, so clearly inherited from his father Joe D'Allesandro and thus linking everyone who saw him (touched him? loved him? fucked him? were fucked by him?) with Warhol and his factory and its 'scene'. Indeed reading about Sam D'Allesandro I was never sure whether he was admired as a writer, a beautiful man or as simulacrum through which to love the unobtainable, or perhaps now shopworn, Joe D'Allesandro. Certainly he is the only writer whose looks and antecedents seemed more important than his writing.
So is it important that he was not the illegitimate son of Joe D'Allesandro? Does it matter that the poems in 'Slippery Sins' by Sam D'Allesandro were the texts of performance pieces cut up and arranged to 'look' like poetry? At what point does artifice and deceit just become a cover for being a poseur. If he hadn't been a plausible illegitimate son of Joe D'Allesandro would his earlier supporters have praised him? What were they admiring, his looks or his prose?
I can pull out any of the anthologies of literary gay writing from the 1980s and 90s, like the Men on Men series, and find stories by authors who have had nothing further published and which I still remember. Many died of AIDS and many others failed to make a living in literature. I could draw up a list of at least two dozen names without difficulty. There is not a line, image, metaphor, theme or sentence from Sam D'Allesandro that I can recall. I would not tell anyone not read him but I would happily supply alternates.
I read it back in 2006 and further three times, the collection is not long, and each time I searched the stories for some indication of why they attracted the attention of so many of the writers associated with the West Coast 'New Narrative' movement, amongst them, Kevin Killian. It is unfair, but I couldn't help thinking of my reaction to reading 'My Mark' by Dennis Cooper. I knew I had read something special and that I wanted, no had, to read more of his work. The images, phrases, scenes from that story remained with me, embedded in my imagination. None of Sam D'Allesandro's brief oeuvre, even after four readings, has made even a tiny dent in my memory.
What I do remember about Sam D'Allesandro is his looks, or at least other writers reminiscing about his good looks, so clearly inherited from his father Joe D'Allesandro and thus linking everyone who saw him (touched him? loved him? fucked him? were fucked by him?) with Warhol and his factory and its 'scene'. Indeed reading about Sam D'Allesandro I was never sure whether he was admired as a writer, a beautiful man or as simulacrum through which to love the unobtainable, or perhaps now shopworn, Joe D'Allesandro. Certainly he is the only writer whose looks and antecedents seemed more important than his writing.
So is it important that he was not the illegitimate son of Joe D'Allesandro? Does it matter that the poems in 'Slippery Sins' by Sam D'Allesandro were the texts of performance pieces cut up and arranged to 'look' like poetry? At what point does artifice and deceit just become a cover for being a poseur. If he hadn't been a plausible illegitimate son of Joe D'Allesandro would his earlier supporters have praised him? What were they admiring, his looks or his prose?
I can pull out any of the anthologies of literary gay writing from the 1980s and 90s, like the Men on Men series, and find stories by authors who have had nothing further published and which I still remember. Many died of AIDS and many others failed to make a living in literature. I could draw up a list of at least two dozen names without difficulty. There is not a line, image, metaphor, theme or sentence from Sam D'Allesandro that I can recall. I would not tell anyone not read him but I would happily supply alternates.
November 12, 2007
Here's my Guardian review... hope this isn't cheating
The Wild Creatures: Collected Stories of Sam D'Allesandro
Edited by Kevin Killian. Suspect Thoughts Press, 160 pages, $12.95 (paper).
Sam D'Allesandro, author of the short-story collection The Wild Creatures, was born in 1956 and died of AIDS in 1988 at the age of 32. Kevin Killian, the collection's editor and D'Allesandro's friend and collaborator, only learned his real name – Richard Anderson – after his funeral. On the scene for San Francisco's 1980s writing renaissance, D'Allesandro was a presence at the Small Press Traffic workshops that served as a "laboratory for New Narrative," as the writer Bob Glück put it. This republication of work from a lesser-known writer of that time is an insight into that heady era in San Francisco's queer literary community. The Wild Creatures includes the stories D'Allesandro published in his lifetime, along with several more Killian extracted and worked up from manuscripts and notebooks. One story-sketch, "Travels with My Mother," was transcribed by Dodie Bellamy from an audiotape D'Allesandro recorded a couple of months before his death. The rawness of some of its material means that The Wild Creatures is an inconsistently satisfying read. That rawness, though, gives glimpses into the mechanisms that make his stories work.
And some stories work like charms. They read like unselfconscious letters to lucky intimates from a brilliant personality. The stories, all first-person narratives, explore queer and unconventional desire and the fragmented manifestation of identity – central subjects of New Narrative. Unlike in most New Narrative writing, some of D'Allesandro's narrators describe their own desires with an exhilarating absence of shame. "The truth of the matter is I like to be beaten and fucked like a dog" is the opening line of "Walking to the Ocean"; and that story's gusto doesn't falter. These "shameless" stories (another is "Electrical Type of Thing") are sharp and fun, but also a little alienating in their seamless confidence.
When anxiety is included and described, the writing is most compelling. In "Giovanni's Apartment," the narrator gets completely consumed by a relationship that starts with being picked up by a stranger on the street. "I'm now thirty days old, all a continuation of that first night – hot bath, dream without end, big fat death of the outside world. He used sex as a means of communicating. I need sex as a way to get into heaven. I didn't know exactly what I wanted, and what I need I got." At his best, D'Allesandro's writing has a poetic brevity that shoots right to a reader's bloodstream. (Masha Gutkin)
The Wild Creatures: Collected Stories of Sam D'Allesandro
Edited by Kevin Killian. Suspect Thoughts Press, 160 pages, $12.95 (paper).
Sam D'Allesandro, author of the short-story collection The Wild Creatures, was born in 1956 and died of AIDS in 1988 at the age of 32. Kevin Killian, the collection's editor and D'Allesandro's friend and collaborator, only learned his real name – Richard Anderson – after his funeral. On the scene for San Francisco's 1980s writing renaissance, D'Allesandro was a presence at the Small Press Traffic workshops that served as a "laboratory for New Narrative," as the writer Bob Glück put it. This republication of work from a lesser-known writer of that time is an insight into that heady era in San Francisco's queer literary community. The Wild Creatures includes the stories D'Allesandro published in his lifetime, along with several more Killian extracted and worked up from manuscripts and notebooks. One story-sketch, "Travels with My Mother," was transcribed by Dodie Bellamy from an audiotape D'Allesandro recorded a couple of months before his death. The rawness of some of its material means that The Wild Creatures is an inconsistently satisfying read. That rawness, though, gives glimpses into the mechanisms that make his stories work.
And some stories work like charms. They read like unselfconscious letters to lucky intimates from a brilliant personality. The stories, all first-person narratives, explore queer and unconventional desire and the fragmented manifestation of identity – central subjects of New Narrative. Unlike in most New Narrative writing, some of D'Allesandro's narrators describe their own desires with an exhilarating absence of shame. "The truth of the matter is I like to be beaten and fucked like a dog" is the opening line of "Walking to the Ocean"; and that story's gusto doesn't falter. These "shameless" stories (another is "Electrical Type of Thing") are sharp and fun, but also a little alienating in their seamless confidence.
When anxiety is included and described, the writing is most compelling. In "Giovanni's Apartment," the narrator gets completely consumed by a relationship that starts with being picked up by a stranger on the street. "I'm now thirty days old, all a continuation of that first night – hot bath, dream without end, big fat death of the outside world. He used sex as a means of communicating. I need sex as a way to get into heaven. I didn't know exactly what I wanted, and what I need I got." At his best, D'Allesandro's writing has a poetic brevity that shoots right to a reader's bloodstream. (Masha Gutkin)
May 10, 2019
It’s only been a few times I’ve stumbled onto books that have unexpectedly and magically embraced, amazed and transformed me. The Wild Creatures is one of them. Discovered at a used book store, I was initially attracted by the handsome man on the cover. As I skimmed through this slim book and read short portions, I knew immediately I held a precious and rare literary creation. This collection of Sam D’Allesandro’s short stories, observations and musings encompass the broad spectrum of this beautiful man’s life experiences from childhood until his untimely and tragic death at 33 from AIDS. One feels that he does not want to leave any stones unturned...family, farm, friends, lovers, sex, drugs, travels, education, emotions, philosophy, religion, dreams. For him, all these experiences, that blur the boundary between fact and imagination, appear to be a communion with the divine. Or at least he possessed the talent and skill to write them as such. With gentle and sensitive rawness, unpretentious and angelic beauty, Sam D’Allesandro continues to spread his love and lust for life via this gorgeous book.
August 10, 2024
“I go out all the time and stay out late. I take drugs but they’re not big in me. I’m an outlaw from social expectation, violent and violently romantic. I’m figuring out my own way. I’m more interesting than anyone I know—that’s the way it should be. I live on the soft white underbelly of the city. I’m not addicted to happiness. I pursue feeling myself living, I worship a new icon, the dog with wings, god of fun and teenage integrity. I’ve regressed to about seventeen years old. I guess I got it together pretty good.”
perfect perfect perfect perfect
perfect perfect perfect perfect
December 9, 2007
A unique opportunity to read a an evolving writer who didn't get to fulfill his potential. Not every story works as a full story but there is a graceful description of everyday conversations and crystalline insight into emotions. Certain passages, like the end of Nothing Ever Just Disappears and the "little animal" description in The Zombie Pit give me chills and wish D'Allesandro had been able to write more and more.
January 18, 2012
One of my favorite books of all time.
The short stories presented in the 'The Wild Creatures' are amazingly beautiful. Every story within the book left a lingering twisted thought with me - but in a good way. Although the fictional stories are vividly realistic, they take you to a whole other level (but that's all based on just my sole opinion). I highly recommend this book to anyone enjoys short stories and/or enjoys descriptive pieces of work.
The short stories presented in the 'The Wild Creatures' are amazingly beautiful. Every story within the book left a lingering twisted thought with me - but in a good way. Although the fictional stories are vividly realistic, they take you to a whole other level (but that's all based on just my sole opinion). I highly recommend this book to anyone enjoys short stories and/or enjoys descriptive pieces of work.
April 13, 2022
“THE FILM BROKE IN MIDREEL”
Back around 2005 I was in Giovanni’s Room looking for something gay and sexy to read when the cover of a small book on the new fiction display caught my eye. It was a color photograph of a handsome young man in a v-neck t-shirt holding a cigarette in his right hand. He had thick dark eyebrows. I bought the book for the cover. The book was The Wild Creatures: Collected Stories of Sam D’Alessandro. I had never heard of Sam D’Alessandro. I had also never heard of Kevin Killian, the editor of the collection. I read The Wild Creatures over a couple of evenings in bed before turning in. I assumed the captivating stories were autobiographical. While I was reading The Wild Creatures, I had thought that the hot man on the cover was Sam D’Alessandro. When I got to the end of the book and saw the photograph of Sam, I was stunned. Sam was fair, not dark like the guy on the cover, but he was also gorgeous.
Recently, I reread The Wild Creatures. I could go on and on about Sam D’Alessandro’s stories and his writing. I’ll just single out several that are my favorites.
According to Kevin Killian, “Giovanni’s Apartment” is an unfinished novella. This story doesn’t seem to be a takeoff on James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, but I read “Giovanni’s Apartment” through the filter of the novel. The narrator describes himself as “a lonely, horny, walking bundle of need. I probably left a trail of stuff on the sidewalk behind me like a snail slick.” He meets Giovanni, who gives him the life he never had. This Giovanni doesn’t murder anyone as in Baldwin’s novel, but the narrator does equate sex with killing but in a uniquely benign way: “Sex was a way to forget. Each night, each time he killed me and revived me, a little more of my past slipped away, leaving me free to be happy for perhaps the first time ever.” Giovanni’s Room ends tragically, but “Giovanni’s Apartment” does not.
Sam uses several motifs in his stories: lava lamps, coffee, and smoking. Several of Sam’s characters have lava lamps. Giovanni’s lava lamp is red. Sam’s characters love freshly ground coffee. They are often sitting at Formica tables drinking coffee or making coffee for their lovers or working in coffee shops. And Sam’s characters frequently smoke, as I assume Sam did.
In “The Zombie Pit,” the narrator delightfully describes himself to his lover as “my own best superego in a constant and spectacular smashup with an impulsively conniving id. Just pieces of things, really, in pretty active disagreement. That’s who you’ve been dealing with. That’s what you’ve been up against.” Sam’s narrator is honest about his vulnerability, but he also takes no prisoners. I assume Sam was a piece of work in a relationship but not in a dishonest or unfaithful kind of way.
On the basis of two short entertaining pieces, the bratty, even cruel, “Teddy Kennedy,” and “All I Want Is to Die Famous,” a sarcastic skewering of Hollywood, I don’t think Sam would have been hired to write celebrity profiles for Interview or Vanity Fair.
If Sam had only given us “Nothing Ever Just Disappears,” he would be a queer author for the ages. This story was included in George Stambolian’s first Men on Men: Best New Gay Fiction (1986), while Sam was still alive. In his introduction to Men on Men, Stambolian says the following about this story: “Without naming the disease, Sam D’Alessandro’s story, “Nothing Ever Just Disappears,” makes us feel the surprise and pain of loss.” This brief description of this story is accurate but it’s such an understatement! This story relates the progression of a relationship between two gay men from their first meeting to when, as the narrator says, “We were starting to have dreams together,” then “the film broke in midreel.” The last two pages of “Nothing Ever Just Disappears” are the most wrenching and beautiful writing about coming to terms with a lover’s death that I have ever read.
Kevin Killian, a genius of an editor, placed “Nothing Ever Just Disappears” first in The Wild Creatures. This story resonated powerfully with me because I experienced the loss of a lover to AIDS just as, after four years, we had begun to discuss living together. After twenty-three years since his death, this story, especially those last two pages, helped me come to terms with my loss in a way I never had before. How can someone so young be so wise? Thank you, Sam.
Did Sam write “How I Came to Dinosaur Pond,” the last story in The Wild Creatures, while he was dying of AIDS? Killian says he found the story in Sam’s notebooks. Is Dinosaur Pond a metaphor for extinction? In this story, the narrator reviews his young life. At the conclusion of his story—and the collection—he says, “I worship a new icon, the dog with wings, god of fun and teenage integrity. I’ve regressed to about seventeen years old. I guess I got it together pretty good.” The narrator is brave and affirmative to the end.
In “How I Came to Dinosaur Pond,” the narrator says that he has always had difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality. He says that he makes up things. Is Sam putting us on here? Although Sam may have masqueraded as the son of Joe Dallesandro, the Andy Warhol superstar, until Joe told him to stop (Sam’s real name was Richard Anderson), Sam’s dissection of relationships in his stories is unflinchingly real.
What courage it must have taken for Sam to allow Robert Giard to take his photograph while he was wasting away from AIDS! Sam died on February 3, 1988 at the age of 31. If he had lived, Sam D’Alessandro would now be one of our elder, venerated writers.
When I finished The Wild Creatures, just like the first time I read it, I wanted more. It’s hard to turn loose of Sam. Unfortunately, The Wild Creatures is out of print, and its publisher, Suspect Thoughts Press, is out of business. Some queer publisher (there are still a couple out there, aren’t there?) should reissue Slippery Sins, Sam’s poetry collection, and The Wild Creatures in one fabulous volume.
Back around 2005 I was in Giovanni’s Room looking for something gay and sexy to read when the cover of a small book on the new fiction display caught my eye. It was a color photograph of a handsome young man in a v-neck t-shirt holding a cigarette in his right hand. He had thick dark eyebrows. I bought the book for the cover. The book was The Wild Creatures: Collected Stories of Sam D’Alessandro. I had never heard of Sam D’Alessandro. I had also never heard of Kevin Killian, the editor of the collection. I read The Wild Creatures over a couple of evenings in bed before turning in. I assumed the captivating stories were autobiographical. While I was reading The Wild Creatures, I had thought that the hot man on the cover was Sam D’Alessandro. When I got to the end of the book and saw the photograph of Sam, I was stunned. Sam was fair, not dark like the guy on the cover, but he was also gorgeous.
Recently, I reread The Wild Creatures. I could go on and on about Sam D’Alessandro’s stories and his writing. I’ll just single out several that are my favorites.
According to Kevin Killian, “Giovanni’s Apartment” is an unfinished novella. This story doesn’t seem to be a takeoff on James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, but I read “Giovanni’s Apartment” through the filter of the novel. The narrator describes himself as “a lonely, horny, walking bundle of need. I probably left a trail of stuff on the sidewalk behind me like a snail slick.” He meets Giovanni, who gives him the life he never had. This Giovanni doesn’t murder anyone as in Baldwin’s novel, but the narrator does equate sex with killing but in a uniquely benign way: “Sex was a way to forget. Each night, each time he killed me and revived me, a little more of my past slipped away, leaving me free to be happy for perhaps the first time ever.” Giovanni’s Room ends tragically, but “Giovanni’s Apartment” does not.
Sam uses several motifs in his stories: lava lamps, coffee, and smoking. Several of Sam’s characters have lava lamps. Giovanni’s lava lamp is red. Sam’s characters love freshly ground coffee. They are often sitting at Formica tables drinking coffee or making coffee for their lovers or working in coffee shops. And Sam’s characters frequently smoke, as I assume Sam did.
In “The Zombie Pit,” the narrator delightfully describes himself to his lover as “my own best superego in a constant and spectacular smashup with an impulsively conniving id. Just pieces of things, really, in pretty active disagreement. That’s who you’ve been dealing with. That’s what you’ve been up against.” Sam’s narrator is honest about his vulnerability, but he also takes no prisoners. I assume Sam was a piece of work in a relationship but not in a dishonest or unfaithful kind of way.
On the basis of two short entertaining pieces, the bratty, even cruel, “Teddy Kennedy,” and “All I Want Is to Die Famous,” a sarcastic skewering of Hollywood, I don’t think Sam would have been hired to write celebrity profiles for Interview or Vanity Fair.
If Sam had only given us “Nothing Ever Just Disappears,” he would be a queer author for the ages. This story was included in George Stambolian’s first Men on Men: Best New Gay Fiction (1986), while Sam was still alive. In his introduction to Men on Men, Stambolian says the following about this story: “Without naming the disease, Sam D’Alessandro’s story, “Nothing Ever Just Disappears,” makes us feel the surprise and pain of loss.” This brief description of this story is accurate but it’s such an understatement! This story relates the progression of a relationship between two gay men from their first meeting to when, as the narrator says, “We were starting to have dreams together,” then “the film broke in midreel.” The last two pages of “Nothing Ever Just Disappears” are the most wrenching and beautiful writing about coming to terms with a lover’s death that I have ever read.
Kevin Killian, a genius of an editor, placed “Nothing Ever Just Disappears” first in The Wild Creatures. This story resonated powerfully with me because I experienced the loss of a lover to AIDS just as, after four years, we had begun to discuss living together. After twenty-three years since his death, this story, especially those last two pages, helped me come to terms with my loss in a way I never had before. How can someone so young be so wise? Thank you, Sam.
Did Sam write “How I Came to Dinosaur Pond,” the last story in The Wild Creatures, while he was dying of AIDS? Killian says he found the story in Sam’s notebooks. Is Dinosaur Pond a metaphor for extinction? In this story, the narrator reviews his young life. At the conclusion of his story—and the collection—he says, “I worship a new icon, the dog with wings, god of fun and teenage integrity. I’ve regressed to about seventeen years old. I guess I got it together pretty good.” The narrator is brave and affirmative to the end.
In “How I Came to Dinosaur Pond,” the narrator says that he has always had difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality. He says that he makes up things. Is Sam putting us on here? Although Sam may have masqueraded as the son of Joe Dallesandro, the Andy Warhol superstar, until Joe told him to stop (Sam’s real name was Richard Anderson), Sam’s dissection of relationships in his stories is unflinchingly real.
What courage it must have taken for Sam to allow Robert Giard to take his photograph while he was wasting away from AIDS! Sam died on February 3, 1988 at the age of 31. If he had lived, Sam D’Alessandro would now be one of our elder, venerated writers.
When I finished The Wild Creatures, just like the first time I read it, I wanted more. It’s hard to turn loose of Sam. Unfortunately, The Wild Creatures is out of print, and its publisher, Suspect Thoughts Press, is out of business. Some queer publisher (there are still a couple out there, aren’t there?) should reissue Slippery Sins, Sam’s poetry collection, and The Wild Creatures in one fabulous volume.
June 30, 2016
Wow - this was a very powerful book. Racy and gritty, and incomplete in terms of some of the stories, but brutally honest and real. The collection was put together after the author's death so some of the works had not been completed.
April 23, 2008
sam sam sam sam.
If he hadn't died he'd likely have a restraining order out against me by now. I'm just kidding... I think.
If he hadn't died he'd likely have a restraining order out against me by now. I'm just kidding... I think.
Read
September 8, 2024loved the dinosaur pond story, new narrative with an emphasis on the narrative, the telling of a life with little to no "showing," thrill of transgression!
i loved how this book was mostly excavations of relationships in a rlly honest way, it was like a friend was catching me up on stories of their life
i loved how this book was mostly excavations of relationships in a rlly honest way, it was like a friend was catching me up on stories of their life
June 25, 2025
Giovanni’s Apartment, Nothing Ever Just Disappears, The Wild Creatures, Travels With My Mother: perfectas.
El resto por lo general muy bien también, pero estas cuatro historias me interpelaron y conmovieron mucho.
El resto por lo general muy bien también, pero estas cuatro historias me interpelaron y conmovieron mucho.
March 28, 2023
real good stuff akin to cookie mueller but not as barbarically hilarious
February 19, 2017
This is a collection of all his short stories put together after his work went out of print sometime after his death in 1988. I don't mind short stories, but I prefer immersing myself in a novel to the start-stop of a writing collection. But with this work all the pieces shared a voice, were more like different tales from the same life, so there was a more seamless flow. The writing was some of the best, at least the best male writing, I've read recently. The only thing I question is the whole "gay fiction" tag. The only gay aspect of the work was the author's personal sexual preference, which if the biographical tone of the pieces is anything to go by, was not set in stone. The stories themselves deal with family & friend relationships as well as sexual or romantic ones, of which some were not homosexual & even the stories relating to those which were dealt with issues & feelings not unique to gay relationships. I can see that the tag of "gay fiction" could be relevant in some contexts, but to categorise this & no doubt other work without true reason could exclude or deter people from enjoying what was, in my opinion, a beautiful literary voice.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews