The Orchid Stories

Fiction. LGBT Studies. Like the orchids that provide their leitmotif, these interwoven stories by Kenward Elmslie are exquisite, exotic, and oneiric, as if they had been written in another world. Although each of THE ORCHID STORIES stands alone, their characters and moods recur frequently, in a swirl of visual echoes and the bewildering clarity of a dream. Even the characters themselves–Phil, the little boy gigolo; Mummers and Mummy who adopt him; the alluring Diana Vienna; the eccen-tric Dr. Schmidlapp and his wives who plot to capture the Native Innards orchid at the stroke of midnight–have an illusive reality that enhances the pleasure of these tales.

The Song Cave is honored to present this new edition of Kenward Elmslie’s out-of-print masterpiece, first published by Paris Review Editions in 1973. With an introduction that provides a fresh sense of Elmslie’s oeuvre by Michael Silverblatt, host of KCRW’s Bookworm, this spectacular and spectacularly overlooked book is at last available to a new generation of adventurous readers.