On Gary Indiana’s “Rent Boy”

Among the many lately-rediscovered chroniclers of New York’s seamy fin de siècle, Gary Indiana is the patron saint of human detritus. His subjects are the elder statesmen of waning movements, bohemian éminences grises unable or unwilling to accept their obsolescence—at least, when they’re not actively indulging it. His great theme is that particular tint of Weltschmerz experienced by the atomized specks of a moth-eaten avant garde. The state, or the fear, of being outmoded, haunts his early novels, casting a carbon-rich smog over their proceedings. As the nameless narrator of Gone Tomorrow observes, “There is no anger more pointless than that of people left behind.”