HORSE CRAZY<i> by Gary Indiana (Plume: $8.95) </i>

Gary Indiana’s dark, wordy tale of sexual obsession captures the propulsive rhythms of its New York City setting--the frantic energy, the ongoing battle to remain in the vanguard of taste, the conversations that consist of self-involved rushes of words. The unnamed narrator, a hip arts writer, becomes so fixated with the handsome, erratic Gregory Burgess that everything else ceases to exist for him. Oblivious, he walks the gritty streets of the Lower East Side, only dimly aware of the twin specters that haunt his existence: the mounting death toll from AIDS and his burgeoning celebrity.

“Horse Crazy” falters at the end, when the one-sided love affair sputters out, and the author never really allows the reader to see the beauty that captivates the narrator. But Indiana succeeds at re-creating the agonies of unrequited passion and its attendant foolishness and frustration.