Mendelsohn’s first book is a clever attempt to look at gay identity and family mythology through literary narratives of antiquity. A classics scholar who for years has been grappling with issues such as gay culture and the homosexual psyche, Mendelsohn finds a natural connection between the “pagan culture” and “pagan acts.” He discovers in the Greek mentality and Greek language a tendency to bipolar thinking, whereby any articulated idea invites its opposite. Such, claims Mendelsohn, is the gay identity, which hovers between the extremes of the straight world into which every gay man is born and the gay world that he eventually chooses to inhabit. In Ovid, the myth of the nymph Echo illustrates how difference can be mistaken for sameness; it is supplemented by the myth of Narcissus, who, on the contrary, mistook his own face (sameness) for a stranger’s (difference). This ancient paradigm is reflected in the gay male perception of men and women. While for gays the female world signifies difference, other men signal sameness. Tracing the etymology of the word “identity” to the Latin adverb identidem (“repeatedly”), Mendelsohn defines the gay identity as an infinitely repeated desire for other men. Analyzing Sappho’s love poem about the frustration of seeing the erotic object pursued by someone else, the author reflects on similar painful episodes in his own love life. Euripides’ fatherhood tragedy Ion provides for Mendelsohn a framework for his own experiences as the godfather of a friend’s child. Here two extremes coalesce again, as he is driven both by his inherent fear of commitment to family life and by his enjoyment of this pseudofatherhood and the accompanying routine. Finally, Sophocles’Antigone presents the author with an archetypal myth of beauty and loss, which he sees reflected in his family’s myth of a great-aunt’s death. Despite Mendelsohn’s disturbingly excessive descriptions of his numerous one-night stands, his insights into the mechanisms of gay culture are interesting.
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-375-40095-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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