My 1980s & other essays

Behind the flash of his style and the occasional outrageousness of the topics, Koestenbaum (English, CUNY) delivers a collection of essays on postmodern art and culture. For him, being gay is more than a lifestyle; sexuality is a perspective that acts as a rhetorical tool and presents new insights to the fragile business of creating art. He illustrates this point in the title essay, an episodic (and epigrammatic) history of the Eighties, and in "Fag Limbo," in which Koestenbaum draws on his own experience hiding his sexuality and explains how sexual preferences color one's art. He further discusses how the experience of being an outsider operating in an insider culture affects one's own work. An affinity between the writings of Koestenbaum and Hunter S. Thompson, the Duke of Gonzo, begins to emerge as one reads deeper; both authors intrude themselves into their prose, employ heightened and hyperbolic language, and write in a paradoxical style. Not every essay is successful, but the batting average is extraordinarily high. Beneath the surface of the author's sizzling prose lies a deeply serious man whose writings inspire a fresh way of thinking. VERDICT The book isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it should appeal widely to the hip and readers of the New Yorker and Vanity Fair.-David Keymer, Modesto, CA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Critical and personal essays from noted poet and cultural critic Koestenbaum (English/CUNY Graduate Center; The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, 2012, etc.). The author collects essays on poetry, photography, painting, opera and other aesthetic concerns, but the true subject that emerges is Koestenbaum himself; the possessive in the collection's title is telling. The author explores his relationship with art (and that term here applies to everything from online pornography to the novels of Marcel Proust), teasing out meaning by means of a relentless, densely allusive, insistently personal interrogation of the work, the artist and Koestenbaum's own response. That response is largely an apprehension of desire. The author is less interested in historical context or qualitative evaluation than he is in grappling with the ways in which art makes him feel; this drive, buttressed by an intimidating level of erudition and agile reasoning, is reminiscent of Pauline Kaels' work, if she had been more steeped in critical theory and less coy about sexuality. Koestenbaum employs fragments, lists, digressions and all manner of playful formal strategies to consider the essays of Susan Sontag, the artistry of opera singer Anna Moffo and the photographs of Cindy Sherman; the author also applies his formidable faculties to the mystique of Lana Turner, a nude of Cary Grant and the sublimity of Debbie Harry of the rock band Blondie. Notions of high and low dissolve in Koestenbaum's passionate engagement with culture and in his palpable urgency to unpack the mechanics of desire, whether parsing the line breaks of Frank O'Hara's poetry or recalling the tactile pleasures of Play-Doh. Other subjects include Brigitte Bardot, Hart Crane, John Ashbery and Diane Arbus. A challenging, rich, aesthetic autobiography and intellectual high-wire act that rarely falters.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

.. Excerpted from My 1980s and Other Essays by Wayne Koestenbaum All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.