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Title: Cleavage : Essays on Sex, Stars, and Aesthetics by WAYNE KOESTENBAUM ISBN: 0-345-43460-9 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 29 February, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.29 (7 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Not his best work...
Comment: Although I am a fan of Koestenbaum, I was less impressed by Cleavage than I was by The Queen's Throat or Jackie Under My Skin. However, I do feel that this book has some merit, and I like the writing style. Although some of the essays are more interesting than others, I think this book is worth reading, if you like Koestenbaum. I don't recommend it as an introduction to him, however.
Rating: 4
Summary: Does It Smart? Well, Let Me Kiss It!
Comment: At his best Koestenbaum, wit, ardent fan, astute critic and antic camp, riffs on his idols and his passions to intoxicating effect. Bringing high and low perspectives to bear on his varied subjects here, he flaunts his knowledge (wide-ranging) and queerness (all-consuming) and dares to go out on to the high wire without a net (e.g. "I want to fail in the most beautiful way, to write something so like a parallelogram it baffles every critic and excites the raven-haired young androgynes.") Whether he is writing about his underwear (he starts out from home) or his favorite diva (he ends up at the theater), he lets his imagination run amok, trusting that his daunting intelligence will step in later to ground the musings in the everyday that we all will recognize (it does). Fans of his "Jackie under My Skin" and "The Queen's Throat" will adore this even zestier collection, although some others may feel that a shorter, more focused array of delicacies would have made this very good book a masterpiece of its genre. On a more pedestrian but essential note, Koestenbaum's "Cleavage" will also make you laugh like nobody's business.
Rating: 1
Summary: Drippy
Comment: Koestenbaum affects, throughout every essay in this collection, the pose of the breathless, trivial, glib narcissisist, as enamored of fashion and movie stars as he is of himself. He seems to have anticipated much of the criticism which could be (and has been) levied against him, particularly in his essay "Logorrhea." Yes, he tacitly admits, he does tend to gush, and he does obsess about what other people would consider trivialities,--but didn't James, Proust, Wilde, Barthes, and other irresistible gay aesthetes? Isn't this just what a brilliant aesthete can do, transfix his audience with his charming reveries, and show how the seemingly trivial actually demostrates deep truths about our culture? Isn't this an important political strategy?
The answer to these questions he implicitly poses is very much "yes"--that is, *if* you happen to be Henry James, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde, or Roland Barthes. Koestenbaum is not in their league, and where he aims for charm and brilliance he comes off instead sounding both dippy and drippy. It's a pretty pointless read, and his self-indulgence comes off as infuriating rather than irresistible.
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Title: My Life by Bill Clinton ISBN: 0375414576 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 22 June, 2004 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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