Wayne Koestenbaum
Wayne Koestenbaum returns with a zesty and hyper-literate collection of personal and critical essays,Wayne Koestenbaum has been described as "an impossible lovechild from a late-night, drunken three-way between Joan Didion, Roland Barthes, and Susan Sontag" (,Bidoun,). In ,My 1980s and Other Essays,, a collection of extravagant range and style, he rises to the challenge of that improbable description.,My 1980s and Other Essays, opens with a series of manifestosâ€”or, perhaps more appropriately, a series of impassioned disclosures, intellectual and personal. It then proceeds to wrestle with a series of major cultural figures, the author's own lodestars and lodestones: literary (John Ashbery, Roberto BolaÃ±o, James Schuyler), artistic (Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol), and simply iconic (Brigitte Bardot, Cary Grant, Lana Turner). And then there is the personalâ€”the voice, the style, the flairâ€”that is unquestionably Koestenbaum. It amounts to a kind of intellectual autobiography that culminates in a string of passionate calls to creativity; arguments in favor of detail and nuance, and attention; a defense of pleasure, hunger, and desire in culture and experience., Koestenbaum is perched on the cusp of being a true public intellectualâ€”his venues are more mainstream than academic, his style is eye-catching, his prose unfailingly witty and passionate, his interests profoundly wide-ranging and popular. ,My 1980s, should be the book that pushes Koestenbaum off that cusp and truly into the public eye.
Writing,Essays,Nonfiction,GLBT,Queer,Art,Criticism,Autobiography,Memoir,LGBT,New York,Culture,Cultural Studies,Literature,American
My 1980s and Other Essays