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Koestenbaum, Wayne (Author); Wordsworth, William; Freud, Sigmund; Eliot, T.S.; Pound, Ezra & Others : Double Talk: The Erotics Of Male Literary Collaboration

Routledge, London, England, 1989

ISBN 0415790077

First Edition / First Printing. Fine in Fine Dust Jacket. 215 pages. The author's debut book. One of Wayne Koestenbaum's finest achievements. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions, particularly the regular trade edition, which was a softcover original only. Published in a small and limited first print run as the Library Edition, for distribution to libraries and university collections only, and as the inaugural volume of the "Literature And Sexuality" Routledge Series. The First Edition is now rare. Presents Wayne Koestenbaum's "Double Talk: The Erotics of Male Literary Collaboration". A subject the author was naturally born to write about: Men writing books together. "Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer on hysteria, J. A. Symonds and Havelock Ellis on sexuality, a novel by Ford Madox Ford (and Joseph Conrad), 'The Waste Land' of T. S. Eliot (and Ezra Pound), even the 'Lyrical Ballads' of Wordsworth (and Coleridge). Koestenbaum's startling interpretation of literary collaboration focusses on homosexual desire: Men write together in order either to express - or to evade homosexual feelings. Their writing becomes a 'textual intercourse', the book at once a female body they can share and the child of their partnership. These man-made texts steal a generative power that women's bodies represent. Seen as the site of a struggle between homosexual and homophobic energies, the texts Koestenbaum explores - works of psychoanalysis, sexology, fiction, and poetry - emerge as more complex, more revealing. They crystallize and refract the anxiety of male sexuality, and open up a deeper understanding of connections between the erotic and the literary. Koestenbaum connects male collaboration and the exchange of women within patriarchy. He peers into both medical texts and imaginative literature, disturbing our ready acceptance of the co-authored work. This strong and unsettling book transforms our understanding of the creative process, providing a new sense of what both collaborative and solitary artistry mean" (Publisher's blurb). The original DJ Cover (since censored by Amazon and other platforms) is especially, even disturbingly, apt: It reproduces George Platt Lynes' great homoerotic photograph, "The Birth of Dionysus", one of the most imaginative male nude images ever conceived and realized. It shows a baby boy emerging from a naked man's ample thigh, Platt Lynes' serenely imagined substitute to a woman giving birth. An absolute "must-have" title for Wayne Koestenbaum collectors. This title is a contemporary classic. This is one of few copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a beauty. Please note: Should NOT be confused with the regular trade edition, which was a softcover original only. Published in a small and limited first print run as the Library Edition, for distribution to libraries and university collections only. A rare copy thus. One of the most brilliant culture critics of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER WAYNE KOESTENBAUM TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0415790077.

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