Deep Gossip and Haiku
I met Henry Abelove at Dorothy Wang's book party, and was introduced to his book of essays called Deep Gossip . The title is taken from Allen Ginsberg's elegy for Frank O' Hara. After describing O'Hara as a "Curator of funny emotions," Ginsberg praises him for his ear "for our deep gossip." The essays are as engrossing as gossip, an apt compliment if we think of gossip as the sharing of information between disempowered people. In these essays, Abelove performs careful and gracious corrections to what has been underestimated, overlooked and sidelined. Like many gay men, I have read Freud's letter to the American mother, but had not realized that it was his last riposte to the moralism of American psychoanalysts. In the next essay, the suggestion that other sexual practices besides "intercourse so-called" have been redefined as foreplay in the late eighteenth century is brilliant. Since I am not a fan of marriage, Abelove's read...