Customer Reviews

Love's Confusions

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I was pleasantly surprised after picking up this book. Great design , meaty, fun, informative. It's sort of a scholarly book combined with a rambling read. Reeve enters the domain of love in various forms , eros, thanatos, sentimentality, pornography and covers it with many examples from movies and literature. There are gems of reading here, I started it thinking it might be another evil little boring book with a nicely designed cover and found myself hoisting up the chair and reading and reading and reading -- straight through in one sitting. I also like a book where when people are cited the notes are complete and clear -- they are here. You won't find it beach reading to be sure, there is no dominant story as in something like Fermat's Theorem. But neither is it pulpy schmaltz. Desire this book (a nod to Lacan) and enjoy it. I have no idea who this author is, ans surprisingly he or she is a philosopher -- a clear one at that! How oddly refreshing!

One becomes more philosophically inclined with advancing years; I don't take it neat, but I'm partial to something-&-philosophy - usually a 'hard' (or genuine) science. One might have hoped this book interfaced with neurology or evolutionary psychology (they often do); unfortunately this book (by a professor of philosophy, no less!) interfaces with another pseudoscience, psychiatry, and after detours including up the author's putative innamorata's butt (p61) ends up almost like counselling. A how-to book on love-making? It's pure Adam Phillips territory (notorious clever-clogs and narcissist, but also crucially a practicing psychiatrist) but is it scholarship? After running the gamut of sexologists I was almost nostalgic for St Augustine; at least he was authentically weird - and he, how shall I say, ploughed his own furrow.

First off, the author ties himself in knots trying to distinguish between corporeal and 'spiritual' love. I had better declare myself; I don't believe in spirits, or gods for that matter, let alone 'God'. I even have a problem with love as some kind of virtue - it is a need, a hunger, and no more a Ding an sich than 'evil'; it may produce virtuous ACTS or the exact reverse. ('Love made me do it (sob)')

Still in chap 1 Reeve makes heavy weather of 'Love thy neighbour as thyself' - it surely means don't love yourself MORE - or in the language of the nursery 'Do as you would be done by'. Not always easy, and we can only do these things if we want to - the trick (or the luck!) is wanting to, and that's involuntary. We explain the 'why' of our existence by positing a god; that does not explain the why of our behaviour (the point is of course that there IS no why in either case - and why should there be?!) hence life's intense interest and excitement; it's for real - rather than being cogs in some divine plan, rather than a dry run for eternity this is all we've got - whew, don't mess it up!

But it turns out all this talk of God is a blind, a mere sweetener before we get to more earthy activities. Which are rather a turnoff, as it happens. By the end of chap 2 I was squirming with embarrassment; it reads like an elaborate apology to his former partner(s) (and I'm wildly hypothesising here) and to his former (Catholic) self (again deduced from internal evidence) or both. What Reeve is up to, it emerges, is a work (mini yet arduous) of self-analysis, talking us through his mid-life (we must assume) crisis. Oh America! But at least his analyst would have got paid for listening. And what are Harvard doing publishing this? And who is the intended beneficiary of the musings of this middle-aged latecomer to the lovefeast (he tells us on p162 that sex is 'something we can...maybe even admit to wanting'; whew!)

This book feels less like philosophy than self-help to me (I was going to title this Catholic Portnoy takes the Talking Cure) but who is being helped, and how? (The modern equivalent of quis custodiet custodes is who will counsel the counsellers; who will analyse the analysts?) It is really about lust and shame, but neither term is used (masturbation only gets a coy - or sly? - mention). There is a whiff of the confessional and the consulting room that for me are passion-killers (maybe I don't have the background). Is it the Screwtape Letters where someone erotically roused is compared to a starving man staring at meat turning on a spit through a restaurant window? Don't talk about it!! Love is a woolly concept at best; lust, on the other hand, is not rocket science. To engage with both in the same breath, as it were, is a foolhardy enterprise, especially for a philosopher; this reads like a muddled 'busman's holiday'. The only kind of love one can moralize about is the longterm emotional bond (aka habit) and Reeve is really more interested in the exciting process by which you get there, bless him; but what is there to say about it? Just do it; if you want to change horses in midstream or cheat on your partner it's up to you, but you must take the consequences. You can cry on my shoulder but I particularly don't want to hear you justify yourself.

For a reality check may I suggest a serving of wholemeal Crumb (Robert), preceded by Chester Brown's exquisite amuse-bouche The Playboy (does he ever understand confession!) and topped off by lashings of Binky Brown meets the BVM. That or cold showers.

Nice cover, by the way.