Customer Reviews

A Queer Geography: Journeys Toward a Sexual Self

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This book should insult any gay man who considers himself to be an intellectual. Full of faulty logic, purple prose, gross generalizations, and accounts of Browning's crusing experiences, the textoffers a disturbing, degrading picture of homosexuality. Despite a section on the works of Michel Foucault, the text demonstrates no knowledge of political ontology; also, the text avoids mentioning the works of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and David Halperin, but it posits Camille Paglia as an intellectual diety--look out! The correlation between coming out and becoming "born again" just doesn't work: the former is an outward, social/public event, and the latter is an inward, spiritual one. Nonetheless, the cover of the book reproduces a beautifu, homoeroticl print by Paul Cadmus.

I'm not sure what happened to Frank Browning. His first book, The Culture of Desire, was interesting and provocative. It got me thinking and it was, above all, generous. It was inclusive and it was respectful of so many kinds of gay people. This book is the complete opposite. Browning comes off like a closed-minded old man--and I don't mean that in an ageist way. A young person could sound like an old fool, so it's not about age. It's about style and openess and thinking. It's about personal attacks and ugliness. And it's about sticking to a post-structuralist, Foucauldian agenda, even when it doesn't intrique or make sense. I read both Michaelangelo Signorielli's book Life Outside and Gabriel Rotello's book Sexual Ecology. Rotello I found to be a bit dull and unwilling to entertain the thoughts of those who might disagree, though I still found him enlightening and interesting, and I thought the book was major piece of scientific work. Signorile I found to be thoughtful overall, far from dull, and quite perceptive. The book was also well-written. But all that Browning has to say about these two is that they're "policing" desire. He has nothing good to say about them and their work, and seems instead to be hellbent on attacking them. It so much deviates from his usual thoughtful style, and it's a real embarrassment. I can only imagine that he's jealous of them for taking the spotlight while he's been nowhere to be found. He reduces and simplifies their work in ways that I think is dishonest, as I cannot believe he actually thinks these things to be true. Furthermore, his use of postmodern theory is just hackneyed and pitiful. In his first book it was an interesting aside, something we should consider. In this book, it has become the religion by which he judges everything. He's turned me off. I think this book is a total mess--and boring.

Same-sex desire can cohere into many different identities -- we've known that since Foucault. Same-sex behavior often does not cohere into an identity at all -- we've known that at least since "Tea Room Trade." So why does Browning present it as a remarkable revelation that he has just now thought of, and that will come to the reader as a shocking revelation? This is a well written book, but interesting accounts of pansexual Arcadias are unfortunately interspliced with annoyingly self-absorbed tales of his tricks -- Browning believes that he is hot enough to attract every guy in the world, straight, gay, or whatever, and that the reader is desperately interested in hearing the details. I can buy better porn elsewhere -- but my problem with this book is not that there are many ways to express same-sex desire, not that there is gay life beyond the Castro Street clones with gym memberships and charge accounts at Ikea -- who'd want a world where everybody is the same? But Browning continuously states that those clones have no right to exist, that they are inauthentic, self-absorbed, sex-obsessed closet bisexuals. Gay life should should not ever include muscles, circuit parties, and political activism. In fact, there should be no gay people, anywhere, ever, just promiscuous pansexuals going with the flow. In a less enlightened age, we would call such rantings homophobic.

Best thing I've yet read on why so many of us younger, er, gays, are feeling increasingly "post-gay."

Unfortunately, this book will probably sell only half as well as Browning's blockbuster "The Culture of Desire." That's because it's twice as good. "Queer Geography" is a sexy read, but it's also very smart, which may make it a challenge to readers unwilling or unable to look beyond 1970's ideas of what it means to be gay. But it should be required reading for anybody who's ever felt that maybe, just maybe, there's a life outside of dumbed-down gay magazines.