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Reflecting Narcissus: A Queer Aesthetic

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It's easy to get lost in the refracting images of Narcissus, but Bruhm happens to be an excellent guide through the morass. He opens the book with a challenging but rewarding survey of recent relevant scholarship (Earl Jackson, Leo Bersani, Moe Meyer, Gregory Bredbeck are all discussed). He then provides an elegantly written contribution to the evolving themes of the Narcissus myth which is heavily indebted (but updated) to Louise Vinge's thematic study.

The best chapter by far (for me) is "Reverse of the Mirror" (chapter 2) which lays out Gide and Wilde on Narcissus. It is an excellent study of the differences between the two writers who otherwise shared so much friendship. One wonders in the end how they could have been such close friends. Bruhm works through "Telleny" which is possibly by Wilde, maybe pseudo-Wilde. This is a pornographic work, the first of its kind to have been attributed to a literary man of genius such as Wilde.

Also of note is his chapter on Nabokov.The book is not at all boring to read even though it treats some very boring literature (I mean Freud). Bruhm includes plenty of humor while sustaining his polemic throughout. The one regret is that he did not prove (to me at least) how Narcissus is a same-sex love story. I mean, I can see how it might be read that way but I am not sure that even Ovid meant it that way. I think that Bruhm's argument toward such a same-sex narrative might have been bolstered by a closer examination of Philostratus' "Imagines" and an historically valid look at the appearance of Narcissus in ekphrastic works of the second century. Louise Vinge hinted at the scholarship available on the Philostrati as well as other post-Ovidian works that treated it before the onslaught of Christian based compulsory heterosexuality.

Despite these quibbles of mine I think this book is an excellent addition to queer theory.