Paul Robinson's Gay Lives is a comprehensive study of how the gay male memoir evolved over the course of the 20th century. Focusing on writers from Great Britain, France, and the United States, Robinson creates a series of dialogues among his 14 subjects as he examines how each deals with issues such as what it means to be a "man," how to view oneself in relationship to a gay community, and how one deals with having, or claiming, an outsider identity. Quoting at length from writers such as John Addington Symonds (who can be viewed as the father of the modern gay memoir), André Gide, G. Lowes Dickinson (a close friend of E.M. Forster), and contemporary writers including the late Paul Monette and Martin Duberman, Gay Lives is not only a crash course on gay literary history but a meditation on how often gay men (in varying degrees of closetedness) have greatly influenced what we call "mainstream culture." It is perhaps here that Gay Lives is most startling; Robinson both explicitly and implicitly forces us to reexamine how ideas of the personal, the political, and truth shape all writing. Gay Lives is an important--and provocative--addition to the critical literature on life writing. --Michael Bronski


From Publishers Weekly
Stanford University humanities professor Robinson provides thoughtful analyses of 14 "autobiographers, artists and intellectuals, whose chief concern is to describe their love of men," selecting gay men from England, France and the U.S. He focuses on "three issues much on the gay mind of late: identity, masculinity, and solidarity." John Addington Symonds?who "may have been the first homosexual to write an autobiography focused on his erotic life"?and G. Lowes Dickinson shed light on 19th-century gay life and were both concerned with "reconciling their desires with the values of society, values they often shared," writes Robinson. Andre Gide was the first to have his homosexual history published during his lifetime, and Robinson sees in Gide the Gallic tendency to be "philosophical" or "in the thrall of abstraction." Representing American "coming-out" stories are activist Martin Duberman and novelist Paul Monette. Some of Robinson's conclusions are too broad: for example, his contention, expressed in an epilogue, that "black homosexuals may have been spared the Great [Sexual] Repression" that whites endured, sounds, absent elaboration, uncomfortably like the old racist stereotype of blacks as sexual exotics with little intellectual intercession. Even so, Robinson's fluid prose illuminates the lives and texts of these men in a way that doubtless would have pleased them, and it allows his subjects to engage in a literate colloquy across the century. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Robinson (humanities, Stanford Univ.) wondered whether or not there was such a thing as a "gay life." Toward that end, he has examined 15 autobiographies, not simply by gay men but rather by those who seek to explain their love of men. He limits his canon to self-described artists and intellectuals, but the range here is extraordinary. Robinson looks at men from the 19th century to the present, including Paul Monette and Martin Duberman. The famous (Stephen Spender) appear alongside little-known diarists (Donald Vining and Jeb Alexander). The differences between them (class and nationality, for example) turn out to be not so superficial, and the ways in which they conduct their lives lead Robinson to conclude that there is no paradigmatic gay life. This lucid book will be of interest to historians for contextualizing gay life over time and space and to literary critics for examining a genre that has hitherto received little attention.ADavid S. Azzolina, Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib., PhiladelphiaCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Caleb Crain
Robinson deserves credit for drawing our attention to some works of real beauty.


From Kirkus Reviews
Cultural historian Robinson (Humanities/Stanford; Freud and His Critics, not reviewed, etc.) examines provocatively a centurys worth of authors whose homosexuality is a central subject of their autobiographical narratives. Covering 14 British, American, and French writers, most of them professional men of letters, Robinson focuses with sometimes claustrophobic reductiveness on what they did in bed, what they wanted to do, what they didnt want to do. The lives here and the way their authors represented them are remarkably various: The posthumous memoirs of 19th-century belletrist John Addington Symonds and Edwardian don G. Lowes Dickinson evidence lots of flowery Greek-inspired idealism but precious little sexual success in a society that was not so much repressive as willfully oblivious. In 1951 Stephen Spender disparaged his gay past through elaborate avoidances, while Christopher Isherwoods post-Stonewall Christopher and His Kind recreated much of the same milieu without Spenders backpedaling. J.R. Ackerley found lasting (nonsexual) love only with his dog; the flamboyantly effeminate Quentin Crisp flatly disdained sex. The French indulged in philosophical contortions: Andr Gide wrote that his physical desires had nothing to do with emotion; Jean Genet claimed that his homosexuality was, like his criminal career, a deliberate choice to remove himself from conventional society; Julian Green couldnt reconcile his sexuality with his Roman Catholic faith. The diarists Jeb Anderson and Donald Vining both endured the post-WWII crackdown on gay life in America, the former miserably and the latter with inexplicable perkiness. Memoirs by Andrew Tobias, Martin Duberman, and Paul Monette all center on emergence from the closet. In general, Robinson writes with crisp elegance, but he tends to dive for his subjects genitals with unseemly relish. And though he is often shrewd in assessing literary strategies as psychological evasions, he just as often ends up berating writers unfairly for lack of candor, self-knowledge, or 1990s political savvy. Nevertheless, Robinson covers an impressive amount of previously unsurveyed ground. (15 photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
In his autobiography, John Addington Symonds relates a glorious night of passion, in which he and his lover "lay covered from the cold in bed, tasting the honey of softly spoken words and the blossoms of lips pressed on lips." Christopher Isherwood's first autobiography, on the other hand, was far less direct; he wrote a second autobiography in part because the first was "not truly autobiographical" in that "the author conceals important facts about himself." These contradictions, evasions, and explicit sexual details of the life stories of fourteen men form Gay Lives, a revealing account of homosexual autobiography.

Paul Robinson reads the memoirs of French, British, and American gay authors--André Gide, Quentin Crisp, and Martin Duberman, among others--through the prism of sexual identity, asking fascinating questions about homosexuality and its relation to literary form. How did these authors discover their sexual identity? Did they embrace it or reject it? How did they express often conflicted desires in their words, which ranged from defiant and brutally frank to ambiguous and abstract? Robinson considers the choices each made--as a man and an author--to accommodate himself to society's homophobia or live in protest against his oppression.

Despite the threads that connect these stories, Gay Lives refutes the notion that there is a typical homosexual "career" by showing that gay men have led wildly dissimilar lives--from the exuberant to the miserable--and that they have found no less dissimilar meanings in those lives.







Card catalog description
Paul Robinson reads the memoirs of fourteen French, British, and American gay authors - including Jean Genet, Quentin Crisp, and Martin Duberman - through the prism of sexual identity: How did these men understand their homosexuality? Did they embrace or reject it? How did they express their often conflicted desires, in words ranging from the defiant and brutally frank to the ambiguous and abstract? Robinson shows how all these authors struggled to cope with their sexuality and to reconcile it with prevailing conceptions of masculinity; he considers, through their writings, the choices each man made to accommodate himself to society's homophobia or live in protest against his oppression. And Robinson also discovers national patterns among them as he explores the English obsession with social class and the French association of homosexual attraction with geographical or racial difference.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Paul Robinson reads the memoirs of 14 French, British, and American gay authors - including Jean Genet, Quentin Crisp, and Martin Duberman - through the prism of sexual identity: How did these men understand their homosexuality? Did they embrace or reject it? How did they express their often conflicted desires, in words ranging from the defiant and brutally frank to the ambiguous and abstract? Robinson shows how all these authors struggled to cope with their sexuality and to reconcile it with prevailing conceptions of masculinity; he considers, through their writings, the choices each man made to accommodate himself to society's homophobia or live in protest against his oppression. And Robinson also discovers national patterns among them as he explores the English obsession with social class and the French association of homosexual attraction with geographical or racial difference.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Stanford University humanities professor Robinson provides thoughtful analyses of 14 "autobiographers, artists and intellectuals, whose chief concern is to describe their love of men," selecting gay men from England, France and the U.S. He focuses on "three issues much on the gay mind of late: identity, masculinity, and solidarity." John Addington Symonds--who "may have been the first homosexual to write an autobiography focused on his erotic life"--and G. Lowes Dickinson shed light on 19th-century gay life and were both concerned with "reconciling their desires with the values of society, values they often shared," writes Robinson. Andre Gide was the first to have his homosexual history published during his lifetime, and Robinson sees in Gide the Gallic tendency to be "philosophical" or "in the thrall of abstraction." Representing American "coming-out" stories are activist Martin Duberman and novelist Paul Monette. Some of Robinson's conclusions are too broad: for example, his contention, expressed in an epilogue, that "black homosexuals may have been spared the Great [Sexual] Repression" that whites endured, sounds, absent elaboration, uncomfortably like the old racist stereotype of blacks as sexual exotics with little intellectual intercession. Even so, Robinson's fluid prose illuminates the lives and texts of these men in a way that doubtless would have pleased them, and it allows his subjects to engage in a literate colloquy across the century. (Feb.)

Library Journal

Robinson (humanities, Stanford Univ.) wondered whether or not there was such a thing as a "gay life." Toward that end, he has examined 15 autobiographies, not simply by gay men but rather by those who seek to explain their love of men. He limits his canon to self-described artists and intellectuals, but the range here is extraordinary. Robinson looks at men from the 19th century to the present, including Paul Monette and Martin Duberman. The famous (Stephen Spender) appear alongside little-known diarists (Donald Vining and Jeb Alexander). The differences between them (class and nationality, for example) turn out to be not so superficial, and the ways in which they conduct their lives lead Robinson to conclude that there is no paradigmatic gay life. This lucid book will be of interest to historians for contextualizing gay life over time and space and to literary critics for examining a genre that has hitherto received little attention.--David S. Azzolina, Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib., Philadelphia

Caleb Crain - The New York Times Book Review

...[T]hese stories cast a long shadow....Robinson...is awfully earnest. Where he finds unhappiness, he needs to diagnose it....[He] keeps suggesting how his subjects might have made themselves more contented, more ethical or more truthful....He thinks that living a happy gay life matters more than writing a good gay autobiography.

Kirkus Reviews

Cultural historian Robinson (Humanities/Stanford; Freud and His Critics, not reviewed, etc.) examines provocatively a century's worth of authors whose homosexuality is a central subject of their autobiographical narratives. Covering 14 British, American, and French writers, most of them professional men of letters, Robinson focuses with sometimes claustrophobic reductiveness on "what they did in bed, what they wanted to do, what they didn't want to do." The lives here and the way their authors represented them are remarkably various: The posthumous memoirs of 19th-century belletrist John Addington Symonds and Edwardian don G. Lowes Dickinson evidence lots of flowery Greek-inspired idealism but precious little sexual success in a society that was not so much repressive as willfully oblivious. In 1951 Stephen Spender disparaged his gay past through "elaborate avoidances," while Christopher Isherwood's post-Stonewall Christopher and His Kind recreated much of the same milieu without Spender's backpedaling. J.R. Ackerley found lasting (nonsexual) love only with his dog; the flamboyantly effeminate Quentin Crisp flatly disdained sex. The French indulged in philosophical contortions: André Gide wrote that his physical desires had nothing to do with emotion; Jean Genet claimed that his homosexuality was, like his criminal career, a deliberate choice to remove himself from conventional society; Julian Green couldn't reconcile his sexuality with his Roman Catholic faith. The diarists Jeb Anderson and Donald Vining both endured the post-WWII crackdown on gay life in America, the former miserably and the latter with inexplicable perkiness. Memoirs by Andrew Tobias, Martin Duberman,and Paul Monette all center on emergence from the closet. In general, Robinson writes with crisp elegance, but he tends to dive for his subjects' genitals with unseemly relish. And though he is often shrewd in assessing literary strategies as psychological evasions, he just as often ends up berating writers unfairly for lack of candor, self-knowledge, or 1990s political savvy. Nevertheless, Robinson covers an impressive amount of previously unsurveyed ground. (15 photos, not seen) .