Desire: A Memoir

Description

Fifty years after the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 decriminalised homosexual acts, Jonathan Dollimore explores, in, through and beyond the gay sub-cultures of cities like New York, Brighton and Sydney, what the new freedoms meant for him and others in the following decades. He writes honestly and movingly about his teenage attraction to risk and danger; of accidents and escapes; of curiosity as a flight from boredom; of suicidal depression and ecstasy; and, beneath all, of the life of desire haunted and torn by loss. For more than thirty years Jonathan Dollimore has been one of contemporary culture's most influential critics of politics, literature, and sexuality. Desire: A Memoir, a hybrid of autobiography, meditation and philosophical reflection, explores the existential sources of his writing. FC Praise for Desire: A Memoir Half title Beyond Criticism Title Copyright Quote Dedication Contents Preface – Simon Palfrey Acknowledgements 1 Life-changing accident ‘… their best/Desires’ Leaving 2 Loss and change Journalism University 3 Life-changing wager, 1977 Sex and the self Broken bodies 4 New York: City of many Sirens The Saint East Village Life and sex New York and Brighton Cruising 5 ‘Death is in my sight today’, 1990–1 Sussex Campus, c. 1991 The soulful illness Hamlet Causes, causes Psychiatrists, therapists and analysts Illusions 6 On loss 7 Sydney, Australia, 1988 Life, disease and condoms ‘True Faith’ Sydney Mardi Gras Circle of desire The entirely beautiful 8 Reckonings Getting caught The test 9 Oblivion and touch, 1993