Double Talk: The Erotics of Male Literary Collaboration

Sigmund Freud And Josef Breuer On Hysteria, J.a. Symonds And Havelock Ellis On Sexuality, A Novel By Ford Madox Ford And Joseph Conrad, The Waste Land Of T.s. Eliot (and Ezra Pound), Even The Lyrical Ballads Of Wordsworth And Coleridge: Men Making Books Together. Wayne Koestenbaum's Startling Interpretation Of Literary Collaboration Focuses On Homosexual Desire: Men Write Together, He Argues, In Order Either To Express Or To Evade Homosexual Feelings. Their Writing Becomes A Textual Intercourse, The Book At Once A Female Body They Can Share And The Child Of Their Partnership. These Man-made Texts Steal A Generative Power That Women's Bodies Seem To Represent. Seen As The Site Of A Struggle Between Homosexual And Homophobic Energies, The Texts Koestenbaum Explores – Works Of Psychoanalysis, Sexology, Fiction, And Poetry – Emerge As More Complex, More Revealing. They Crystallize And Refract The Anxiety Of Male Sexuality At The End Of The Last Century, And Open Up A Deeper Understanding Of Connections Today Between The Erotic And The Literary. Drawing Upon The Work Of Feminist Critics, Koestenbaum Connects Male Collaboration And The Exchange Of Women Within Patriarchy: He Peers Into Both Medical Texts And Imaginative Literature, Disturbing Our Ready Acceptance Of The Co-authored Work. This Strong And Unsettling Book Transforms Our Understanding Of The Creative Process, Providing A New Sense Of What Both Collaborative And Solitary Artistry Mean.