Writing Desire: Sixty Years of Gay Autobiography (review)

In this engaging and well-written study of gay men's life writing in the postwar period, Bertram Cohler offers us insights into the different social and historical contexts that have informed and shaped gay subjectivity for six generations of men. Cohler uses the concept of generation-cohort "as a means for understanding the impact of time upon the experience of self and others in the meaning we make of sexual attraction for other men" (17). He argues that the life narratives published by each cohort evince a "generational consciousness" that underlines how the experience of "being gay" is a product of wider discursive forces. Drawing upon pioneering research conducted by Ken Plummer in his 1995 book Telling Sexual Stories, Cohler advances a social-constructionist interpretation of gay desire, arguing that "rather than assuming sexual orientation as innate or 'hardwired', we might better understand the desire for sexual and social relationships with other men . . . as a particular kind of shared life story learned within a particular time and place" (10).

Regarding choice of narratives, Cohler has relied upon stories that are "information rich" (23), ones that he thinks best illustrate the generational shifts under discussion. Yet, despite an awareness that "such factors as geography, ethnicity, social status and sexual orientation" (217) have enormous impact on how individuals understand and represent the course of their own lives, the selection of gay men chosen is somewhat homogenous in terms of race (white), class (if not middle-class at origin, then upwardly mobile), and geography (primarily urban). There are few moments, then, when Cohler's overall schema is disrupted by voices from same-sex-desiring men who might better be described as "queer." In this regard, one might think of the late artist and former teen-hustler David Wojnarowicz, whose 1991 Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration is a lacerating critique not only of establishment persecution of those who are sexually different, but also of the numbing conformity of late 80s gay culture. Wojnarowicz was certainly not one of the "generation of gay youth" who "found acceptance from family, school, and community for their alternative sexual identity" (20), and it would have been interesting to hear more from narratives that disrupt rather than confirm the genealogy of growing acceptance that Cohler's book outlines. After all, it is only a certain kind of gay life that has become acceptable—one that many queer theorists would label "homonormative."

Of particular interest in this study is the attention paid to gay life writing on the Internet, and the importance of this genre for solving problems of isolation for a younger generation of gay men. As Cohler points out, "Readers of these Internet accounts are . . . able to use this master narrative as a means of organizing their own life experiences into a coherent story of oneself as gay" (11). Young men who in previous generations would have needed to network face-to-face in urban-based gay communities in order to seek out role models and possible life paths can now do so virtually and at a younger age. Importantly, too, these young men are themselves able to tell their stories online, often before they are able to communicate about their same-sex desires face to face. As Cohler notes, this "activity of telling or writing a life story is itself a practice that fosters the construction of an identity" (217). Telling here is the notion of a "master narrative," a controlling factor in the narration of gay lives complained of by Paul Robinson who, in his 1999 book Gay Lives, expresses regret at the ubiquity of "the coming out narrative," wondering "what explains why this particular version of a homosexual life is now the only one we tell ourselves" (393). Cohler's book, articulating in great detail, as it does, the wider social and historical factors that enable life stories to take on the shape they do, goes a long way toward answering...