The Bar and the Board: for Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

In this brief memoir, the author describes his first meeting with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick when they discussed Anthony Trollope’s fiction; a later meeting, when they discussed some early writings on gay history; the author’s initial reaction to the publication of Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire; and one other meeting, when the author and Sedgwick discussed James Merrill’s poetry and also cruising. Finally, the author quotes and contextualizes a passage evidently about himself from one of Sedgwick’s poems.