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Hardcover
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
In Love Stories, Jonathan Ned Katz presents stories of men's intimacies with men during the nineteenth century—including those of Abraham Lincoln—drawing flesh-and-blood portraits of intimate friendships and the ways in which men struggled to name, define, and defend their sexual feelings for one another. In a world before "gay" and "straight" referred to sexuality, men like Walt Whitman and John Addington Symonds created new ways to name and conceive of their erotic relationships with other men. Katz, diving into history through diaries, letters, newspapers, and poems, offers us a clearer picture than ever before of how men navigated the uncharted territory of male-male desire.
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| A New History |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Katz, Jonathan Ned/ "Love Stories: Sex Between Men and Homosexuality", University of Chicago Press, 2003.
A New History
Amos Lassen
Jonathan Ned Katz's "Love Stories" is a new way of looking at men in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This time we look at them from the gay and romantic point of view. Katz gives us stories on men and their intimacies with other men and the way these men looked to find a name for what they felt for each other. This was long before the terms of "gay" and straight" entered our vocabularies in the way they are used today. Looking at diaries and letters as well as newspaper and poems, we get a clear picture of how men acted in male/male situations.
There are names we recognize in the pages of this book and looming above them all is Walt Whitman who spoke in favor of love between men and served as an inspiration and as a mentor to other men who were struggling with their feelings of love for other men.
We must remember that we cannot look at the 19th century in the way we look at today---there was no terminology then and many times same sex relations were deemed either immoral or wrong.
The book is really about the struggle for men to find a place for themselves. Katz maintains that the origins of the come temporary gay community go back to this time. We learn a lot from Katz and he shows how same sex attraction was not really looked at as out of the ordinary. Katz dissects history and gives us a great deal of information and he really shines in his discussion of the legal definition of sodomy.
The book looks at deep friendships between men with the sexual aspects playing second fiddle. This is a wonderful collection of facts about sex between men in the 19th century. It is because of the courage of the men in this book that we have come as far as we have. Without this book we may never have learned about them.
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| Finally a balanced view |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I must applaud this author for producing a fine book which takes the pain to explain people and their actions in the light of their times; before we invented the label 'gay'.
A lot of reserach went into this work, and it shows. Facts are shown which have nowadays been glossed over by urban myths and have become distorted. I found the book fascinating and full of aspects that highlighted historical backgrounds.
Recommended for all who wish to study the facts.
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| Social Constructionism.... |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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When C.A. Tripp began to exchange information with Larry Kramer about Lincoln's homosexual experiences, I warned him that because Larry was so close to Jonathan Ned Katz, Katz might be inspired to revisit the question about Honest Abe's homosexuality and take an equivocal position on it, which he did in Love Stories. Katz was hampered by his adherence to "social constructionism" - the notion that before the coining of the word homosexual in 1869 homosexuals didn't exist.
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| Important But Quirky |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Before Freud ruined so much of human relationships with his misguided and anti-human theory, people could have deep friendships across many, if not all, social and gender boundaries without fear of being labeled as deviate or shameful. In the mid-to-late 19th century, deep, and sometimes sexual relationships between men, found a common theme. Male/male love was now seen, by well-educated devotees, as a rediscovery of ancient Greek traditions. Britain and America thought themselves the heirs to the Greco-Roman legacy, and those platonic (or not) friendships were a part of that. The role that Walt Whitman played in giving the movement a voice and a testament gets thorough treatment here.
Unfortunately, the book has three significant flaws, two of which could be solved by editing and the third of which should send Katz back to the library. First, the jacket subtitle is `Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality" which is misleading and needlessly provocative. The book is much more about deep male friendships; the sexual aspects are really secondary to the narrative. Secondly, the author indulges in far too many snickering, leering asides, such as "Could this have meant...?" "Were they really referring to (insert name of sexual act)?" To add insult, he feels compelled to explain the double -entendre of the word `tight'. One thinks he didn't know his audience. He should have just used a lot of emoticons!
The third, and most serious flaw is the lack of context. Having carefully established the nature and wide range of these relationships, he omits any mention of Freud and other researchers into human sexuality who only succeeded in making everyone more uptight than they were. To judge from this book these Victorian proto-queens were only slightly bothered about the moral aspects of male-male sex, but after Freud, all that changed. Just a few pages about the difference in post-Freudian sexual anxieties would help the reader appreciate just how good most, if not all, of Katz's 19th century subjects had it.
An important book that needs to get over itself in some ways, Love Stories needs just a few more minutes in the dressing room before going back to the cotillion.
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| Fascinating! |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I find the subject of all-male attraction finally being validated in this work and presented in a realistic manner--not meant to trash but to inform and educate. To see such honored men among the group, which attests to male on male sexual attraction as being part of a "normal" everyday sensation that so many men encounter, is more than welcomed. I also find the subtlety of this subject matter written in an erotic fashion (although presented as "fiction" for reasons of the people meant to protect) in a recent, although little known work, entitled Love, Lust & Terror.
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