Deep
Gossip
by Henry Abelove
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,
2003
128 pp., illus. 5 b/w, Trade, $25.95
ISBN: 0-8166-3826-8.
Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium
stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be
If you ever wondered what Freud thought
of homosexuality, how heterosexuality
came to be penetration-oriented, how an
'action' differs from a demonstration,
or what turned gay and lesbian people
into queers here's a wonderful book for
you.
Deep Gossip is taken from a eulogic
poem by Allen Ginsberg on the demise of
his fellow gay author Frank O'Hara. Henry
Abelove chose it as a title to indicate
that the knowledge it contains is illicit
but "indispensable for those who are in
any sense or measure disempowered, as
those who experience funny emotions may
be, and it is deep whenever it circulates
in subterranean ways and touches on matters
hard to grasp and of crucial concern."
I cannot think of a title that is more
appropriate to convey the sense of intimacy
and urgency in this mixture of historical,
philosophical, political and literary
essays.
Abelove covers a very wide range of subjects,
and he treats each and every one in a
lucid way, starting with a seemingly unimportant
event or observation, developing the theme
slowly and with humour, only to arrive
at a startling conclusion, a point that
rings loudly and clearly.
In the opening essay, Freuds own
writings and his refusal to treat the
homosexual son of a well-to-do American
lady as such, lead the author to a draw
a summary history of the moral rejection
of homosexuality by American analysts.
"Some speculations on the History
of Sexual Intercourse during the Long
Eighteenth Century in England" is
by far the most daring essay. Equally
interesting for historians of sexuality
as for students of economic history, the
author conjectures that the rise of the
industrial mode of production coincides
with a change in the meaning and practice
of heterosexuality. Statistics show a
fast increase in the population of England
in the period 1680-1830. Historians have
never convincingly and completely explained
what caused this increase, but Abelove
reinterprets the figures and the facts
and comes to the conclusion that heterosexual
practice actually and mentally changed
over that span of time. Some practices
like mutual masturbation and oral and
anal contact were gradually 'banned' to
the realm of foreplay while 'sex' became
to mean 'penis in vagina, vagina round
penis, with seminal emission uninterrupted'.
Sex became more productive in the process
and the birthrate rose accordingly. Meanwhile,
the work-week was restructured as well.
Mondays and even Tuesdays and Wednesdays,
which had been days of leisure and play,
were turned in productive daysa
process necessitated by the demands of
industrial production. Sundays became,
so to speak, foreplay-days, introductory
days for a week full of labour. The analogy
is clear, the coincidence too startling
to be overlooked.
Three more essays in this collection treat
some aspects of the history of queerness
in America. One on Thoreau and the Queer
Nation movement, one on the founding father
of gay/lesbian studies, Francis Otto Matthiessen,
and the last one on the literary inspirations
of the Gay Liberation Front.
Whatever your conviction or practice,
or, as Freud would have understood it,
whatever aspect of your polymorphic sexuality
is more pronounced, this is an utterly
readable and enjoyable book by an erudite
yet unpretentious author who likes his
piece of gossip.