Arts & Entertainment
Embracing Your Selves
Embracing Your Selves
review by David Grenier
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I usually like to read books that I can identify with. I can’t deal with reading about breakups or gushy love stories; Conversely, if it’s provocative and swirling with sexual innuendo, I will read it. But every now and then a title catches my eye that tweaks my desire for serious discussion or exploration, an oasis from the hundreds of books out there that try and to something important but fall short.
I opened Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity, expecting another drippy memoir of a distressed queen looking for love. But what I found was quite the opposite: a meticulously detailed, insightful, and bold attempt to answer those tough questions about gay identity most of us are afraid to confront in our own lives. Mendelsohn’s exploration of gay identity is honest and thought provoking, and I admit I found myself captivated by his story.
Growing up just outside of New York City, raised by a mathematician father who envisioned every answer to life’s questions as rigid scientific equations, a young Daniel discovers a yearning for things he cannot explain with simple math. A sexually starved student in search of desire and identity, the author wishes everything in his world could revolve around boys, gay this and boy that. And there’s no better place to achieve that than in Chelsea, New York City’s fairyland of sex, cruising and excess, where Mendelsohn ends up moving and living half-time. In Chelsea, he discovers that gay identity itself is riddled in conflict and paradox, as the community argues for equal rights and civil rights while completely separating themselves from the heterosexual world. Mendelsohn also battles tough questions of personal identity: “who am I?” and “what could I become?”
The book explores the paradox of a gay man’s desire for love and his love of desire. One conceivably desires to settle down with a partner, foster a family and be satisfied. But what about that cute guy cruising you from across the street? What if he is the man of your dreams—and look at his package! The search for middle ground in this paradox is tricky. Mendelsohn suggests that the sand is always shifting underneath, that identities are always changing, that maybe we shouldn’t assume that we are strictly part of one and not the other.
Mendelsohn brilliantly untangles these questions, and several others, using his personal experience and thorough knowledge of classical Greek and Roman texts, such as the story of Narcissus, Ovid and Oedipus. Educated at Princeton, he is a master of these texts, and uses the ancient tales of tragedy and myth to cross-reference his social commentary on gay life and his delicately personal journey from son to boy to hunk to scholar, and eventually, to father figure.
When Mendelsohn is asked to father the child of a close friend, he refuses. His fear of commitment rears its ugly head. Yet when the friend bears a child, Daniel is there, suddenly thrust toward a more responsible, nurturing course as a male role model, which he nervously embraces. Suddenly this Chelsea playboy is now playing daddy, and he illustrates his sensitivity toward the child beautifully. Here Mendelsohn absorbs some of the child’s innocence, and describes him, well, innocently:
“Since he was about three months old, Nicholas has been a beautiful child. Until then he had the same rumpled and paradoxically old-looking face that many infants have, but when he turned three months, I became struck by his beauty. His head is large and round, except for a funny bump at the very back, which I always feel for when cutting his hair, something I will not let anyone else do…”
Mendelsohn’s vulnerability toward the child, his caring for him, encourages a discussion about gay men and their ability to escape the crazysexycruisy world and become successful parents, dispelling the myth that we are all inherently destined for singlehood.
There are other surprises here. Mendelsohn goes into great detail discussing family myths, and while researching his family history, uncovers a dark family secret hidden for generations.
The Elusive Embrace is rather thick with references at times. It walks the line of being too crowded with examples and throwbacks to classical literature. But overall, this is a courageous and insightful memoir. The thought, dedication and knowledge thrown into this book are apparent, and it is probably a volume many men should have on their shelves. It is a deep exploration of our lives as gay men, our struggle to understand who we are, know where we came from, and go wherever we dream.
David Grenier earned a degree in journalism from Saint Michael’s College in 1997, co-founded College Street Magazine, and now works for Computer Games Magazine in Richmond, VT.
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The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity Vintage Books |