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The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity

de Daniel Mendelsohn

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2095128,627 (3.53)1
Hailed for its searing emotional insights, and for the astonishing originality with which it weaves together personal history, cultural essay, and readings of classical texts by Sophocles, Ovid, Euripides, and Sappho, The Elusive Embrace is a profound exploration of the mysteries of identity.nbsp;nbsp;It is also a meditation in which the author uses his own divided life to investigate the "rich conflictedness of things," the double lives all of us lead. Daniel Mendelsohn recalls the deceptively quiet suburb where he grew up, torn between his mathematician father's pursuit of scientific truth and the exquisite lies spun by his Orthodox Jewish grandfather; the streets of manhattan's newest "gay ghetto," where "desire for love" competes with "love of desire;" and the quiet moonlit house where a close friend's small son teaches him the meaning of fatherhood.nbsp;nbsp;And, finally, in a neglected Jewish cemetery, the author uncovers anbsp;nbsp;family secret that reveals the universal need for storytelling, for inventing myths of the self.nbsp;nbsp;The book that Hilton Als calls "equal to Whitman's 'Song of Myself,'" The Elusive Embrace marks a dazzling literary debut.… (més)
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Nearly twenty years after its original publication, this unique book continues to defy classification. Part memoir, part family history, part socio-cultural critique—The Elusive Embrace resonates as a late 20th-century/early 21st-century chronicle of the ambivalent lives that many gay men lead.

As a Classics scholar, Mendelsohn informs his observations of contemporary life with relevant analogues from Greek language and drama. Using the Greek construction of “men” and “de” (i.e., “On the one hand…but then again, on the other…”), Mendelsohn (whose surname begins with the combination of these two Greek syllables) demonstrates the conflated binaries of his own life (men, as an intellectual…de, as a sexual being) as well as broader humanistic concerns (men, the desire for love…de, the love of desire).

The references to AOL chat rooms now seem quaint, and the somewhat lengthy chronicle of his family’s history in the latter quarter of the book gets a bit tedious, but ultimately, Mendelsohn’s transcendent prose and the sheer power of his youthful memories will strike a bittersweet chord with many gay men of a certain age. ( )
  jimrgill | Mar 5, 2017 |
Absolutely the best memoir from a present day intellectual American author and critic. A rarity. Difficult to classify and touching to read. ( )
  ebeach | Jul 8, 2015 |
A really beautiful book; a skillful weaving together of personal history and literature. ( )
  KatrinkaV | Oct 23, 2012 |
How does one resolve the mystery of his own identity? Can one understand the rest of the world if he does not know himself first? These questions and more form the themes of this rare if not unique memoir. Daniel Mendelsohn shares his own personal history through essays on the ways that he, and by reference we, defines himself. The geographies, paternities, mythologies and what he calls multiplicities lead him to a summary section that discusses identities. Concluding at the end of his musings that "you live in the middle voice, you are here and you are there," (p 206), and this is the cumulative result of the experiences of a life - our personal mythology. By weaving into his personal experience the lessons of classical mythology (Ovid et. al.) Mendelsohn pursues the nature of the desire. Since Plato discussed the relationship between eros and the good this question has been a critical part of human existence. The Elusive Embrace updates the search for the nature of this relationship and its part in the "riddle of identity". Beautifully written and deeply felt this is a book to return to again and again. ( )
  jwhenderson | Apr 1, 2012 |
Awful. ( )
  leeinaustin | Feb 27, 2008 |
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Hailed for its searing emotional insights, and for the astonishing originality with which it weaves together personal history, cultural essay, and readings of classical texts by Sophocles, Ovid, Euripides, and Sappho, The Elusive Embrace is a profound exploration of the mysteries of identity.nbsp;nbsp;It is also a meditation in which the author uses his own divided life to investigate the "rich conflictedness of things," the double lives all of us lead. Daniel Mendelsohn recalls the deceptively quiet suburb where he grew up, torn between his mathematician father's pursuit of scientific truth and the exquisite lies spun by his Orthodox Jewish grandfather; the streets of manhattan's newest "gay ghetto," where "desire for love" competes with "love of desire;" and the quiet moonlit house where a close friend's small son teaches him the meaning of fatherhood.nbsp;nbsp;And, finally, in a neglected Jewish cemetery, the author uncovers anbsp;nbsp;family secret that reveals the universal need for storytelling, for inventing myths of the self.nbsp;nbsp;The book that Hilton Als calls "equal to Whitman's 'Song of Myself,'" The Elusive Embrace marks a dazzling literary debut.

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