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Book Review: How We Desire, Carolin Emke
Dec. 29th, 2018 03:40 pmI think this might have been the first e-ARC I read via NetGalley, and oooh boy, do I have opinions! The text, an English translation by Imogen Taylor of a work first published in German, came out in May 2018, but NetGalley had it marked as to-publish 2019, so I was conscientiously putting off posting my review until I realised my error.
I was very interested by this book - fascinated, even - and in places validated by it, but not satisfied. It offers an engaging personal account of the way that desire can fluctuate and shape identity, without necessarily being coterminous with identity. However, there are serious limitations in Emke’s perspective and the ability of this book to present something more than a personal coming-of-age narrative.
The strength of this book is, by far, Emke’s storytelling (facilitated by Imogen Taylor’s translation). Recollecting events from her childhood, Emke mixes vivid descriptions of particular details (the woods behind her family home feature frequently) with lyrical recounts of repeated, almost ritualised activities. I was struck, for instance, by her description of early teenage parties, where she and her peers danced and made out without, apparently, much discrimination as to who they made out with, aside from the consistent boundary of gender. Descriptions of music lessons, of learning to deconstruct music as a text, are exquisite. Emke makes deft metaphorical links between music and experience of sexuality - she writes, for instance, of repetition and variation, and the inability to identify variations if one has never heard the theme isolated and defined, as comparable to her inability to recognise lesbian desire without an example thereof in her life.
I also really enjoyed Emke’s take on sexual identity formation - she writes of becoming gay, as a result of discovering her desire, rather than of her status as gay (which she prefers to lesbian, although she also uses lesbian throughout the book) being an innate thing which she discovered. She writes of how her adolescence - marked by gender-non-normative pursuits and by an affinity with a gay male friend - could be interpreted as full of ‘signs’ that she was ‘really gay’ all along, but she insists on the valid experience of eroticism and ‘falling in love’ with men throughout that time. I did feel, as I often do with memoir, that either some aspects of this aren’t fully interrogated, or that the balance between truth-telling and privacy has produced an odd result. Emke writes, insistently, that she desired and fell in love with men, but she never describes doing so, not as she describes desiring her first female partner or falling in love with her long term partner. She describes eroticism with men as entirely depersonalised, her male age peers interchangeable. If she desired any of them specifically, and she insists she does, she doesn’t describe it. What was the experience of falling in love with men like, and how different from women? I feel like I want to buy her a beer and pry these answers out of her.
( I have further quibbles )
On a positive note, despite the fact that the book itself disappoints me, I want to note how much I appreciate that the English translation exists. As far as I know this edition, by Text Publishing, is the only English translation of what has evidently been quite a popular book in Germany. I can think of many uses for it - it could be used to broaden a contemporary sexuality studies course beyond the Anglo-American sphere, for instance, and to give anglophone native speakers access to primary source account of 80s youth experience in Germany. That an indie Australian press is investing not only in Australian authors but in broadening Australians’ access to texts from outside the Anglosphere is remarkable and exciting, my issues with this book’s perspectives aside. I’m glad to have had access to the e-ARC via NetGalley, courtesy of the publisher.
I was very interested by this book - fascinated, even - and in places validated by it, but not satisfied. It offers an engaging personal account of the way that desire can fluctuate and shape identity, without necessarily being coterminous with identity. However, there are serious limitations in Emke’s perspective and the ability of this book to present something more than a personal coming-of-age narrative.
The strength of this book is, by far, Emke’s storytelling (facilitated by Imogen Taylor’s translation). Recollecting events from her childhood, Emke mixes vivid descriptions of particular details (the woods behind her family home feature frequently) with lyrical recounts of repeated, almost ritualised activities. I was struck, for instance, by her description of early teenage parties, where she and her peers danced and made out without, apparently, much discrimination as to who they made out with, aside from the consistent boundary of gender. Descriptions of music lessons, of learning to deconstruct music as a text, are exquisite. Emke makes deft metaphorical links between music and experience of sexuality - she writes, for instance, of repetition and variation, and the inability to identify variations if one has never heard the theme isolated and defined, as comparable to her inability to recognise lesbian desire without an example thereof in her life.
I also really enjoyed Emke’s take on sexual identity formation - she writes of becoming gay, as a result of discovering her desire, rather than of her status as gay (which she prefers to lesbian, although she also uses lesbian throughout the book) being an innate thing which she discovered. She writes of how her adolescence - marked by gender-non-normative pursuits and by an affinity with a gay male friend - could be interpreted as full of ‘signs’ that she was ‘really gay’ all along, but she insists on the valid experience of eroticism and ‘falling in love’ with men throughout that time. I did feel, as I often do with memoir, that either some aspects of this aren’t fully interrogated, or that the balance between truth-telling and privacy has produced an odd result. Emke writes, insistently, that she desired and fell in love with men, but she never describes doing so, not as she describes desiring her first female partner or falling in love with her long term partner. She describes eroticism with men as entirely depersonalised, her male age peers interchangeable. If she desired any of them specifically, and she insists she does, she doesn’t describe it. What was the experience of falling in love with men like, and how different from women? I feel like I want to buy her a beer and pry these answers out of her.
( I have further quibbles )
On a positive note, despite the fact that the book itself disappoints me, I want to note how much I appreciate that the English translation exists. As far as I know this edition, by Text Publishing, is the only English translation of what has evidently been quite a popular book in Germany. I can think of many uses for it - it could be used to broaden a contemporary sexuality studies course beyond the Anglo-American sphere, for instance, and to give anglophone native speakers access to primary source account of 80s youth experience in Germany. That an indie Australian press is investing not only in Australian authors but in broadening Australians’ access to texts from outside the Anglosphere is remarkable and exciting, my issues with this book’s perspectives aside. I’m glad to have had access to the e-ARC via NetGalley, courtesy of the publisher.