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L'Amphitheatre Des Morts: Memoires Anticipees
Hard to Find book
156 pages, Paperback
First published April 10, 1994
About the author
Guy Hocquenghem
29 books40 followersGuy Hocquenghem, essayist and activist, is often considered the father of Queer theory. He was the author of Homosexual Desire (1972) and L'Amour en relief (1982). The Screwball Asses is his first work available from Semiotext(e).
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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September 29, 2020What a blessing for a new Hocquenghem translation to appear in 2018! It's been 10 years since the last one, The Screwball Asses.* Guy wrote this short novel (...memoir?) on his deathbed. The fact that it's set in 2018 is interesting, but has little bearing on the narrative, which has next to nothing of science fiction about it. It has the feel of a tragedy. It's very short, and the narrator is always moving on, possibly because Guy's strength is failing him even as he writes. From what I know about his life, this seems to be his own story, a kind of memoir.
"We were more than a political organization; and we groped our way forward, like babies in the dark, trying to grab onto one another, toward the evanescent idea of an absolute happiness, of a life reconciled with itself. And what we believed ourselves to be grasping for, the phantom of liberty, continually escaped us. We discussed it for hours each night without realizing that this happiness was not 'to come' after the Great Overturning; we had it already, between us; it had taken us by surprise without us even recognizing it."
Hocquenghem was a French homosexual, a militant leftist at a time when being gay was a real cause for shame among the comrades, and a brilliant thinker. Some consider him to have originated queer theory. I'd only read his political/theoretical writing before this, but there are two other narrative works available in English: Love in Relief and Eve.*
The translator, Max Fox, did an awesome job.
* Errata: Guy did not write The Screwball Asses, and Eve has not yet been translated to English!
"We were more than a political organization; and we groped our way forward, like babies in the dark, trying to grab onto one another, toward the evanescent idea of an absolute happiness, of a life reconciled with itself. And what we believed ourselves to be grasping for, the phantom of liberty, continually escaped us. We discussed it for hours each night without realizing that this happiness was not 'to come' after the Great Overturning; we had it already, between us; it had taken us by surprise without us even recognizing it."
Hocquenghem was a French homosexual, a militant leftist at a time when being gay was a real cause for shame among the comrades, and a brilliant thinker. Some consider him to have originated queer theory. I'd only read his political/theoretical writing before this, but there are two other narrative works available in English: Love in Relief and Eve.*
The translator, Max Fox, did an awesome job.
* Errata: Guy did not write The Screwball Asses, and Eve has not yet been translated to English!
December 12, 2025
- unhappiness of Hocquenghem vs rage of Wojnarowicz
- flashes of brilliance in how he confesses perversion, transgression
- otherwise slight. bad translation?
"At every terrible event in the history of humanity—the burning of Rome, or of the Reichstag—there must have been dreamy adolescents like us who see the Event finally arrive, and rejoice."
"I always had something to hide from half of my relations. I love it; it’s a kind of extra wealth."
"Swallows dive outside my large bay window on the tenth floor, drunk off the altitude."
"And when I came back in the early morning, the odor of tear gas clinging to my skin, he would lick the smell of the riot off me."
- flashes of brilliance in how he confesses perversion, transgression
- otherwise slight. bad translation?
"At every terrible event in the history of humanity—the burning of Rome, or of the Reichstag—there must have been dreamy adolescents like us who see the Event finally arrive, and rejoice."
"I always had something to hide from half of my relations. I love it; it’s a kind of extra wealth."
"Swallows dive outside my large bay window on the tenth floor, drunk off the altitude."
"And when I came back in the early morning, the odor of tear gas clinging to my skin, he would lick the smell of the riot off me."
June 24, 2017
Passionnant mais un peu court. Serait un parfait ajout au sein d'une anthologie sur les 70s gaies.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews