Strategies of Deviance: Studies in Gay Male Representation (Theories of Representation and Difference)

Rating:
Summary: a difficult and obtuse read, for the scholar only.
Review: Although this book has plenty of information, the vast majority of it is presented in such a lenghty and wordy manner that it is very difficult to follow, much less to understand. Any reader will be sure to find something useful and interesting in the various topics covered, but be prepared to be completely lost on a regular basis.

Rating:
Summary: Relates steamy fiction and film to heady theory
Review: Rating a difficult book such as this 5 stars obviously implies that I am comparing the book to its peers: works of scholarship in gay and lesbian studies that seek to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries and to say something synthetic and theoretical about the very possibility of "representing" gay men (in this case) and lesbians.

Jackson knows contemporary gay fiction and the critical language about narrative, he knows gay cinema and the critical language about cinema, and he knows psychoanalytic and poststructuralist theory like the back of his hand. His book is a tour de force that relates steamy fiction and film to heady theory in useful, clever, and illuminating ways.