The Fugitive Self

About the Book

“This memoir is a profoundly intelligent evocation of the split in one man’s life between the sensual and the tender: beautifully written, deeply felt.” Vivian Gornick “This startlingly candid, wise memoir takes us on a dramatic journey through the minefield of isolation, sex, guilt, shame, and finally, love. Seymour Kleinberg’s lucid and unsparing devotion to truth turns one gay man’s quest into the universal struggle of every fugitive self. And its ending is dazzling, as fulfillment comes from the most unexpected, yet inevitable source.” Lynne Sharon Schwartz “When the author of Alienated Affections announced his memoir, I was certain that such a study, by such an author, would be a revision of those inner voices, the intimate relations (between son and mother, between brother and sister, between lovers and friends) which are so uncertain and indeed so unexplored by gay men in our culture. Yet what Seymour Kleinberg proposes, so tenderly and so tellingly, in The Fugitive Self, is not just a revision but, in the historical and religious sense, a reformation of these likelihoods and limitations which, in his case, so surprisingly comprehend the erotics of parenting. In his case, of course, for his book is a true memoir; but it is also a trial map-- of a territory accessible to more of us than we ever knew, of a consciousness made free to others. For in Schiller’s beautiful phrase, one freedom liberates us all.” Richard Howard

About the Author

Seymour Kleinberg is the author of Alienated Affections: Being Gay in America (St. Martin’s Press) and editor of The Other Persuasion: Stories about Gay Men and Women (Random House). His essays and reviews have appeared in The Nation, The Village Voice, The New Republic, The Colorado Review, The Sewanee Review, The Markham Review, Christopher Street.