Love Undetectable: Notes on Friendship, Sex, and Survival"Sullivan offers [a] profound, often beautiful appreciation of friendship. . . . [He can] fascinate us with the range and depth of his mind."--San Francisco Chronicle A New York Times Notable Book of the Year "One of the great pleasures of this book lies in watching Sullivan's mind at work . . . [his essays] are filled with a passion and heat that most cultural criticism lacks." --Katie Roiphe, The Washington Post When former New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan publicly revealed his HIV positive status in 1996, he intended "to be among the first generation that survives this disease." In this new book, a powerful meditation on the spiritual effect AIDS has on friendship, love, sexuality, and American culture, we follow Sullivan on his path to survival. A practicing Catholic, Sullivan reflects on his faith in God, and expresses his bittersweet joy upon learning about new AIDS treatments that he believes led to the virus's recent transformation from a plague into a chronic illness. He revisits Freud to seek the origins of homosexuality and reviews the works of Aristotle, St. Augustine, and W. H. Auden to define friendship for a contemporary, post-plague world. Sullivan's last essay extols the virtues of friendship, elevating platonic love over the romantic, as he memorializes his best friend, who died of AIDS. Intensely personal and passionately political, Sullivan's essays are not just about his own experiences but also a powerful testament to human resilience, faith, hope, and love. "Sullivan has found meaning in chaos. . . . With its paradoxical sense of beauty amid pain, Love Undetectable has something of the quality of a war memoir." --The New York Times Book Review "On display here are all of the author's many strengths--compelling, poetic prose style, some keen observations on faith. . . . Sullivan offers a moving defense of the open gay male urban sexual culture and his participation in it." --The Boston Globe |
From inside the book
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Page 132
... exists among both men and women , and neither gay men nor lesbians seek to eradicate or deny the existence of the ... exist . Nor does the resilience of homo- sexuality threaten to eclipse or unbalance male - female symmetry in human ...
... exists among both men and women , and neither gay men nor lesbians seek to eradicate or deny the existence of the ... exist . Nor does the resilience of homo- sexuality threaten to eclipse or unbalance male - female symmetry in human ...
Page 145
... exist among , say , gay men or African Americans . It is to say that they exist elsewhere as well , and we would do well to check ourselves before we too easily assert them as intrinsically related to something that also defines an ...
... exist among , say , gay men or African Americans . It is to say that they exist elsewhere as well , and we would do well to check ourselves before we too easily assert them as intrinsically related to something that also defines an ...
Page 210
... exist . But until a lover seeks to possess his beloved , the love has hardly begun . Where love is all about the juggling of the power to hurt , friendship is about creat- ing a space where power ceases to exist . There is a cost to ...
... exist . But until a lover seeks to possess his beloved , the love has hardly begun . Where love is all about the juggling of the power to hurt , friendship is about creat- ing a space where power ceases to exist . There is a cost to ...
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Common terms and phrases
Aelred AIDS Andrew Andrew Sullivan argument Aristotle asked become body boys conflict course culture death defense deny disease drugs emotional equality eros exist experience fact father fear feel felt Freud friendship gender genetic Greg heterosexual homo homosexual human identity infection inherently intense intimacy intrinsic invert Isay J. D. McClatchy Jesus kind lesbian less liberation lives lover male homosexual marriage masculine mean merely Montaigne moral mother NARTH nature never normal notion Oedipal complex orientation pain pathology Patrick perhaps person philia Philip Larkin plague political possible profound promiscuity psychoanalytic question radical relationship remember reparative therapists romantic love seems sense sexual sexual objectification ship Sigmund Freud silence simply Socarides social society somehow someone straight suddenly tell therapy thing tion tionship told true uality undetectable virtue virus W. H. Auden women words