Humbled thanks to Steve Bamlett for writing a review of my latest book, Narcissus in Bloom. It is a book that deals with the joys and terrors of seeing and being seen, after all, and this is one wonderful example of feeling seen by a reader. This is exactly how I hoped it would be read.
I especially want to share the concluding paragraph here, as ending books is hard and ending on an ambiguity is always a gamble as well, and Bamlett has a takeaway that I did not expect, but which makes me feel like the choice was the right one:
Of course I am left with questions mainly about self-reference. Critical commentary and the tone of the book itself makes me believe it is a wonderful contribution to queer theory and yet self-reference in it hardly covers this potential in ways usual to writing. There is, as it were an occluded part of the ‘selfie’ this book constitutes. But why should this not be the case. The invocation of male queer lives, especially Jarman and his role in the beginning of Colquhoun’s own subjective instabilities feels like a story deliberately not told fully, particularly since we are told that the only relationship specified was with a girlfriend. There are so many ways to read this. Has Matt just begun an identity as queer, a queer ally or is their lost story one of transition to non-binary status or a trans male with non-binary preference or is none of this relevant at all. There is always a suspicion of prurience in oneself when asking such questions. The topic of this book makes the alternative of non-relevance unlikely and given that the book continually analyses how identity is distributed across works including and especially ‘selfie’s’ it feels as if one might ask. But in the end, no answer should be given for as the book says ‘the blooming and wilting’ of selves alike is part of the process of narcissism properly understood – a letting happen. And for another to ask for certainties here is a kind of appropriation of the process and its re-insertion into unnecessary conventions.
You can read the whole review here.