The Mythology of Transgression: Homosexuality as Metaphor

by Jamake Highwater

Book Overview

Jamake Highwater is a master storyteller and one of our most visionary writers, hailed as "an eloquent bard, whose words are fire and glory" (Studs Terkel) and "a writer of exceptional vision and power" (Ana s Nin). Author of more than thirty volumes of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, Highwater--considered by many to be the intellectual heir of Joseph Campbell--has long been intrigued by how our mythological legacies have served as a foundation of...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195101804
• ISBN13: 9780195101805
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A BOOK THAT SPEAKS TO EVERYONE

Mr. Highwater's encyclopedia knowledge, his original and completely convincing analogies, and his fleet, transparent musical prose make a book that both creates an extraordinary world of its own and also - brilliantly, unforgettably - illuminates the world in which we live. The book speaks to everyone - gay, straight, other - looking for a new way to synthesize the religious, political, aesthetic, and physcological legacies that make up who we are.

AMAZON.COM'S CRITIC GOT IT RIGHT: A REMARKABLE BOOK

There are so many biased books for and against outsiders in general and homosexuals in particular that it is extremely agreeable to find a book that has both scope, poetry, and a remarkable vision of the worldwide community, past and present. Highwater takes on homosexuality as the most vivid metaphor of the outsider and in the process provides a rather spectacular view of the Western world from THE OUTSIDE!! The scholarship is remarkable. The language is as fluent as a novel. The ideas stimulating and eye-opening. Altogether, a most intriguing, not-to-be-missed book.