Heterosexist Presumption &
The Villa Seurat:
Questioning Queerings of the
Censored Text
The Durrell-Miller Letters 1935-80
• Ed. Ian MacNiven
• Replaces A Private
Correspondence
(1966)
• Selects only the
‘literary’ letters
Obelisk Press
• The Villa Seurat
Series (1938)
• Miller Max and the
White Phagocytes
• Durrell The Black
Book
• Nin Winter of Artifice
• Published Tropic of
Cancer (1934)
Elizabeth Ladenson:
Tropic of Cancer is a “work
that surely offer[s] the most
impeccable straight male
credentials” (144)
“I’m down on my knees
behind Van Norden …
tickling him in the rump”
This suddenly brings to
my mind, for the second
time, the remembrance of
my dream of Van Norden’s
penis”
Michael Hardin:
“the colon as well as the
anus represent a
Rabelaisian focus on the
alimentary canal; although
the colon is not the same
as the anus, its proximity
and the breadth of meaning
inherent in Rabelasian
images allow for readings
which can be related to
food, excrement and sex.”
(144)
;
:
The Black Book
“He has discovered that he
is a homosexual. After
examining his diary, having
his horoscope cast, his
palm read, his prostate
fingered, and the bumps on
his great bald cranium
interpreted.”
The Black Book
“‘From now on it is going
to be different. I am going
to sleep with whom I want
and not let my conditioned
self interfere with me. . . . I
am that I am, and all that
kind of stuff” (167)
The Black Book
“‘From now on it is going
to be different. I am going
to sleep with whom I want
and not let my conditioned
self interfere with me. . . . I
am that I am, and all that
kind of stuff” (167)
Problems…
• ‘Queering’ and
heterosexist
presumption
• identity politics and
the unstable ego
• Acts vs. identity