The End of Being Known: A Memoir

by Michael Klein, David Bergman (Editor), Joan Larkin (Editor)

Written in poet Michael Klein’s uniquely passionate, unapologetic but humble voice, The End of Being Known explores the lines that define, yet also blur, the boundaries of sex, friendship, and compatibility. This collection of autobiographical essays probes the manifestations of sexual desire in its mystical experiencing incest, falling in love, being a twin, and inhabiting the world of anonymous sex—in practice, and, in an essay about the Body Electric movement, as something recuperative and renewing.
    Each essay unfurls in a hybrid of poetry, narrative, and fragmentary literary devices. Here is an uncompromising gaze upon the quandaries of those whose sexual, emotional, and relational worlds collide, yielding no answer to the riddle of desire, yet finding meaning by piecing together personal examples of universal themes such as learning, through trial and error, about love and life.

Genres: Memoir

156 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2003

Reviews

[Roland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good. Fast written memoir. Interesting.

[Ron Mohring · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally got around to reading this. Hmm. Still thinking about it. The experience was like falling asleep in the back of a moving car: not unpleasant, sometimes being startled awake and unsure of the surroundings, oh wait there's a lovely bridge in the moonlight, what an interesting commentary, wait you're sharing *that*? There's a slipperiness to the content--I mean a thought will spool into a kind of lyric twist and become, or feel, ungrounded and perhaps unresolved. There's a hasty, breathless quality to some of the writing. I'd like to come back to this again.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic.

[Ron Estrada · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many people give us insight to their lives. Few do it with such dimension and angle and plenitude. It's sincere and beautiful. And good. Really, really good.

[Mic Parker · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a super queer world described in poetic prose. But I completely cannot remember anything that happened so...meh.