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My Lover, the Rabbi by Wayne Koestenbaum review
With echoes of Balzac and Proust, this tale of obsessive love evokes the dangers and delights of forbidden desire
TL;DR
- The novel 'Will My Lover, the Rabbi' by Wayne Koestenbaum is characterized by its unconventional style and exploration of obsessive desire.
- Despite a title suggesting realism, the book treats realist conventions with "exalted scorn," focusing on carnality and confusion.
- The narrative structure includes 188 short chapters, many repeating the book's title, creating a mantra-like effect.
- Plot elements, though set in modern America, echo 19th-century literature with themes of infidelity, illegitimacy, and interconnected relationships.
- The protagonist's obsession with his rabbi lover is compared to Proust's Swann, focusing on an inexplicable attractiveness.
- A central mystery involving the rabbi's deceased son fuels the plot, revealing further "vistas of unknowability."
- The novel combines explicit sex scenes with a unique prose style that is both breathless and abrupt.
- Key figures, the lover and the rabbi, are conspicuously nameless, referred to only by pronouns.
- The ending reveals the book's broader theme: the unknowability of any object of desire and love's inability to triumph over death.