Cleavage: Essays on Sex, Stars, and Aesthetics

At his best Koestenbaum, wit, ardent fan, astute critic and antic camp, riffs on his idols and his passions to intoxicating effect. Bringing high and low perspectives to bear on his varied subjects here, he flaunts his knowledge (wide-ranging) and queerness (all-consuming) and dares to go out on to the high wire without a net (e.g. "I want to fail in the most beautiful way, to write something so like a parallelogram it baffles every critic and excites the raven-haired young androgynes.") Whether he is writing about his underwear (he starts out from home) or his favorite diva (he ends up at the theater), he lets his imagination run amok, trusting that his daunting intelligence will step in later to ground the musings in the everyday that we all will recognize (it does). Fans of his "Jackie under My Skin" and "The Queen's Throat" will adore this even zestier collection, although some others may feel that a shorter, more focused array of delicacies would have made this very good book a masterpiece of its genre. On a more pedestrian but essential note, Koestenbaum's "Cleavage" will also make you laugh like nobody's business.

I don't know who these goons are that keep putting down Wayne Koestenbaum, but he's one of the best contemporary writers out there, and this is an absolutely brilliant book -- a compilation of the best of his cultural essays over the past years. Don't let a couple of lamebrains dissuade you from this marvelous book -- Koestenbaum has a lot to say about modern culture, the cult of stardom and the experience of being human, and he says it with remarkable insight and grace. Highly recommended.