Confessional

Bob Tobin originally wrote this essay in 2000 as the preface to his first book, Warm Brothers: Queer Theory and the Age of Goethe. At the time, however, only one of the reviewers of the manuscript approved of it, so he decided not to include it in the book. In the summer of 2022, when Bob was struggling with liver cancer, he remembered this essay and expressed his desire to have it published, but it was nowhere to be found in his home or office files. Fortunately, he still had the old floppy discs for the book and was able to save the document. We are honored to publish this piece posthumously in this German Quarterly forum that also includes ten other essays by scholars inspired by Bob's lasting legacy. A note on citations: we have done our best to fill in references where needed; where not otherwise indicated, translations are, we assume, Bob's own. —The Editors How did German literature become queer for me? And how did I become queer through German literature? The first time I heard the phrase “confessional criticism” I was entranced, since the personal, the subjective, and the sexual are all bound up with the confessional. Michel Foucault sees modern discourses of sexuality emerging from the early Christian practice of confession, which he claims began the imperative of turning desire into discourse. Augustine and Rousseau both wrote confessions in which an aberrant sexuality informs new models of subjectivity. But the text that best reflects my relationship to confession, sexuality, and subjectivity is Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask. Mishima did not look to the explanations for his desire in the long tradition of Japanese same-sex relationships, but rather turned to Europe, to Joan of Arc, to the German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, to Oscar Wilde, and to depictions of Cleopatra. Mishima made no claim for the authenticity of this constructed desire, but regarded it as a mask. His coming out was not the discovery of a solid identity, but an investigation of his own construction. I too find myself constructing a mask out of a culture, admittedly a culture much closer to mine than Europe's was to Mishima, but still not an immediately obvious choice. German might seem far from my early life and upbringing. Although there is some German blood in my veins, there are other nationalities—Polish, Scotch-Irish, English—that play at least as important a role in constituting my genetic background. We'd have to go back to my grandmother's grandfather to find German speakers in my family history. But in my own life and academic career, starting in college, German was the language that helped me express myself, organize my thoughts, name my desires, and develop my sexuality. Raised as an American speaking English, I pivoted to this foreign language, the literature written in that language (and for me, literature is often language about language), and critical language to discuss this literature—an intricate web of textuality—while coming of age and coming to terms with my own identity as a white gay male in the 1980s. One of the appealing aspects of conventional academic writing was that it prohibited the “I.” Through high school, college, and graduate school, I wrote papers that presented objective interpretations, denying any subjectivity. My teachers urged me to avoid the “I” in the interest of concise prose, and I also recommend my students delete openings like “I think” and “I believe.” I seemed only too eager to embrace an academic style that discouraged me from analyzing myself, from looking into those images that constructed me, from thinking too much about something—such as sexuality—that intrudes too painfully upon the “I.” But while I was happy to lose myself in academic writing, I did have a lively interior life. I kept extensive journals through much of my childhood and youth. The journal is a self-portrait, like Dorian Gray's, taking on the weight of all the perceived iniquities the writer feels the need to hide. It is a useful closet into which one can shove the messier parts of one's personal life so that one's persona will look neat when the guests arrive. Is there a queer affinity to the journal? John Cheever, Ned Rorem, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Joe Orton, Noel Coward, Virginia Woolf, Julien Green, August von Platen, Klaus Mann, and Thomas Mann are just a few of the queer journal writers who come to mind. The journal sharpens one's ability to write as well as giving its writer a chance to develop multiple identities. My journals helped me develop a mask for my sexuality and associated that hidden sexuality closely with the text. These journals preserve my old masks for me, forcing me now to come to terms with who it was I had wanted to be. In “On Keeping a Notebook,” Joan Didion writes, “So the point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking.” Instead, she argues that “keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about.” She means keeping in touch with younger versions of herself—even uncomfortable versions like the twenty-three-year-old, “skirts too long, shy to the point of aggravation, always the injured party, full of recriminations and little hurts and stories I do not want to hear again, at once saddening me and angering me with her vulnerability and ignorance, an apparition all the more insistent for being so long banished” (140). I find myself similarly confronted with younger versions of myself, with a teenager who was sometimes radically intolerant, right-wing, homophobic, and at times cruel to his family and friends. He frequently wrote about girls he hoped to go out with. He was socially active and busy with all the events of his school and family. He was also surprisingly articulate, writing entries that sound like the journals he liked to read by Charles Sulzberger, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Charles de Gaulle. None of this jives exactly with my own memories, however. I would like to think of myself as progressive, open-minded, sensitive, clearly homosexual, a loner, and full of emotions that I couldn't express. My journals provide a vital corrective to my vision of myself. Yet, as a reader, I too can provide a corrective to the bravado that marks these journals. I resist the temptation to grant absolute primacy to the text; these texts I also want to read queerly. During my high school years in Eugene, Oregon, my first extended exposure to real gay culture occurred at the Eugene Hotel. A downtown establishment that had seen better days (John F. Kennedy had stayed there when he was campaigning for the presidency!), the hotel still had a restaurant (where I worked), dance halls, and a couple of bars, one of which was Eugene's gay bar. The dance halls also hosted annual transvestite balls. Once in a blue moon I would be asked to deliver something to the upstairs bar, the gay one. It was terrifying, because I thought I would be accosted by promiscuous gay men. It was also mortifying, because no one even looked at me. Reading my journal entries from the summer of 1979, when I was 17, I can't believe the casual homophobia of my writing: “At work, things go steadily downhill. The place is becoming gay all over. If I were not leaving soon, I would quit immediately.” A few weeks later, “I finally got a chance to tell a gay that the Hotel is going downhill because of the gays. The fellow responded well.” I don't recall this exchange at all, yet there it stands, this attitude glaring out at me from pages I myself wrote. On this last we each had an opinion worth writing. Jonathan said that homosexuality was “still love,” even if degenerate and perverted, however. I pointed out that male friendship in America runs down certain channels—sports, business, church. When men try to be friends through more dangerous paths—academics, for instance—the risk of perversion grows more strong. Disobeying societal rules can lead to homosexuality. I find this entry hilarious. On the one hand, Jonathan, who was probably further along in coming to terms with some version of his homosexuality, sounds positively open-minded in his argument that homosexuality was “still love.” On the other hand, I was using words like “degenerate” and to up our on homosexuality. a to the of this I have to I was so in homosexuality and I was an academic the in that I also seemed to be of homosexuality that I now in a homosexuality and for in the early on male by in to the family. Thomas Mann read My about societal rules come from in the and von in with the that the German with the and the of the emerging like not for the and of the and of the and of the be to can to find its in some through this I first began to develop an interest in German literature as an at At the time I to come out both and more out going was no that I look to German I even to the and seemed much more and and more But the of the German language was a real She that we to a German mask if we were to we to we were even with a German I still this on to my that one to as on the in to I think the of on of out the role of was appealing to me at the In A this do want to something in own don't that name that her in her language for not and to to desire, is all up in my I can't tell the (140). the homophobia in my early my for German had more to do with rather than my Foucault argues that it is not the that we are but that we upon our and he the to found identity in discourse. the of one's desire a foreign some of the that Foucault in in “On a with would be to my in It would be in that language that mine because in that language, there is no of the it would be for to that what I is a to In Thomas The the of his of in rather than his as he it is like speaking in a for me, speaking is speaking in the which we in about one's desire in a foreign language the chance to out at a about something it an a in which to express But a foreign language also to the chance to more clearly and My much more as I to German and to and to organize my in the by German was a language in which I had the at some of that I were few words or that I I couldn't nor did I have the of through or Instead, my at a of a in the that we don't have as words is forcing to The of our of of some and it through the and all the more through In a the foreign language the to express or at a from the and yet upon it more more more than those who that are one with the In to the that are often the best on the and with the to the in our own she writes, life one to develop a new who to in and only with and in the now in the new language as a a and me the chance to find those of myself that were foreign to my to and in sexual in my My in was with sexual for me. When I at my I resist the to on the the and the of The summer on the was it, from one's own language, and in to is a that always in with sexual more is She always an of the old In I began to personal of men looking for other men. I one dance where I began to dance with other men. I in a with a high school that had and as if I had in the of sexuality. on the a German me he was I that my were that of as if I from the background. We all for all my of what was probably a to the my these did not it into my journals. I do but I write about things I find in my journals I don't thinking or writing. writing the of as its it further the of But I find it that my first of homosexuality is written in It the of writing in a foreign language to come to this about myself. In in a about a I found I with this is I find men writes, and to to desire, is all up in my I can't tell the (140). In English, I still the On a to with a I wrote in “I find men but do not myself inspired in me about desire that it had also for August von Platen, Thomas Mann, Christian and that I that I was and my years of graduate with the of my sexuality. It was to finally for both my and I was not just the of a but in an new of the gay and in gay and began to be in the One of the first I read along these was and me to the of same-sex in the and I also got of and when it in These texts the that I was to on my since that of in the German it was also not I found that even the to my gay for new of texts that interest in my It a of but I finally to go up the to the Hotel When I got to the of the I a in to a looking with that was She had blue I this place She in the and I to It was was a I to the to find my to a I did not was a white old with a He had a He a his and when he he his up in a keeping his and his He about a He me of the with who sees on the I was to think the was I said I had had a relationship with a this summer and that I had My began to and as I the of my was a seemed long to me. I the need to I had just made the so I said I was I She seemed She about how she had had in her and that she it was for to She said the was not only She wanted to if I was about my I said I was In my own I think of myself as come out in on my it my in college, and at in a out and it was more than I had about as did gay men in the 1980s. would the as when the to on a to from the His and the of his at in the made it to avoid thinking of I wrote on the has a I in what I would do if I were as the In a of otherwise and from the out with my sexuality, so that will me with my and be if I develop The also made to me the of and the of discourse. I was often going to the for while I was my by a a asked if she to a into my The at to my ability to my and she that it was always to have a with a this was so I can at The asked me how I had I I promiscuous and that I who had more The me that the was not a useful and that it was more important to that the I had was my of the but of the about my the of and the of to a a as I with my about my sexuality and my writes, is in of that we are to that we not but to a of a who has no of and by it is to our The and critical interest in the in terms of sexuality, and I found myself with the on as In graduate school I out at the which still up a of my How much more I have written if I the I like to at the to But the I like to think that it me more of my and But in other I that like has to do with an by the to the I had by this time, If and are the of the will on the is It is the of a of the the to and In high school in the I had to the school of thought that that was or associated with the in the school But friends with a for the new of the early me a and dance in who of his gay on the dance I found the gay dance to be a I was by all the and and the of dance the of the one couldn't much so the dance a place for me to and Yet, down the dance of with and me in the of and of an of busy in I seemed to to the something I had read in that at the where the and the the an by by by by by of those made by which the of but a all, from far back in my and to with a the one that to from the of The dance has been by the of it has also my of those of It is not just who the dance I but those dance that to for me. These were the days that the was first becoming One of my gay I found with images of with about and The to seemed all the images was the and the I found it that a of was not in the least by the of a one in in a of How years of have into a of of I got a of practice these of my was on but it was for new into the texts I was The other that while I was a graduate was I wrote my first papers on for the had to be by a at the of a a for one had to the and something like The text on the looked like the text that out of the It was a text with hidden and We a of time on the of on writing. it our writing more to as we upon in our was some about the of the ability to think out a argument and write it as had done when it was to and At the time, it seemed that the with would no be as a be made to look by a looking was not The of had as One always a more to an a few a in a it was never But one always it out and it so it was also always I the to writing associated with I also the new to me to have an culture of with even those who each other not the only one who frequently to friends seen and sometimes in to for the the of our culture an of that the text will be with for a In terms of the the has of writing that have about a radically new of models are into a new of of a that will for that are as far and as long as can of thought and of from these It is to that thinking would When I to in for my into and I had about my language since I had just German in One of the I still had to was the American that can an otherwise more than the of the American in a in speaking language, since the American is It is by the of the that the of the back when a American In the up so I on the of my to the of my who got to hear me in of the practice an of my in and for one's identity in the for the to her discovery of in got me from my family and me how to me an And the of it is in that how in my how it on that I was also the mask that would me to as a gay in the of my life. more and than I made friends in and myself in gay academic and to American My of at the through and all of a I had a vision of in becoming a on as a and language going back to I how I would look and as an and from of from on my German my time in and years in I did come to more and more like an and I I would have more for an academic in the I was to a and become a But my and my personal me in At my it was how the of sexuality and I wrote about how discourses the into a which was in as and originally sexuality had to become of sexuality were not in the of my of my work, the up on I had at a in a far of I not to in my language and I only sexuality into my In literature I to and at In some my about sexuality into the were not because students were open-minded about the but because were as to and it as I in an German we were with of much I decided to include an with a gay of who had to We the text. The were was this so with his he and a up the of his sexuality. I up the to the students were the of the had not the of the German for gay students had not that he was had not been able to find the in the had thought something was going on with all those men in the but had the as a be I that in a the students on to the homosexuality in the text But I that it is often not to discuss sexuality a of In literature things were and the on homosexuality in literature that I began in to be an chance to my and my personal in my students who might not have much than of Thomas Mann, or often for the I had done well in an academic that discouraged the my students were at of like and sexuality, but were not able to personal to of the texts we were I something in the of German in the early as I was in queer culture, and and the I found my in German and these new emerging was still In I my first in and writing with to the and to gay dance My into German texts to place the of a gay culture that both and I a of time at gay where gay and were at one hear by scholars like the of history. were point of academic and In and were coming up more and more as In however, this was still to At on gay and it was to interest in or in German the at gay and had heard of other in the German German on the other hand, to at to of sexuality at that When I read a on Christian and the queer I the thought I was being with my new to these I to be at a gay and where the I me on in this I I had to the of texts to or the of German texts to queer much has of the since I on this But this of my as a gay and my as a queer might still to the and of one's personal and academic My for myself through language and literature me through the of sexuality, culture, dance and to name only a few of the and that me and some of the constituting the text of my How the text that I the texts of the the of as would

Art · Confessional · Human sexuality · Literature · Political science · Sociology · Textuality · Gender Studies · Historical and Linguistic Studies · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

• “Reizend”

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• The Sounds of English and German

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• Queering the pitch

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