Sleeping with Strangers, David Thomson
Sleeping with Strangers, David Thomson
List: $25.00 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.50

Sleeping with Strangers
How the Movies Shaped Desire

Author: David Thomson

Narrator: David Thomson

Unabridged: 17 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/29/2019


Synopsis

In this wholly original work of film criticism, David Thomson, celebrated author of The Biographical Dictionary of Film, probes the many ways in which sexuality has shaped the movies—and the ways in which the movies have shaped sexuality. Exploring the tangled notions of masculinity, femininity, beauty, and sex that characterize our cinematic imagination—and drawing on examples that range from advertising to pornography, Bonnie and Clyde to Call Me by Your Name—Thomson illuminates how film as art, entertainment, and business has historically been a polite cover for a kind of erotic séance. In so doing, he casts the art and the artists we love in a new light, and reveals how film can both expose the fault lines in conventional masculinity and point the way past it, toward a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be a person with desires.

About David Thomson

David Thomson is one of the great living authorities on movies, and is, most notably, the author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. He has written more than twenty books, including biographies of David O. Selznick and Orson Welles.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Andrews

Thomson’s always worth reading but this is one hellishly confused book. He’s getting at something but he never grasps it; he doesn’t even settle on a consistent definition of “gay,” (an identity? action? politic?) which gave rise to the volume in the first place. This is a morally incoherent work, wi......more

Goodreads review by Ron

Thomson is one of the most interesting and occasionally frustrating philosophers writing today -- who almost incidentally, it seems, uses cinema and television as the vehicle for his observations and criticism. This book, given its focus, is sure to provoke strong reaction. Given the cultural climat......more

Goodreads review by Michael

This is a frustrating read for many reasons, but I found some of the speculation dubious. For instance, Scotty Bowers claims to have had sex with Spencer Tracy while no other source has suggested Tracy had any homosexual relationships so why would Thomson give it enough credibility to be included he......more

Goodreads review by Michael

To be fair, I abandoned this book around the halfway point. I've enjoyed books by this author before, but this one is a mess. There is no thesis; a publisher summary says it is "an original, seductive account of sexuality in the movies and of how actors and actresses on screen have fed our desire,"......more

Goodreads review by Meg

I want to give this book a four, but I just can't. Some of it was interesting but much of it is way too skim worthy. I glanced over more than half of the book. Way too much philosophizing rather than writing to his topic. Too much psychoanalysis of people, films, and situations. If you're a real cin......more


Quotes

“More original insights, provocative asides and thought-inducing speculations than several volumes of a less talented writer’s efforts . . . Thomson, a stylist extraordinaire, has written an unaccountable and irresistible book. He reminds us that in a world of increasing sham, movies have the virtue of being instructive, occasionally enlightening shams—to embrace or ignore, as the case may be, but always full of bright dreams, dark visions and glittering possibilities.” —Daphne Merkin, The New York Times Book Review

“Mr. Thomson is the finest film critic at work today . . . [He] is never more bracingly irreverent and disorderly—and funny—than when he sets about subverting the pieties attaching to ‘manly films.’” —John Banville, The Wall Street Journal
 
“A fearless, personal, revealing and wildly original account . . . a brand new way of looking at movie history—and a brutally frank one, too . . . This, I think, is Thomson’s most powerful book and one of the smartest ever written about sex and the movies.” —Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News

“Literate, frank, and sometimes graphic—another essential volume from an essential writer.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“[Thomson] has been called the greatest living writer about film . . . [He] is at his best when he’s mining . . . hidden veins of meaning, noticing a detail in a familiar film that helps you see the movie in a new way.” —Dana Stevens, The Atlantic

“Unfailingly provocative. Thomson is pretty much a walking encyclopedia of film history, and this is the kind of subject he can really sink his teeth into. Fascinating and illuminating.”Booklist

“Thomson deploys his encyclopedic knowledge of film so genially and dexterously that readers who are movie aficionados will want to rewatch their favorites through his eyes.” Publishers Weekly

“A typically concentrated paragraph of David Thomson offers more fervent ideas and intellectual sustenance than many—most?—books. Sleeping With Strangers is a pinwheel of delight revolving around the variegated signals of sexuality and gender identification communicated by the movies and the figures inhabiting them. Thomson makes the two-dimensions of the movies three-dimensional, and you don't have to wear those ridiculous glasses.” —Scott Eyman, author of John Wayne: Life and Legend

“David Thomson never fails to dazzle me with his striking, original, and evocative prose. The man has never had a clichéd thought. His splendid and wonderfully idiosyncratic writing about film is always fascinating, always backlit with love and devotion. Sleeping with Strangers is a beautiful, mysterious book, both learned and wickedly entertaining. It is an intimate, passionate interrogation (and celebration) of how cinema has shaped our erotic imaginations and, ultimately, both our secret and public expressions of desire.” —Dana Spiotta, author of Eat the Document

“Move over darling film books and make room for another irresistible beauty from David Thomson. No writer makes better love to his subject." —Patrick McGilligan, author of Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane