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A review by tangleroot_eli
Auden in Love by Dorothy J. Farnan
2.0
If this book were fiction, I'd've abandoned it about 4 chapters in, when I realized that the title was meant to be ironic. Auden and Kallman fall in love in '39 but have mostly fallen out of love by '41; although they're technically together until Auden's death in '73, they're more apart than together. And they're just so horrible to each other for most of the '40s and '50s: sullen, jealous, disappointed Auden and immature, shit-stirring Kallman, both of them catty as could be, made quite a pair, but not one I might otherwise have wanted to read about.
By the end, I had a "the car is on fire" approach, page after page as Farnan's chronicle (beset by the casual racism, sexism, homophobia, and bi erasure practically unavoidable by a person in the early '80s writing about the '40s and '50s) moved through time, I thought Surely they'll end it any day now. Surely they'll call off this farce, stop torturing themselves and each other. But, no, a combination of stubbornness and relationship inertia held them together for decades, and, I don't know, I guess I was supposed to see it as... noble? Mostly I just thought it was a little sad for everyone involved.
By the end, I had a "the car is on fire" approach, page after page as Farnan's chronicle (beset by the casual racism, sexism, homophobia, and bi erasure practically unavoidable by a person in the early '80s writing about the '40s and '50s) moved through time, I thought Surely they'll end it any day now. Surely they'll call off this farce, stop torturing themselves and each other. But, no, a combination of stubbornness and relationship inertia held them together for decades, and, I don't know, I guess I was supposed to see it as... noble? Mostly I just thought it was a little sad for everyone involved.