Gay denial.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Briefly Noted - Denial: My 25 Years without a Soul by Jonathan Rauch - Brief article - Book review

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Journalist Jonathan Rauch has written movingly about many personal topics, from caring for his infirm parents to being an introvert. But his latest book--ebook, actually--is his most confessional and compelling yet. Denial: My 25 Years Without a Soul (Atlantic) is Rauch's account of his first quarter century, in which he was unable to come to grips with the fact that he was gay.

Borrowing an old-fashioned psychiatric term, Rauch describes himself as an "invert": His life, he says, was like "a photographic negative." Despite teen puppy love, a tingly interest in male musculature, a profound lack...