The Pleasures of Time

American-born Stephen Harold Riggins and French-born Paul Bouissac have been partners for over thirty years. This book is the story of their complex and fascinating relationship - set in Paris, Toronto, Newfoundland and Indiana, with a cast of characters including celebrated critics Northrop Frye, Michel Foucault, Helene Cixous and Claude Levi-Strauss - but it is also very much more. Spanning over most of the past century, this is an important work of cultural studies and intellectual history, tracing the growth of a committed gay relationship at the same time as it charts important cultural and intellectual trends. For example, Paul Bouissac, the subject of this loving memoir, is one of the world's foremost authorities on circus, as well as a member of the Nouveau Roman literary movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Author Stephen Harold Riggins, who bases the book on the diaries he has kept since the early 1970s, recreates in expert sepia tones the cafes of Paris, his home state of Indiana and rural country circuses of 1960s southern Ontario among other locales. Challenging the dictum that you can never go home, "The Pleasures of Time" is a must-read for those interested in gay history as well as intellectual and cultural trends of the recent past.