Activity

the transcendent nature of sex -- its opportunities for cross-cultural communication, its ability to rise above the specifics of language and embrace the universal with its protean physicality

His fey charm and classic good looks

The teenage dread is not so much dramatized (as with Caulfield or Sport) but is, to borrow Jacques Derrida's phrase, sous rature -- as though the very presence of the idea owrks only to emphasize the extent to which it should be absent.

a revealing interstice in the early eighties

Ellis and his youthful confrères