Warren's bold commentary was inspired by a conversation which the author had with a gay athlete at a party. Warren was, herself, a member of a women's track team. It is clear that she combined these experiences with some research in gay lib literature to assemble a provocative and commanding story. However well-intended, The Front Runner suffers from lack of first hand information, plus much speculation on the I part of the novelist which tends to stray too far afield.

The action centers around a love affair between a gay track star who eventually joins the U.S. Olympic track team, and his older gay coach.

The struggle of both men to achieve ambitious goals while publicizing both their gayness and their relationship. They are always on the brink of being overwhelmed by hostile forces, and this situation creates the standing tension which enwraps the reader.

Both straight and gay reading publics are likely to be moved by the tender pathos which pervades the action. However there are several inaccuracies and distortions of this book which might probably embarass a gay male reader. For example, although the younger protagonist is the son of a gay activist lawyer, has been raised in a predominantly gay environment, and even conducts a college seminar on gay awareness. he is plagued by many problems which most straights imagine gays to have.. The front runner, named Billy, is cared for by a transvestite whom his father had married because Warren apparently feels that any true hero requires at least a fair re-production of a heterosexual mother to become a healthy adult.

Both protagonists yearn for a typical middle-class nuclear family complete with fireside, hunting dog, crying infant, and mother-concubine.

The two "liberated" heroes are so hung up on producing offspring to "carry on their

"1

names' that they arrange through a gay doctor to freeze samples of their semen with which a lesbian is later willingly impregnated. She finally yields them a blond, blue-eyed son who shows signs of becoming a spartan hero himself. This incredible and somewhat primitive sequence seriously mars the original believable progression of events. This macho-saturated story pays only

4444

DOOK Warren redeems ner sell.

Although Warren fails in depicting certain gay circumstances convincingly, she is very successful at revealing the subtleties of gay interactions. While her situations are less than real, her characters are immediate, and human.

Gay men can readily identify with the efforts of the protagonists to conceal their genuine feelings from each other while courting. Also, they can appreciate how the heroes sublimate their rather complex desires and emotions.

Warren pressures applied by straight society against gays and gives abundant expression to the frustration of gays who try to achieve ambitious goals within a heterosexual matrix. The sufferings of gays who find it hard to reconcile themselves with their homosexuality is also empathetically dealt with. There is no dearth of profundity in this novel. Warren evokes considerable personal reflection in a gay reader with such quotables as "Lovers are a dime a dozen; but a good friend is worth a thousand lovers."

is sensitive to

The writer provides various other insights, including .a progressive assessment of the United States Olympic Committee, The International Olympic Committees, and especially The American Athletic Union.

Warren is a strong proponent of human rights in sports and severely chastizes the backward, undemocratic, and often cruel hierarchy of American athletics.

She carefully outlines the rigors and trials of aspiring athletes in the field of track, and does so in such a way that the reader can appreciate the details and hardships of a runner, even if he unfamilair is with sports.

Admittedly, The Front Runner is no Anna Karenina; but it is a gigantic leap forward from many rather banal and unimaginative gay oriented models. In spite of its shortcomings, it makes fascinating and inspiring reading for gays and non-gays alike.

taught to hunt foxes, a traditional male English sport. She was given schooling in writing, mathematics, and several foreign languages. As she was growing up, her only friend that understood her "differentness" was her father. The children in the neighboring areas teased and tormented her. Her mother hated her...On in the story, Stephen's father dies by an accident and she is left alone in a hostile world to explore her feelings toward other women that cause her such internal strife. Shortly after her father's death, Stephen has an affair. with another woman. Her mother. discovers this, and forces her to leave Morton, her home. For several years, Stephen supports herself by writing. She produces successful novel and becomes famous, but still unfulfilled. World War I comes and Stephen joins the ambulance division of the army. It is there that she meets Mary Llewellyn, a young woman who eventually grows to love her. After the war, Stephen and Mary become lovers and live together for years. They meet other lesbian couples and go to gay bars together. Life seems to have really opened up

a man could, so she cheat on Mary. Mar Martin. Thus ends the note of despair, emp hopelessness.

some

This story is by suitable for coming out, or nev gay. The book-foste that gay is an lifestyle...and in the book was written and it took place, gay was lifestyle, rugged and

From a literary star Hall's work is years time in dealing with n was never spoken & less written into a dealt sympathetic homosexual love. A c the book is give emotions of the cha the exploring of em authoress speaks f knowing point of vie well explaining the her characters

emotion/reason be actions. Some parts are given to the voi liberation material. E the gay characters "sick," Ms. Hall is the book asking "Why do we see the sensitive people a

Fred Schenk sug

DRIN

Stroh's and Miller

THE GAY H

IT ONLY WORKS!

631-53