BOOKS:

Why are they written and what do they say? Is there a parallel with the rats and the sinking ship, or is this a simple case of sunlight clearing away the shadows? Certainly the amount of fiction dealing with the homosexual that has appeared in the last few years is far greater than the amount published during the last fifty, while the quality of writing is such that some recent novels stand as high in the field of contemporary literature as any book should stand that falls outside the range of pamphleteering.

The apologists continue to excuse themselves; the devotees to seek adherents, but somehow out of the morass of words the novelists ride high. Not merely as special cases, but simply as good books, Angus Wilson's HEMLOCK AND AFTER and Walter Baxter's LOOK DOWN IN MERCY would stand 'out in any season and on any shelf. Here we are concerned not with stock characters but real people, with human beings caught in situations not of their own choosing but yet of their own making. It is in this seeming contradiction that both authors expose the reader to himself.

HEMLOCK AND AFTER (The Viking Press; $3.00) is the study of an aging author who, on a humanistic crusade to set up an artist's retreat, is caught up in a crux of blackmail and evil. His wife has retired into a state of mental deshabille and his search for a return to youth is on the verge of degenerating into a mere search for pretty boy after pretty boy. But throughout there is a sense of morality and of ethical behavior that not only justifies but determines his course of action and reaction.

In LOOK DOWN IN MERCY (Putnam, $3.50) we have the professional soldier in retreat not only from battle but from himself. Fleeing, with the beaten British Armies through Malays he succumbs to a passsion till now unknown to himself. As the formal battle recedes into the distance, a new battle begins within himself. His retreat becomes an advance into honesty with a sense of fulfillment that is rare in all but the best novels.

On the other hand there is DARK PASSIONS SUBDUE (Dodd, Mead & Co., $3.00), a first novel by Douglas Sanderson, which falls into the more traditional category of homosexual novels. It is the familiar story of the young man of rectitude who is caught up in a Bohemian coterie. This is not to say that "Dark Passions Subdue" is without virtue or without interest It is sensitive, thoughtful and, in its deliberate use of exotic characters, arresting. But the hero is too much the villain and the villain too much the hero; it is a successful example of the soap-opera form in the novel of deviation.

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Martin Block

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