way from Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice" to Edgar Box's "Death in the Fifth Position." I have just finished reading this last item. It is a murder mystery -yes, a murder mystery with several homosexual characters and incidents, and wonderfully entertaining. Of course, One cannot acquire fiction of this class due to lack of money, but I believe you must gradually work up to it if the magazine is ever to become the real, big success I hope for.

A.X. asks, "Who cares whom Shakespeare went to bed with after reading Hamlet!" The answer is: many people care. Books have been written on this very subject. Clemance Dane wrote a play about Shakespeare's mistress-it ran a year on Broadway! If A.X. admires "Hamlet" so much, he should know there is a homosexual element in it. "Crushingly limited subject matter" indeed!

Most of A.X.'s arguments are as ill considered as this one. His only valid points are the obvious ones: your difficulty in getting good material and in holding out financially until you do. This very obstacle must determine your editorial policy, which A.X. says you lack. Of course, you lack one. Your only possible course is to judge by quality alone. Print everything you can lay your hands on that is good: fiction, verse, informative articles, research, polemics, arguments pro and con, digest of classics in homosexual literature, stuff written from any viewpoint whatever, material only partially concerned with homosexuality. The sole requirements should

one

be that it measures up to a certain standard of excellence.

Homosexuals probably average higher than the general public in literary and, artistic taste. There is undoubtedly an enormous latent demand for a magazine just like One. If you can get material sufficiently interesting, I am sure you will succeed. Frankly, I would not spend my money for any periodical to get the kind of fiction and verse you've published so far. But I appreciate your difficulties and believe you can gradually improve the quality of your offering. If it is apparent to your readers that you are trying to do so, the intelligent ones among them will be patient. L. G., Los Angeles

Pro

Con't from page two

aroma and kind of made you dizzy." Mr. A.X.'s stripped-down version of "agonized parting": "Life was now a vast empty plain." Mr. Freeman tops this with one thesaurus tied behind his back: "Paul had forsaken him, and there was nothing but to throw himself into the abyss." And while Mr. A.X.'s sensitive stomach turned at "reunion" (or "boy gets boy") and he could only gasp feebly: "Thud, smack, squeeze, yumyum"-Mr. Freeman is made of sterner stuff and gurgles an explicit "I love you, Dave boy" besides some rich beautiful prose about the "mystic autumn twilight" and the "glorious overpowering emotion" of you-know-what.

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