But it is in that fifth of his book he devotes to homosexuality that I most resented the author's juggling of fact and fiction. According to Mr. Malaparte, not only did a large percentage of the homosexual population of Europe cross the German lines to get to the American forces, but most of that percentage arrived as converted Communists because it was the smart thing to be that year! (He even suggests there was a homosexual Five Year Plan for corrupting the male population of Europe!) To prove his point he falls into Proust's error of holding up as representative of the group, a few decadent aristocrats whose education seems as spurious in art and heraldry as it is inadequate in economics. and politics.

His version of the homosexual underground in Europe that worked so closely with British and American Intelligence leaves much to be told, and his story of the pretty Italian boy who practiced homosexual wiles to persuade the Roman head of Nazis Intelligence to turn traitor, thus saving the industries of Northern Italy and countless American lives, does not, unfortunately, contain names, dates or incidents that can be checked.

Then too, for a man who tells us not once but eight times that he is a good Christian, his satisfaction in the sufferings of the phosphorus bomb victims of Hamburg and beaten homosexuals alike contrast sharply with the tears he sheds over the death of his pet dog, Febo. But by coupling Communism with homosexuality, Mr. Malaparte, who is a good Christian, is certain of winning the plaudits of most unthinking American readers, which seems to be another of his purposes. For a country whose faults are so disgustingly clear to him, he seems to have gone to strange lengths throughout his book to secure its favorable attention. Of course, the dollar exchange is still very good in his country. Summing up The Skin, this column can only agree with one of Mr. Malaparte's statements: "There's never a shortage of pimps."

—James Barr

WIND WOMAN

The Woodford Press, New York, 1953

Carol Hales

As the story begins, its heroine, a Lesbian, finds herself in the throes of a sexuallyunrequited love for a woman violinist. The heroine, herself a pianist and composer, finds it impossible to break this relationship, yet equally impossible to "sublimate" her sexual desires, which are offensive to the object of her devotion. In this predicament, she consults a woman psychologist, and her confessions as a patient, together with the advice of the therapist, comprise the major portion of the book.

In contrast to the realistic and somewhat staggering complexity of the heroine, the other characters are starkly simple and clear-not people so much as elementary types of human behavior and attitude, each helping to bring into focus some single facet of the homosexual problem, and all revolving around the ideals, the sentiments, and the sensual inclinations of the major character. Certain situations, such as her long-standing sexual affair with Dr. Stancliff, male, and her ultimate rejection of Vivian because the latter accepted men, had been married and had borne a son, will seem completely mystifying and contradictory except to the "true homosexual," whose homosexuality is a matter of the heart, rather than of the senses.

Miss Hales has produced a book for which she should be congratulated on many points. It should be as welcome to intelligent heterosexual men and women and to homosexual men, as to Lesbians, since it deals with emotional and intellectual levels of experience which are common to ALL of these relationships, and contrasts very clearly the spiritual, the aesthetic, the sentimental and the sensual aspects of human attachments. Minds which have failed to experience and note the often-close proximity in life between primitive and advanced modes of consciousness may find Miss Hales' story bewildering, perhaps even comic. Others, however, will see in this book a courageous and an essentially successful effort to portray the full scope of homoerotic experience. -Robert Gregory

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