BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

Notices and reviews of books, articles,

homosexual and poetry dealing with

homosexuality and the sex variant. Readers are invited to send in reviews or printed matter for review.

"MEN INTO BEASTS"

By George S. Viereck Bridgehead Books, Inc. N.Y. 1955

A prolific and talented writer of both prose and verse turns his pen to a subject which has received much public attention during the past few years. But unlike many "inside-prison" books, which concentrate chiefly on the sadistic and brutal elements of prison life, Viereck's story of his own imprisonment contains as well the many elements of pathos, humor, satire and fact necessary to present a realistic picture.

As a creative writer interested in sexology in all of its mental and emotional ramifications, Mr. Viereck brings into considerable prominence the erotic aspects of prison life, and the factors of homosexual behavior which inevitably dominate any scene where persons of the same sex undergo long confinement together; and his keen and sensitive insight into the varied qualities of human emotion have produced a documentary whose personalities have all the dimensions necessary for a convincing portrayal.

MEN INTO BEASTS is a book which must be thoroughly read in order for its objectivity and understanding to be appreciated. However, this objectivity and understanding is suggested in the author's own introduction, when he says, "I could not have won the esteem of men like Havelock Ellis, the foremost pioneer of sex knowledge in England, Magnus Hirschfeld, head of the Institut für Sexual-wissenschaft in Berlin, Sigmund Freud, explorer of the dynamics of sex in the unconscious, and Alfred Kinsey, who stripped away the hypocritical pretenses with which we Americans

attempt to conceal the facts of life from ourselves, if I could not look truth in the face without blush or snicker." Mr. Viereck's presentation of sex life in prisons is truly free from prurience, from apology, from sanctimony, and from any of the other inventions by which (in Cory's terms) this 'anti-sexual" age deceives itself.

Readers of MEN INTO BEASTS will be gratified that Mr. Viereck's story does not harp continually upon the sexual theme. Running like a thread through the author's account are the circumstances of his own imprisonment (on political charges) and, interspersed liberally among the erotica are the personalities of prisoners themselves, carefully drawn and full of the tragedy, and the occasional humor, of anti-social attitudes and behavior.

ONE shares with both the author and publisher of MEN INTO BEASTS the hope that this book will make a deep and wide impression upon the public mind. There is certainly no social absurdity more glaring than a penal system which leaves men and women worse off than when they were subjected to it, nor any psychological absurdity more glaring than the notion that punishment will rid a person of his anti-social tendencies. ONE congratulates Mr. Viereck and his publisher for their courage and candor, and for a book which will do much to bring rationality into the sexual morals of the modern era.

"THE NUDE IN THE MIRROR" By George S. Viereck

"The Nude in the Mirror" is based on the author's theory that women are sexually superior to men. The author of a trilogy commencing with "My First Two Thousand Years," "The Invincible Adam," and, recently, "Men Into Beasts," continues on his

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ROBERT GREGORY

phallic tangent in the present novel. The story concerns one Adam Greenleaf, a young professor in a well-known girls' college, who takes a Mediterranean cruise aboard the "MUNDANIA," a luxury liner. Aboard, he meets Stella de la Mar, a very volup-

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