In addition to Symonds, Hamilton, Edward Westermarck, Edward Carpenter, Richard Burton, Paolo Mantegazza, Hans Licht, Voltaire, Gilbert Van Tassel Hamilton, Alfred C. Kinsey, George W. Henry,
Morris Ploscowe, Albert Ellis, and Donald Webster Cory are all contributors. One of two articles by Ellis titled Are Homosexuals Necessarily Neurotic? will be familiar to One readers.
FABRIZIO LUPO
Translated from the French into Spanish by Aurelio Garzon del Camino, Compania
General de Ediciones, S.A., Mexico, D.F., 1953, 417 pp.
Carlo Coccioli
The present volume is the Spanish translation of the muchheralded novel, Fabrizio Lupo, constructed around the theme of homosexuality. The author tells the story in his own name and character beginning with a visit to his study by a young admirer of his novels. This young man, an artist, is a confirmed homosexual and feels very strongly that the sufferings and misunderstandings he has undergone make a story which should be given to the world and he hopes that the author will be the one to do so. He has in fact tried his own hand at writing a novel which he is willing to turn over to the author along with his letters to his friend which have been returned to him presumably at the death of the latter. From the first visit on he tells the author his story which is interspersed with copies of the letters and finally the novel which he has written, all of course being woven into a connected story by the author. Much of the material is fantastic to the point of unreality, the episodes incoherent with one another, and practically all of it surcharged with emotionalism and subjective introspection well
irrigated with copiously wept tears. The devise of the author's using Fabrizio's own materials, however, saves him from the criticism that the qualities mentioned represent defects in his work. There is no plot in the usual sense of the word in the story; it is held together only by the allabsorbing love of Fabrizio for Lorenzo which runs like a thread through the whole and becomes the basis for endless pages of emotional self-analysis.
It would doubtless be going too far to say that there is a conventional framework for homosexual novels, but so many have followed the same scheme that it certainly represents a tendency. The story begins with a comparatively naive youth who forms strong attachments to friends of his own sex without knowing why he does so. Gradually he learns the truth through various and promiscuous episodes accompanied by much emotion running the gamut from ecstasy to deep depression and temperamental variations from fierce anger, amounting to tantrums, to completely selfless devotion. Finally the one and only satisfying companion is found or isn't found, and the relationship or hero, perishes in a climax
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