BOOKS

Notices and reviews of books. ar. ticles, plays and poetry dealing with homosexuality and the sex variant. Readers are invited to send in reviews or printed matter for review.

BDD

YOUNG TORLESS

By Robert Musil Translated from the German by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser. Introduction by Alan Pryce-Jones, editor of the London Times Literary Supplement. Pantheon Books, New York, 1955, ix-217 pp.

Although Young Torless was written in 1906, the whole atmosphere of the book fits into the ultramodern picture of existentialist "anguish," a horror story with little to recommend it but the unmistakable artistry of the author. The scene is a military boarding school located far out on the railroad from Austria to Russia and intended for the sons of government officials and the artistocracy. The young Torless is the son of Hofrat and Frau Torless and misses them terribly upon being placed in this forbidding and inhospitable school, although he had never been aware of any particular fondness for them before. The school is never described in detail, but one never loses the sense of it as background throughout the story. Much of the latter takes place in a dusty hideout the boys had found in the attic of the great, rambling building.

Beineberg and Reiting, the two main characters beside Torless, used the retreat to bully and torment another student, Basini, whom they

accused of petty misdemeanors, to some extent correctly, and took Torless with them when they went up there. During a vacation when the two boys were away, Torless goes to the attic with Basini and learns that homosexual scenes have been enacted there between the others, the boys promising immunity to Basini from their tormenting if he will conform to their desires. Torless fights against the current, but he himself finally succumbs to the feminine and attractive Basini, although he is never entirely satisfied by the relationship, even repelled at times, and later rejects it entirely. Mere satisfaction was not what the other two boys wished, however, but the pleasure of torturing Basini who later appeals in vain to Torless for help. In fact Torless is scarcely more sympathetic than the others and blames Basini for his own misfortunes. The boys, however, suspect his loyalty to them and threaten him with the same barbarous torturing. Nevertheless he warns Basini of a final session which they had planned and the latter gives himself up to the headmaster while Torless himself avoids complications by running away temporarily. The two boys instruct their classmates and a mock court is held wherein Basini is charged with many misdeeds, cruelly beaten, and finally reported to the headmaster who expels him from the school.

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