BOOKS

THE WHITE PAPER,

anonymous,

with preface and illustrations by Jean Cocteau, Macaulay, New York, 1958, $3.50, 88 pp.

This is an exciting little book, frank and delicately beautiful. Above all, it features a mystery, set forth in the introduction by France's professionally astonishing writer, cinematographer, artist and Academician.

Cocteau asks of the manuscript "Who wrote it? Did I? Perhaps. Another? Probably. Do we not become others the moment we've done writing?" etcetera. . .

The coy Cocteau notwithstanding. bibliographers and critics attribute authorship of Le Livre Blanc, published in Paris in 1920, to Cocteau. and for all the cute circumlocution. I think that only the author of such a work would bother to play ringaround-the-rosies with the riddle of whether he had written it. After the pretentious cleverness of the preface, the charmingly boyish directness of the narrative comes as a happy surprise.

The work itself is primarily a confession of homosexuality and secondarily an apologetic. As a confession it is amazingly frank, sharply, effective with fine economy of words, straightforward and quite ingenuous, though, brief as it is, it begins to drag at the end.

The starkest experiences are recounted with innocent simplicity, from

one

the embarrassment of schoolboy ejaculations and the frustration of early friendships to the sordidness of Marseille's male brothels. However, the tale has that annoying one-sidedness that describes homosexual life as chiefly an alternation between the gutter and the confessional.

As an apologetic, a defense of the homosexual's right to be what he cannot help being, the book is less effective, though one must make allowances for the date of its original publication. The non-sequitur argument seems at best an example of simpering defiance. It will take more convincing argument to impress the heterosexual majority than saying homosexuals must be right because they exist and have a rough time.

Yet the overall impression is of a work of rare honesty and beauty, like an innocent child looking at a dirty peep-show without being at all contaminated.

HOMOSEXUALITY, TRANSVESTISM & CHANGE OF SEX

By Eugene de Savitsch, M.D. William Heinemann Medical Books Ltd., 1958, 120 pp.

Dr. de Savitsch first covers homosexuality, using the biological theory, with moral and legal highlights; hermaphrodites, with a few case studies. He then gives a comprehensive description of sex change, using a few diagrams to show the progress of the operation. The Arnold-Arlette Leber case is discussed in detail with the appendix devoted to the medico-legal reports of this case.

Although intended mainly for social workers, clergymen, lawyers, public officials, etc.. this book can be read with profit by anyone interested in the subject of sex change.

Harry Mulford

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