BOOKS

QUAINT HONOUR, a play in two acts by Roger Gellert, London, Secker & Warburg, 1958, 112 pp.

An old saying states that water will seek its own level, if it is left free to do so.

From this ascertained physical fact an analogy can be drawn as to what is happening in England since the publication of the Wolfenden Report. In England what is happening is simply this, that homosexual literature, or, to be more correct, literature that treats of homosexual themes, is not pervaded by a feeling of rebellion any longer, but treats these themes in a matter of fact way, as they should be treated.

This phenomenon is highly evident in the case of the play being reviewed. Everybody knows that adolescent boys are like leaves tossed by the storm of their awakening sexual instinct. Everybody also knows that, in human beings above the level of idiocy, the sexual instinct is never expressed physically only, like animals, but gives rise to feelings of love. Finally, everybody knows that whenever and wherever love is given a chance, it will flourish under the most adverse and the most improbable conditions. Everybody knows all this, but English schoolmasters chose to ignore this particular knowledge up to now.

Now, thank God, they have been forced to acknowledge the truth, and, as it is also a purely human characteristic, truth comes served to them in a supremely artistic form in this play, a play in which the emotion of love in the springtime awakening of the

one

sexual instinct of adolescent boys, is shown for what it really is, vz. a superstructure reared on the foundations of the physical, and, therefore, a real, and not a vaporous thing.

Bruno Vitale

A MINORITY: A Report on the Life of the Male Homosexual in Great Britain by Gordon Westwood, Longmans, 1960, $7.00, 216 pp.

Although rejecting the legal recommendations of the Wolfenden Committee, the British government has followed the Committee's urging to support further research into the nature and cause of homosexuality. This study was initiated by the British Social Biology Council and continued under the auspices of Birkbeck College, London University.

Mr. Westwood and his associates interviewed 127 exclusive or predominant homosexuals who were guaranteed complete anonymity. Subjects were contacted through press accounts, through doctors, and through other contacts. Although the sample was small and the range of age, social background and education was great, the questioning of the subjects was precise and intensive, and several of the results throw a sharp light on some fondly held current misconceptions about homosexuality.

The resulting book is neither light reading, nor a heavy tome. It is careful and solid and challenging and its statistics tend to knock down the рорular notions that homosexuals come from unhappy homes (about half do not); that they are homosexual because of dominant mothers (less than one third were particularly motheroriented); that they are that way because of being shy with girls (almost half had had heterosexual experience); or that they are effeminate