BOOKS

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

OLD

THE SIXTH MAN by Jess Stearn, Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1961, $3.95.

The dust jacket of Jess Stearn's The Sixth Man carries the following: "A Startling Investigation of the Spread of Homosexuality in America!" Startling? No! Written by a former associate editor of Newsweek, the book is not uninteresting in spots, but it is far from startling. The author in many places, I am afraid, has not overcome his training at Newsweek: slanting the news as the bosses would like it to be rather than reporting it as it is!

After a rather sensible opening chapter relating why he delved into homosexuality (curiosity), Mr. Stearn hands the reader, gratuitously a chapter on "Origin of the Species' which is primarily composed of quotes, or misquotes, from the head of the George Henry Foundation in New York. To give you a sample of this chapter, I quote from the author who asked Dr. Henry:

"Then homosexuality is not necessarily tied up with the socalled decline of the West?"

"In the lands where living is hard," he replied patiently, "Where people must scratch the earth and devote their complete energies to feeding and sheltering themselves and their families, homosexuality is almost unheard of. In ancient Macedonia before Alexander, for

one

instance, near a Grecian area of traditional homosexuality, the people had to make a rigorous effort to stay alive; the instinct for selfpreservation, for perpetuation of the race was so strong, so near the surface that nothing was permitted to impede its own propagation."

Whatever that might mean! I wonder if Dr. Henry ever heard of India?

There follows then a series of chapters made up of paragraphs. which apparently were designed to shock the reader. One paragraph containing tidbits of "juicy" information is followed by another paragraph containing additional tidbits with neither paragraph having any relation to the other, much in the style of the Mortimer-Lait "confidential" expose books. This is not only tiresome to read, but much of the information contained therein is of questionable authenticity. Far Westerners will chuckle, but at the same time cannot fail to be impressed by the astute observation and penetrating investigation which has enabled the author to remark: "In San Francisco a large square opposite the St. Francis Hotel, in the heart of the downtown district, is rated by many

a busier recruiting center than Times Square . . . Pershing Square, in Los Angeles, near several big hotels, is a popular meeting ground, It is obvious that the author's visit to the West Coast, if he really