made one, was nothing but a cursory one. Yet, these very statements, and others equally absurb, tend to plant a seed in the reader's mind that germinates into questioning everything else he has to say. Are his stories based on fact, or has he skilfully embellished them in order to create a "startling investigation?"

After many tiresome pages of these non sequitur paragraphs, the balance of the book is taken up with what is intended to be case histories, some amusing, some shocking, some nauseating, some completely unbelieveable. In many of the "cases," the fact that the "patients" are homosexual seems to be purely coincidental and a minor by-product of other neurotic forces at work. To say that the way they are and the way they act is because of their homosexuality is, of course, absurd and a little ridiculous. That is what Mr. Stearn wishes us to believe, however.

Additional revelations of the author run the gamut from gay bars, to bus stations, to university campuses (or is it campi?), to "Show Biz," to Fire Island, to Manhattan's garment district, to Greenwich Village, etc., ad nauseum. A quote from the author's chapter on "Fashion and Beauty" is a typical conclusion of his "investigation":

"It is, all observers insist, part of a homosexual design-male and female to demean and degrade the traditionally American concept of soft, lovely, feminine beauty.

"The plot to defeminize the female face and form usually begins with the homosexual designers, who fit their clothes for gaunt, emaciated women. It extends to homosexual or lesbian magazine editors, who hire boyish-looking girls to show these clothes, and is supported by fashion photographers, homosexual or otherwise, who use these models out of prefer-

ence or to stay in tune."

There is one thing "startling" about this book. I have recognized myself as being homosexual for some thirty years. During that time I have lived in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and, briefly, New York. And yet, the homosexual society I have known bears so little relation to that which Mr. Stearn describes or creates that I begin to wonder if I am homosexual at all. Of course, I cannot have seen or done everything, but it does seem strange that none of my friends, or acquaintances have ever even alluded to the conditions and activities which Mr. Stearn describes as commonplace perhaps I I was not to be trusted with the information which Mr. Stear's informants have poured into his eager ears.

Far be it from me to deny categorically that the things Mr. Stearn says he has seen (or heard) do not exist or have not been done. The trouble is that the author seizes upon every isolated and individual action or activity of any homosexual of whom he ever heard, as he does upon every individual unflattering trait of personality or character exhibited by any homosexual, and from them creates a homosexual personality and a homosexual society which he would have us believe is commonplace. The result is that he arrives at a composite which is accurately descriptive of homosexuals to the exact and same measure that it is descriptive of mankind in general. Or, to put it another way, it is as though a creature from another planet had landed on earth within the confines of an insane asylum, and then, after spending a weekend, there, had gone home to write a startling and authoritative study of life and conditions upon the planet earth.

If the homosexuals that Mr. Stearn writes about in his book are