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.

BODD

THE PROBLEM OF HOMOSEXUALITY IN MODERN SOCITY, an anthology edited by Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek, Dutton, New York, 1963, 304 pp., $4.95.

Dr. Ruitenbeek has brought together sixteen papers on homosexuality, ranging from the famous Freud "Letter to an American Mother," through such diverse contributions as those of Ferenszi, Kardiner, Clara Thompson, Lindner, Rado, Ovesey, Evelyn Hooker, Albert Ellis, Simone de Beauvoir and others. By placing together such a diversity in convenient form he has performed a signal service, for ordinarily it would be necessary to consult numerous volumes to have access to this material.

Many of the papers are of absorbing interest, representing as they do a spectrum of professional viewpoints concerning homosexuality. However, as is almost unavoidable in such a collection, some of the material is of less value and at least one paper is entirely unworthy of inclusion in a serious volume, "The Homosexual Community," by Leznoff and Westley.

This writer clearly recalls the amusement among ONE's staff at a first reading of this effort when it came to our attention six or eight years ago, for it appears all too clearly to represent the earnest

bumblings of professional investigators brought face to face with a social situation entirely unfamiliar to them. Their interviews with number of Canadian queens constitute a record of leg-pulling which would be entirely familiar to those who have had dealings with many homosexuals. This is a pity too, because if good work is needed anywhere concerning homosexuality it is in the sociological approach.

The paper of of novelist Simon Raven, "The Male Prostitute in London," also is rather light-weight, consisting in the main of nothing more than a series of well-written vignettes of London street types, more appropriate, it might be felt, to a work of fiction than to a scholarly work. While the paper by Albert Ellis is far more carefully written. than most of his work, unfortunately for his own professional standing, observers tend to judge the entire corpus of a scientist, rather than an isolated example. In such a light Ellis does not, of course, stand close inspection.

Chief merit of this volume might almost be said, however, to lie with its sprightly and unconventional introduction in which Dr. Ruitenbeek, a practicing psychoanalyst, proceeds to set the record straight on a number of counts.

First to feel his scorn is the

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