THE GRAPEVINE by Jess Stearn, Doubleday, Garden City, N. Y., 1964, 372 pp., $4.95.

In 1961 Jess Stearn wrote The Sixth Man, an investigation into male homosexuality in the United States. Inasmuch as the book became a best seller, it must have been widely read by heterosexuals and homosexuals alike. Certainly it was widely discussed, and many homosexuals, flattered at being noticed by a "name" writer and deceived by the air of fairness which Mr. Stearn affected, thought it the greatest. In view of the commercial success of the book, it was inevitable that Mr. Stearn should eventually bring his attention to bear upon the female homosexual as well. There is no doubt that he was encouraged to do this by the fact that in 1962 the Daughters of Bilitis invited him to participate as a panelist in their annual convention where, according to Stearn, he was urged to write an equally penetrating study of the lesbian. Mr. Stearn's effort in this direction is the book, The Grapevine.

In The Grapevine the author has used the interview technique which he used in the same manner in The Sixth Man (a technique imitated by R. E. L. Masters in The Homosexual Revolution) to allow the queers to damn themselves. The interview technique is, indeed, a useful device and one which offers several clear advantages to the author. First, since he quotes lesbians themselves, or those who are otherwise supposedly specialists in the field, it gives an air of authority to whatever is said. Second, it enables the author to make or record any kind of statement-outlandish, unreasonable, irresponsible. misleading or actually false without having to take the responsibility for it. Third, it permits him to maintain an attitude of detachment, tolerance, understanding or sympathy,

whatever he may wish to convey, without depriving himself of the possibility of coloring his material exactly as he sees fit.

The interview is, no doubt, a useful and perhaps even indispensable technique in any sociological study, but to be useful and genuinely informative it must be controlled. First of all the interviews must be conducted in depth and we must know exactly how many were made. Secondly, each interviewee must be asked, at least at the outset, identical questions. Thirdly, all answers must be recorded and reduced to some kind of basis (statistical or other) which will permit the reader to make his own comparisons and arrive at his own conclusions. It is, to be sure, not improper for the investigator to attempt to interpret or evaluate his results provided he makes it clear when and where this is being done.

It is highly unlikely that Mr. Stearn has followed any of these rules, but he cannot really be criticized for not having done so. To conduct a scholarly investigation or to write a scholarly report was simply not his intention; he was not interested in this kind of book. It is important, however, that the reader understand this and not allow himself to be misled by the case history approach. Mr. Stearn has permitted himself, I am sure, the luxury of using artistic selection in determining which of his interviews he was to reproduce, and it would be naive to believe that he has done other than to choose those which, in his own judgement, would best suit his own purpose. His primary purpose, I am sure, has been to write a book which would sell.

Safely protected by his own often reiterated, secure, non-sick heterosexuality, and impelled only by that greatest of reportorial assets, curiosity -in which a dash of prurience is no handicap-Mr. Stearn has gone stead-

27