quite prepared to understand or believe the revelations of these lesbians, so mystifying to a normal male as to be incredible. It is a nice pose but one scarcely becoming to a man who has already probed male homosexuality to the core. The phoniness of Mr. Stearn's approach is aptly demonstrated by the following.

"She leaned across the table and said harshly, 'Well, it was Evelyn who brought me out.'

"I didn't quite get it at first."

It may be possible that Stearn had never heard that expression before, but if he hadn't, then I would like to believe that it was some other Mr. Stearn who wrote The Sixth Man.

A question which Mr. Stearn is fond of asking, in one form or another, of those girls who confess to never having had or wanted sexual relations with a man is: "How can you rule out something before you've tried it?"

One can't help wondering if, while he was working on The Sixth Man, Mr. Stearn ever had this question asked of him, or if perhaps he ever asked it of himself.

Marcel Martin

LOST ON TWILIGHT ROAD by James Colton, National Library Books, 75c, 156 pp. Lost on Twilight Road, listed for the market as fiction, could easily be a number of actual case histories adroitly strung together as the expanding experiences of a young pilgrim and his stormy progress towards a goal of self-awareness and happiness. The one thing of which he is sure from the beginning of his search, and there are hundreds like him, is that his physical and emotional needs do not follow the beaten paths of most of the men and boys with whom he works and has to find recreation. That he has no father and only occasionally finds a transient father figure amongst the miscel-

laneous collection of men who nightly visit his mother does not add much of personal value to his narrow life. The author presents him sympathetically with much artistic and literary skill, as a too physically attractive adolescent with high ideals and a sense of personal integrity and loyalty, but with no knowledge of the "twilight" web of intolerance, hostility, greed and revenge which ensnare him even before he runs away from his trailer home and prostitute mother. Had he become embittered by the repeated frustrations he encountered throughout the story it might well have had to end on a tragic, minor key, as such case histories generally do end.

After a spicy opening episode and a series of promising situations ending in failure and disillusionment, the story mounts into melo-dramatic climaxes with a possible realistic conclusion on the final page. This, however, is not the final curtain so far as Lonny and his more sophisticated friend Gene are concerned. What further catastrophies and tests lie ahead of them is a matter of conjecture; but it is evident that each of them has grown in understanding and in stature, and will be better able to live with the future and with each other.

Certain bits in the story seem definitely contrived to make the "good" people appear better and the evil ones more evil-but that's life, love and sex, heterosexual or homosexual, the only difference being the matter of the genders of the lovers. Intimate togetherness episodes are presented with quite revealing detail, but not with the forcefulness of Norman Mailer's descriptions; and four letter words are reserved for other characters and situations. Thus, each reader will get from Lonny's experiences and reactions differing interpretations because of his own