INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE, Oliver Layton Press, New York.

If Greek love were to materialize long enough to utter a few words, these words would likely be: "I have been dumb for well nigh 25 centuries, but now, finally, I have again a voice in the affairs of men!" Yes, Greek love has, with the appearance of the first issue of the International Journal of Greek Love found its voice. And what a soul-stirring voice it is— telling of a love which for many men has been and is a thing of the spirit. For such a love transcends perishable values attached to flesh and bone, and reaches for spiritual values of imperishable worth.

We should all rejoice at the appearance of this new quarterly so boldly devoted to this long neglected topic. But our joy, we find, is somewhat tarnished by one glaring shortcoming in this first try. It is the absence of what should have been its main feature: an historical tableau anchoring Greek love within the framework of history. True, such tableaux are presented in many of the best books on Greek love, but magazine readers (a completely new audience for the subject) who open for the first time a magazine by this title will immediately have to have the subject set in perspective to discover the meaning of so many things -to know what counts, to justify themselves to themselves, if need be, in the light of their newly acquired knowledge. In the absence of such orientation, the magazine reader is apt to feel cheated and deluded. This first issue of the International Journal of Greek Love will be, for many of its readers, the very first picture of the Greek love phenomenon.

That it reproduces some aspects of the truth of this phenomenon without the distortions which characterize so many other representations offered for

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sale, and makes the subject so commonly available is to the credit of its editors and publishers.

The shortcomings of this first effort may be redeemed in future issues. The editors have only to show that what Goethe said of boy love is true: that it is as old as nature, and that in its best times it has inspired men to reach for the highest truths and live in an almost perfect symmetry of body and soul. The editors may want to open the pages of their next few issues to the confessions, as it were, of boy lovers from all over the world. There must be many voices of those who would like to sing the praises of their love; they have been so long muted.

This, of course, is the truly remarkable aspect of the International Journal of Greek Love: here at last is genuine public discussion of the subject. Let us hope that the journal will have ethical and educational consequences which we can all call good.

M. P.

THE BOY, A PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY. Book Horizons, New York, 1964. $25.00.

All the 400 photographs of prepubescent boys in this sumptuous outsized album are excellent. For boylovers (except those who insist on pornography), I would judge this a must even at $25.00. However, as most of the photos are clothed and there is only one front-view nude, some may call the album prudish. Still there is certainly no dearth of rear-view nudes.

Boy-love is a ticklish subject, not only because of the law but because of personal taste. One of our editors is opposed even to reviewing this work, contending that boy-love has little or nothing to do with homosexuality, nothing to do with ONE. I suppose there is among homosexuals, just as with chickens, a pecking order