September, 1975

Front Runner

token homage to drags and women, so that toward the end the lesbian is left in the kit-

By LEON STEVENS The Front Runner is an interesting and popular novel about a male gay relationshipchen written by female author, Patricia Warren. The novel is due to be made into a film starring Paul Newman which is sure to stir extensive controversey.

This novel is heavily pro-gay and is intended to be a powerful affirmation of gay liberation and self-respect. The content of Warren's bold commentary was inspired by a conversation which the author had with a gay athlete at a party. Warren was, herself, a member of a women's track team. It is clear that she combined these experiences with some research in gay lib literature to assemble a provocative and commanding story. However well-intended, The Front Runner suffers from lack of first hand information, plus much speculation on the part of the novelist which tends to stray too far afield.

The action centers around a love affair between a gay track star who eventually joins the U.S. Olympic track team, and his older gay coach.

The struggle of both men to achieve ambitious goals while publicizing both their gayness and their relationship. They are always on the brink of being overwhelmed by hostile forces, and this situation creates the standing tension which enwraps the reader.

Both straight and gay reading publics are likely to be moved by the tender pathos which pervades the action. However there are several inaccuracies and distortions of this book which might probably embarass a gay male reader. For example, although the younger protagonist is the son of a gay activist lawyer, has been raised in a predominantly gay environment, and even conducts a college seminar on gay awareness. he is plagued by many problems which most straights imagine gays to have.

The front runner, named Billy, is cared for by a transvestite whom his father had married because Warren apparently feels that any true hero requires at least a fair re-production of a heterosexual mother to become a healthy adult.

Both protagonists yearn for a typical middle-class nuclear family complete with fireside, hunting dog, crying infant, and mother-concubine.

The two "liberated" heroes are so hung up on producing offspring to "carry on their names" that they arrange through a gay doctor to freeze samples of their semen with which a lesbian is later willingly impregnated. She finally yields them a blond, blue-eyed son who shows signs of becoming a spartan hero himself. This incredible and somewhat primitive sequence seriously mars the original believable progression of events. This

cooking, washing dishes, and tending the baby, haus-frau fashion while the men sit in the parlor discussing philosophy. Equally defying belief is an episode in which the rather conservative and reserved coach retires to become an overpaid, sought-after hustler in New York.

Through other portrayals in book Warren redeems herself. Although Warren fails in depicting certain gay circumstances convincingly, she is very successful at revealing the subtleties of gay interactions. While her situations are less than real, her characters are immediate, and human.

Gay men can readily identify with the efforts of the protagonists to conceal their genuine feelings from each other while courting. Also, they can appreciate how the heroes sublimate their rather complex desires and emotions.

Warren is sensitive to pressures applied by straight society against gays and gives abundant expression to the frustration of gays who try to achieve ambitious goals within a heterosexual matrix. The sufferings of gays who find it hard to reconcile themselves with their homosexuality is also empathetically dealt with. There is no dearth of profundity in this novel. Warren evokes considerable personal reflection in a gay reader with such quotables as "Lovers are a dime a dozen; but a good friend is worth a thousand lovers."

The writer provides various other insights, including a progressive assessment of the United States Olympic Committee, The International Olympic Committees, and especially The American Athletic Union.

Warren is a strong proponent of human rights in sports and severely chastizes the backward, undemocratic, and often cruel hierarchy of American athletics.

She carefully outlines the rigors and trials of aspiring athletes in the field of track, and does so in such a way that the reader can appreciate the details and hardships of a runner, even if he unfamilair is with sports.

Admittedly, The Front Runner is no Anna Karenina; but it is a gigantic leap forward from many rather banal and unimaginative gay oriented models. In spite of its shortcomings, it makes fascinating and inspiring reading for gays and non-gays alike.

HIGH GEAR

BOOK REVIEWS

The Well of Loneliness is a lesbian classic written in the 1920's by a young woman, Radclyffe Hall. The story itself takes place at the turn of the century in a rural area outside of Longon England. A female child, Stephen, is born to upper-class parents who wanted none less than a boy for their first child. She was given a boy's name...Stephen, and was raised as a boy. She was taught to ride astride on horses, she was taught to hunt foxes, a traditional male English sport. She was given schooling in writing, mathematics, and several foreign languages. As she was growing up, her only friend that understood her "differentness" was her father. The children in the neighboring areas teased and tormented her.

Her mother hated her...On in the story, Stephen's father dies by an accident and she is left alone in a hostile world to explore her feelings toward other women that cause her such internal strife. Shortly after her father's death, Stephen has an affair with another woman. Her mother discovers this, and forces her to leave Morton, her home. For several years, Stephen supports herself by writing. She produces a successful novel and becomes famous, but still unfulfilled. World War I comes and Stephen joins the ambulance division of the army. It is there that she meets Mary Llewellyn, a young' woman who eventually grows to love her. After the war, Stephen and Mary become lovers and live together for years. They meet other lesbian couples and go to gay bars together. Life seems to have really opened up

The Well of Loneliness

By D. Lorenz for Stephen...they are happy.

Then along comes Martin Halliman, a man out of Stephen's past. He destroys their love by forcing guilt on them and telling them their love is wrong. Martin and Stephen wager a silent competition to gain/keep Mary's love. Mary begins to get uncomfortable with Martin's presence and orders him away from her. As time flows, Stephen realizes that she can never really give Mary what a man could, so she pretends to cheat on Mary. Mary goes to Martin. Thus ends the story on a note of despair, emptiness and hopelessness.

This story is by no means suitable for someone just coming out, or new to being gay. The book fosters the idea that gay is an inferior lifestyle...and in the time the book was written and in the time it took place, gay was an inferior lifestyle, rugged and oppressed.

From a literary standpoint, Ms. Hall's work is years beyond her time in dealing with material that was never spoken about much less written into a novel that dealt sympathetically with homosexual love. A good deal of the book is given to the emotions of the characters and the exploring of emotions. The authoress speaks from an all knowing point of view, and does well explaining the actions of her characters and the emotion/reason behind those actions. Some parts of the book are given to the voicing of gay liberation material. Even though the gay characters are thought "sick," Ms. Hall is throughout the book asking the reader, "Why do we see these harmless,

sensitive people as "sick"?"

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The writing in general is poetic and colorfully descriptive, detail by detail of landscape, interiors of buildings, people, animals and scenes of action.

The book surely points up the cultural oppression against women in that era. The male characters of the book are the "maucho" type...aggressive and dominating. The female characters are meek mild and motherly...typical of what women were expected to be.

Directly, men ruled Stephen's life. Stephen's name itself was caused by male supremacy. Her parents expected a boy baby and received a female child. She was raised as a boy and when. she came up a woman loving woman everyone asked why. When Stephen was finally fulfilled with a woman who loved her, it was a male who with his traditional straight ideas of matrimony and family took Stephen's heart and joy right from her and thus giving her indeed a well of loneliness. This sort of thing haunts the reader for days and days.

Anyone gay or sympathetic to gays will feel at gut level, the mass injustice and oppression mirrored by this book. It is well written about the age in which the book took place. Role playing is prominent and well described. The lesbian "butch" is called an "invert" and is given the traditional role of bread winner and head of the household. The lesbian "femme" is considered a normal woman who "for some ungodly reason gives her love to an invert." Anyone not a traditional straight, establishment oriented, white upper/middle class christian was not acceptable...does that bring home any memories???

Fred Schenk suggests you

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