ject as important as this such fine talent had been devoted to characterizations and situations more recent and nearer the crux of all tolerance,

the struggle for which is quite as fascinating as anything any of us can find in thẹ miasma of antiquity. JAMES (BARR) FUGATE'

Prison Tale Grotesque

CAST THE FIRST STONE, by Chester Himes. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1952. 346 p. A shocking narrative of prison life, this book merits consideration for it revelation of what can happen to men 4 under stress of a penal system which is supposed to rehabilitate. but actually warps men almost beyond recognition. It may disturb even those who think themselves well acquainted with patterns of deviant emotional behavior, says the reviewer, Robert Kirk, Chicago. "HIS WORK is best approached

THIS

not as a work of art but as a social document. Although called a novel by the author and despite many passages of great emotional and imaginative impact, the books. plot and artistic effect are over shadowed by the painstakingly doc umentary style, The reader is led step by step, through a case history d narrated in the first person by the subject himself.

The book's unifying thread is the transformation of the narrator, Jimmy, Munroe, from an agressively heterosexual male through five years of the horror, disgust, indignity,, boredom and apathy of prison life-into a creature for which there is no ready psychological label.

Plunged from the beginning into

a prison society of men who select for themselves the psycho-sexual role of "wolf", "punk," "kid," and "fag," Munroe first resists these grotesque caricatures of ordinary sexual roles with contempt. His attitude changes to amused tolerance, then to submission, to almost hysterical impulses. The conclusion of "Cast the First Stone" finds Munroe involved with another! convict in an intense mutual attachment, a relationship which defies description in ordinary human language, but which is, however, neither overtly sexual on Munroe's part, nor is it platonic, Further, it is not fraternal, or paternal, or inadvertently homosexual; but Munroe does not think of it as homosexual. It is perhap unique to the destructive, degenerative atmosphere of American prison.

the

Whether the transformation of Jimmy Munroe confirms or denies the findings of penologists who warn against prison life's destructive effects upon the human personality, the reviewer does not feel competentto say. But Author Himes, has sounded a warning again in a compelling and convincing manner. The failure to heed these warnings is clearly parallel to the Anglo-American practice of placing homosexuals in prison for "correction."

We ought to pay more attention to the future than to the past, because every one of us is going to spend the rest of his life in it.--Charles F. Kettering

40

mattaching REVIEW

fined, so that efforts on the task would be of value, and not just a compilation of information which would serve no useful purposé.

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Public relations advances during the year were centered specifically in the production of educational sound tapes, recorded and edited from lectures and addresses given by experts in their fields to various Society public discussion groups, and recordings of radio, television and other community sex and mental health subprograms related to the available for use throughout ject. These tapes, the Society, may be obtained from the public relatfonsdirector. Projects planned for this depart ment during the coming year will be aimed at increasing the interest and service of the Society's with a tic-in with the public discussion groups, research department to implement such group therapy techniques as are applicable under present cordi-

tions.

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In the legal-legislative field, it was reported that individual, rather that organizational, support (or opposition) to proposed legislation would continue to keynote the attachine policy, means cooperation with other orgwizatims, working closely with their legal and legislative chairmen, and consultation with attorneys, lcgislators and others concerned with law enactment. projected legal information brochure, in preparafor general use tion at Chicago, will be adapted throughout the Society, the director of this department promised, upon completion.

A

In the publications department, production of the magazine and continuation of the 3-booklet serwere chief activiics, "Mattachine Society Today" ties of the past year. In each of the four main areas, ncwsletters are presently published monthly as a function of this department.

Story of the Nattachine Review from its inception to the present was issued in booklet form Included were finanby the publications director.