BOOKS

"THE HEART IN EXILE" by Rodney

Garland (London: W. H. ALLEN, 1954). The following review by John Boland. Chicago, takes a critical view of Garland's book, with which many readers may not agree. The reviewer, how-

ever, is presenting his own viewpoint. This magazine intends to publish other comment on "The Heart in Exile." because it believes the work to be an important contribution to the literature of the homophile.

ARE HOMOSEXUALS HEARTLESS?

THE BOOK JACKET blurb says candidly that this novel "tells more of the structure of contempory English society' than many a good sociological treatise." In fact, the work is less a novel than a sociological treatise, and not a good sociological treatise, either. The author hides behinds the framework of a novel without having to defend his propositions concerning homosexuality, which apply not only to England but to this country as well. The author's spokesman is a psychiatrist who relates the story.

Tony Page, young psychiatrist, is approached by a young woman to help her discover the reason for the suicide of her fiance, Julien LeClerc, who, it happens, was the first love of Page. The search for clues to the death of the young, handsome, wealthy solicitor leads through London's homosexual "underworld." the "hominterns" (i. e., pubs of the moment), the drawing rooms of the wealthy inverts, the hovels in working class slums, and even Scotland Yard. The psychiatrist believes himself "suffering from a stunted heart” and incapable of love. Most of those he encounters are in the same fix, love for them being only a physiological adventure. In fact, only the slavish devotion of Page's secretary, Terry, seems to warrant the name "love" in the author's estimation.

The real hero is Julien LeClerc. His character is revealed as the story unfolds, and it is a most manifold character. He is alternately an exceptionally mature, sophisticated seducer of his schoolmates; a daring and courageous soldier, who loves men of the "working class" because only they seem capable of the straightforward, wholehearted Whitman-ish camaraderie that he admires: a satyr whose varied sexual appetites cannot be satisfied: a gentle, devoted and faithful lover; a successful lawyer. His character is too manifold to be believed as that of one man, but at least the author does not depict it in unbelievable fashion. The reason for LeClerc's death is, despite his charm, courage, mattachine REVIEW

self-confidence, physical beauty and economic success, due to his fear of growing old and not having sufficient funds to maintain his social position. It was, after all, the psychiatrist concludes, his social position that attracted his working class companions.

In the course of the book. Dr. Page feels the first faint stirrings of love. He is pursued by LeClerc's bereaved fiancee, and he manipulates a great number of people to the purpose of his investigation with superhuman dexterity. One is also persuaded to assume that a "stunted heart" permits one to walk unsinged through any emotional holocaust.

The author believes that World War II ended the power of any individual to influence history and marked beginning of a collective world from which the invert, particularly, feels exiled. Inverts are incapable of escaping exile as a group, because the "pursuance of individual happiness is hardly the basis for social organization, however difficut or dangerous to achieve."

"CONCEPTS OF NORMALITY AND

AND ABNOMALITY IN SEXUAL BEHAVIOR," by Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Paul H. Gebhard and Clyde E. Martin (chapter reprint in booklet form from "Psychosexual Development in Health and Disease," Grune, Stratton, 1949). Little publicized, but still remarkable is an essay by the authors of "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" and a more recent volume on the human female. Here Robert Kirk of the University of Chicago reviews the booklet.

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attitudes toward sexual perversions. for instance, represented the acme of human wisdom in dealing with sociosexual problems!

Opening with remarks on the unique character of the social and legal taboos against certain forms of sexual activity in our own and other societies, the authors observe that. although most societies have regarded as criminal and punishable acts which violate the lives, liberties, persons and proporties of others, in the case of the so-called perversions, our law punishes certain acts on the ground that they are "crimes against nature that is, abnormal or perverse

ARGUING LUCIDLY and force behavior... In all the criminal law.

fully, Kinsey and his coworkers defend their earlier findings and conclusions regarding "sexual perversions" against the attacks of persons "who will not grant the scientists the right to make analyses which are detached from special vaAues.. who contend that a scientist should, in some fashion, keep secret all data which may threaten the continuation of the STATUS QUOas though the STATUS QUO, in our

there is practically no other behavior which is forbidden on the ground that nature may be offended. and that nature must be protected against such offense.”

The bulk of the essay is devoted to examining the truth of the proposition that the sexual perversions are contrary to nature, and its ultimate conclusions may be summarized thus: There is no biological basis justifying the condemnation of sexual per27