sitive types.

Mrs. Branson seems too conscious of caste, of social distinc• tions and other arbitrary lines. Nevertheless, in a city as rife with camouflaged vice squad men as Los Angeles, her selectivity undoubtedly serves a purpose. "Anyone who owns and operates a bar," she says, "has to have something to sell in addition to the alcoholic beverage...I ay to sell safety. Comparative safety, that is."

Obviously, she offers much more. To her boys, she is a sympa. thetic mother, a stern father, a psychiatrist, employment bureau and matchmaker. She is undoubtedly a nice person to know-if she includes you in. What this country needs may very well be a chain of places like Helen's-with Helen behind the bar in every one.

Mrs. Branson writes modestly and simply, with an occasional evocative line ("lonesomeness is a phantom that hovers over every one'') and even a dash of suspense (will our girl Helen succeed in getting the padlock off the bar door and escaping inside before the burglar catches up with her?)

Pan-Graphic Press deserves to be congratulated on this, its first book. GAY BAR is both entertaining and significant. The printing is excellent-I found only one error. The publisher has also provided a thoughtful and informative introduction by Dr. Blanche M. Baker which adds considerably to the value of the volume.

mattachine DIRECTORY

National Headquarters

MATTACHINE SOCIETY, INC., 693 Mission Street, San Francisco 5, Calif. Tel. EXbrook 7-0773

Branch Offices

DENVER Chapter-Post Office Box 7035, Capitol Hill Station, Denver 6, Colo. Tel. Florida 5-3438 (Sec.)

LOS ANGELES Area Council-Post Office Box 1925, Los Angeles 53, Calif. Tel. NOrmandie 3-2818 (Chm)

NEW YORK Area Council-1183 Avenue of the Americas (4th Fl.), New York 36, N.Y. Tel. Circle 5-1868

SAN FRANCISCO Area Council-693 Mission St, San Francisco 5, Calif. Tel. EXbrook 7-0773

Communications to branch offices above should be addressed in all cases in care of Mattachine Society, Inc.

mattachine REVIEW

Of 'Gothic' Tone

THE TRANSGRESSOR. By Julian Green. 222 pages. Pantheon. $3.50.

IKE so many of Juilan Green's novels, this one has its setting in a small provincial French town. All of the principal characters live In an ancestral home distinguished by a coat of arms above the door: "The fact gave them a better opinion of themselves, and such was the virtue of the escutcheon that certain inhabitants of the old house felt themselves a trife superior to the rest of the world."

As in two earlier Green novels, "Avarice House" and "The Closed Garden," the characters seem to be a part of the décor; they are set pieces in a skillfully arranged arabesque. Hedwige, the or. phan, has an unrealistic attachment for a homosexual. Jean, the unwanted lodgerrelative, contemplates a book on the artistic reproductions of St. Sebastian. Ulrique, the daughter, carries about a perpetual image of her own beauty reflected in the famlly mirror. Mme. Pauque, the aunt, plays the devil's advo cate, finding the diabolical pleasing and even attractive. This gallery of portraits reinforces the unrealistic setung of the novel. The characters are never quite human; they are dilated into symbol and myth.

"Gothic" Tonality

The book has the barest element of plot. Hedwige's gradual emergence to maturity, her love of Gaston Dolange and her suicide give it its fe tional basis. We are, however,

less concerned with this flimsy narrative than we are with Green's unmistakable tone or mood. Each of the characters is in an advanced stage of decadence. Two are inverts, one is a narcissist, one is a suicide. The novelist gives us a genuine sense of the various ab normalities by passing back and forth, almost at will, from reality to imagination. He captures the tonality of the "gothic."

Green is especially successful with his treatment of inversion. His' delicate handling of the problem recalls the most revealing pages in Proust's "Cities of the Plain" and Gide's "Counterfeiters." The portrait of Jean as homosexual is particularly sympa. thetic and convincing. Green's Conversion

Since the author's "going over to Rome" in the early years of the second World War, almost all his novels have been haunted by Catholic overtones. The journals Green kept in 1938-39 (recently translated into English as "Personal Record") explain the religious transformation. The novels of the '40's, through an indelicate han. dling of this conversion, do little for Green's stature as a novelist. "The Transgressor, fortunately, gives the problem a more artistic basis.

The novel is ably translated. Green's prose wears well in English. This is partly due to the fact that he is of Ameri can origin and was educated at the University of Virginia. His fluency in English probably explains certain peculiar. ities of his syntax.

MAN.

MELVIN J. FRIEDMAN.

Book Review from Baltimore Sun.