"Diana." I recommend it. Surely the lesbian has as much right to be understood and respected as the male homosexual. But come to think of it, isn't it just like a man not to understand the feelings and needs of the opposite sex?

BOOKS

EFFETE AND ARTIFICIAL

A ROOM IN CHELSEA SQUARE Anonymous. Doubleday & Co., 1959. $3.95. An effete and to a large extent highly artificial account of life in a small group of London homosexuals. Everything happens: a rich member of it who keeps young men spends a long campaign to add a reluctant debutante to his list. Then, just when the latter has talked himself into succumbing, he gets miffed at a fancied slight and and takes up with another one.

An art magazine is started. An aviator with overtones of an Angry Young Man deliberately crash-dives a plane and kills himself. Yet somehow it doesn't seem too important and scarcely worth bothering about.

There is very little description of of the characters, so that you're never really able to visualize them in your mind's eye. All of them talk in exactly the same way so that in extended conversations you get con-

fused and aren't sure who is saying what. The plot tries to be significant and is only unimpressive.

But the odd thing is the bloody thing has a certain fascination. You start reading it and know that in a sense it's trash, but are unable to stop. Perhaps the author has made a valid point which he was unaware of where almost all members are devoted making. Those groups of homosexuals to artificality and affectation carry it alien fascination for outsiders of to such a degree that they have the visitors from another planet. They may be repelled or unable to understand the pressures that make such persons behave so, but they're also

fascinated.

One word of waming, read it but keep it out of sight of people in the know. It's something they simply will not understand!

-J. P.

MATTACHINE BOUND VOLUMES AVAILABLE Bound volumes of Mattachine REVIEW are ready for immediate shipment for most of the past six years. Volumes 1, 2, 4 and 5 are on hand. Volume 3 can be bound on order. Volume 6 will be ready early next year. Volumes 1 and 2 are $10 each; all others are $7.50. Complete set of first five volumes is $40. All are bound in blue fabrikoid, gold stamped, and they make a matching set of permanent interest and historical value.

mattachine REVIEW

To one REVIEW reader. at least, the recent article, "Things Could Be Worse," made a deep impression. He wrote his reactions to the editors of the Swiss Homophile magazine, DER KREIS. Its editors with. held the writer's name, but forwarded the comment which follows.

TOUCHSTONE FOR INFIDELITY?

CRUISING

The article "Things Could Be Worse" left me rather thoughtful. It more or less pokes fun at the "idealists" who want some sort of homophilic marriage recognized by law, such marriage to be founded on a true love relationship. The writer correctly points out the complications and possibly undesirable features of any such proposal. His really basic objection, however, is the "well known tendency for cruising on the part of males" (which) "leads to infidelity." Here he has certainly hit the nail on the head. This set me to wondering if the really fundamental failure with all our kind is not a failure in love, in charity, in the selfless devotion to the interests of others or another. This is the highest attribute of God, it is what the greatest humans have always striven for, it is what can alone redeem human society and enable it to transcend the chaos of warring egos, it is indispensable for the truly happy and fruitful life. Now if all this is true, do not we homosexuals as a class fail most dismally in this respect? Of course there are individual exceptions. But as a group are we not mainly selfish, self-centered, selfseeking, almost exclusively, using sex not as the symbol of expression of

LESBIANA AUTHOR TO SPEAK IN NEW YORK

Miss Artemis Smith, author of "Third Sex" and "Odd Girl" will address the monthly forum of the New York Area Council of Mattachine Society on Thursday, Sept. 15, on "The Ethics of Writing Fiction with Emphasis on Homosexual Novels." The meeting is open to the public. It will be held at 8:30 p.m. in Freedom House, 20 West 40th Street.