BOOKS

IN NEED OF MEDICAL ATTENTION

THE SIXTH MAN by Jess Stearn. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co. $3.95. Reviewed by Jack Parrish.

It is always painful to see a noble mind o'erthrown, but facts are facts and always must be faced no matter however repugnant they may be. As will be obvious to any intelligent reader of this book, Mr. Stearn is an advanced case of schizophrenia and urgently needs medical attention.

One of his two personalities is a slightly sublimated Lee Mortimer and is responsible for the first half of The Sixth Man. Naturally, therefore, the said half consists of sordidly murky anecdotes about the sexual activities of homosexuals in gyms, latrines, and suchlike places.

The one exception to this is an interview with Doctor George Henry, However, in some ways this isn't much better since Doctor Henry believes that heredity and the genes have much to do with the causes of homosexuality. He is of the opinion that homosexuals are emotionally immature and incapable of "the complete love which is possible only between men and women whose shared interests include the blessedness of children and grandchildren." He also feels our civilization may be declining, somewhat as the Romans' did. "Homosexuality, with its lack of responsibility for the procreation of the species, is certainly a factor in that decline," Stearn quotes him as saying, but possibly the reporter has somehow garbled something the doctor said.

The second half of the book is radically different in tone and obviously written by Stearn's more temperate and less sensationally lurid alter ego. It consists of a dispassionately fair account of the Mattachine Society, sympathetic descriptions of the problems of married male homosexuals, and the difficulties of the homosexual's relationship with his parents. The final chapter declares that the problem is a medical not a legal one, cites cases of the harm resulting to everyone when legal measures are used in ferreting out such people, and summarizes the solutions to the problem offered by the psychiatrist, sociologist, social philosopher, clergyman and homosexuals themselves. Obviously what brought about the tragic split in Mr. Stearn's original, unbifurcated personality was a desire to sit on both sides of the fence at once.

It is tempting to become irked at this opus's shortcomings. However, as attitudes towards homosexuality continue to change in our society over the years many more books are going to be published, some as illuminating as 22 mattachine REVIEW

Gordon Westwood's A Minority, some as cursorily superficial as Stearn's. There is little of scientific or sociological value in his book, as much as anything else because as a journalist he has become habituated to writing glibly generalized series of articles on various subjects, usually without giving verifiable sources. However, his book contains one thing to be thankful for, one of the few objective descriptions of the Mattachine Society in book form, and it is to be hoped-his doctors can do something to make him a well man again.

EVENINGS TO SPARE?

WOMEN CONFIDENTIAL by Lee Mortimer. New York: Julian Messner, Inc. 1960. 316 pp. $3.95.

Spring has come, the swallows are back at Capistrano and a new "confidential" book is out by Lee Mortimer. This time it's about women. Quoting all the juicy scandals he can and giving all the gory details he knows, he shows that women all over the world are lapsing completely into sexual promiscuity, perversion and drug addiction. So that you can prove it for yourself, he gives the streets and quarters of almost every major city in the world where such activities take place. One of the finest fantasies seen on the market for years. The one real criticism to be made of it is that most of the addresses are wrong, consequently, half the night will have to be spent in chasing them down.

Comment on THE SIXTH MAN has been expressed elsewhere in this issue, including the letters from readers. Here is another pertinent comment about the book, 'coming from the author himself:

TO LIFT THE CURTAIN OF MYSTERY By JESS STEARN

The Sixth Man appears to have been received very well in most quarters. Because it deals with such a sensitive, controversial subject, of course, the reactions, both by reviewers and the general public, are as varied as might be expected. Some reviewers, while applauding the scope of the book, have expressed the opinion that they would have been happier if it had gone "deeper." My book had a major purpose: to tear the curtain of mystery and misunderstanding from the everyday life of the homosexual, and reveal these problems to a world only dimly aware of his presence.

As is known by almost any homosexual oriented with his problem, the psychiatric approach to the problem is rather vague at this stage. And many 23