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BOOKS

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CORNER OF THE PARTHENON

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PRAYER FOR THE NEW YEAR

Our Father which art above and within us,

Hallowed be Thy Presence.

Thy kingdom come into manifestation.

Thy will be fulfilled on earth as it is in Thy perfect design.

Give us this day our daily portion in this fulfillment.

Forgive us our way of life as we forgive those who speak vilely against us.

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Lead us not into dishonor but deliver us from those who see evil. For Thou art I, and mine is the kingdom and the power and the glory now ever.

-Anon.

BETRAYAL ALMOST BOOMERANGS

THE YOUNGEST DIRECTOR by Martyn Goff. New York & London: Putnam & Co., Ltd., 1961. 237 pages, 3.75. Reviewed by John Logan.

Those who have been looking for the most recent and human gay novel will probably find this a rewarding book. It tells a story that is altogether plausible, entertaining, and not weighed down with tragedy; its characters and their loves and conflicts are the product of today; its minimum of preaching is sane and dispassionate. Moments of happiness balance this story's concern with social problems.

Leonard at 32 has risen to a directorship in a corporation. His office is in London, where his firm follows the policy of the American headquarters: All directors must be married soon after attaining this position if they make it that high without a wife.

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But Leonard, a self-confessed homosexual with awareness of this going back more than a decade, resists this arbitrary inroad into his private life. About the same time, he meets John, 10 years younger and a hustler of sorts ; who measures his success in terms of how many beds he bounds into and out of. They fall in love, with Leonard's erudite and sophisticated friends predicting doom for the relationship on the one hand, and with John's more earthy and sexually gregarious buddies coming around to help wreck the affair on the other.

Leonard's parents and a long-time married couple of which the husband is a fellow director at Leonard's firm all team up, it seems, with the Chairman of the Corporation to help bring events to what so often is the logical end in a book of this nature. But doom, always impending, settles so that the reader is left wholly satisfied, and Leonard and John DO come out of it with a future of hope and happiness ahead.

Martyn Goff is known for his novel, "The Plaster Fabric," and is also a music critic of note. But here again he takes the taboo subject of an allmale love affair, lets the protagonists have a privately passionate relationship, treats them like ordinary human beings and has them enact a story so convincingly that it could be happening to people your know and admire.

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mattachine REVIEW

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