sents an argument toward the belief that Dionysus was homosexual and it is quite convincing. Oh yes, there are homosexual doppelgangers also.

These are just a few examples. The entire book is filled with sexual lore, some of it hilariously funny. The reader is left with the unshakeable conviction that there is homosexuality everywhere, even among demons and witches.

Of course, this is not a must book, by any means, for the homosexual library. It is primarily a compilation of sex in witchcraft. Nevertheless, it contains homosexual data not easily obtainable elsewhere, and certainly not obtainable in one book otherwise.

CARD GAME

ACT OF ANGER by. Bart Spicer. Atheneum, 1962. Reviewed by Gene Damon.

Once, not long ago, the novelist had quite a choice of scapegoats, Negroes, all foreign born groups, minority religions, several professions, many to portray in as unflattering a light as he wished. In those days, homosexuality was still a pretty taboo subject, and ironically most of the homosexual novels of those times tended to be romantic and even occasionally hysterically sympathetic.

Now, most of the old scapegoats have been declared off limits to the writer. Unfortunately, this has left the homosexual population standing on a high thin ledge waiting to be shot off the crest.

This extremely tense, carefully plotted, very well written novel is the sort of sensation-producing blow that tends to undermine every progressive attempt to clarify the true position of the average homosexual in society.

Very few authors have as successfully, cleverly damned the homosexual and still been able to hide the true nature of the damage under a barrage. of tear-jerking, chest-swelling emotionalism.

Arturo Campeon, 21-year-old Mexican national kills homosexual Roderick Duquesne defending himself from a homosexual "rape." Basically, that is the whole plot. That, accompanied by the jury's not guilty verdict. Not satisfied, though, Mr. Spicer really loads the scales:

1. Roderick Duquesne is the son of a rich bastard. This is used in the book as a lever to pass even more sympathy onto the Mexican boy.

2. Every conceivable illegal pressure is brought to convict the boy so that reader sympathy is increased for him.

3. Whole chapters are spirited denunciations of all homosexuals, even to having a Los Angeles police official named 'Valentine claim to have "a

mattachine REVIEW

pretty good line on the homosexual crowd," then insinuating that he has One magazine's mailing list (does not use the name, just says the magazine for homosexuals published in Los Angeles). This same official insinuates he knows all about the one in San Francisco, too. In fact, Duquesne (the murdered man) is supposed to have contributed heavily to the Mattachine Review (not by name) mostly poetry.

4. The author tries to convince us that Duquesne was the worst and blackest homosexual that ever lived. Supposedly he has raped normal males all of his life (but never gotten into trouble of course).

5. Into the mouth of a fictional psychiatrist Spicer puts these words: ".. homosexual seduction or rape is decisive in creating a homosexual." Most readers will resent the stacked deck, but most of all, I resent the damage this will do to our group image in a thousand minds.

FOUR STORIES IN ONE

ANOTHER COUNTRY by James Baldwin. New York: Dial Press. 1962. 436 pp. $5.95. Reviewed by Noel I. Garde.

While most of the reviews of this best-seller by the Negro Hemingway were rather mixed, my reaction has been one of unqualified enthusiasmit's just one helluva book on every score. It also represents a milestone in the "what words can be printed" progress. In fact, the progress has now reached the end of the road. With the frequent use in this book of all and I do mean all the words (including the ones that rhyme with cottonpicker and rockducker, respectively), there are now no more taboo-in-print words. Some of the dialogue and repartee (especially in the mouths of the Negro characters, drawn with scathing honesty) is truly incredible and the erotic scenes are hardly behind. Having been in the middle of the bestseller list for many weeks, this book seems to have made an end run, without much notice, around all the vigilantes picking on poor old Henry Miller. Dial Press must share whatever honors have accrued to Grove Press.

The homosexual element developed in this book by Baldwin, best known heretofore for Giovanni's Room, is so considerable as to place the work on the borderline beyond which lies the primary homosexual novel. Most of the story takes place in New York (Greenwich Village and Harlem), the rest in various towns in France involved in the idyllic romance of the two young homosexual lovers. Actually, the book is built on the interweaving of about four stories:

Story No. 1 involves a handsome, omnery and bitter young Negro musician, Rufus Scott, who brings to mutual grief his affair with a poor-white Southern