The sun had sunk below the palisades now, but the sky was still bright-all full of little pink and blue clouds; and the river was just like it-pink and blue. And out near the middle was a rowboat, and Eric was swimming around it-all alone out in the middle of the river. I watched him from the porch of the shack Andy had built with his own hands. Eric would be locked up again soon, and maybe he would be better off, or somebody would be better off; but I knew that when he was, a part of me would be locked up too. But if I had tried to tell that to him, he would have thought I was just another crazy human being.

May Mattachine

REVIEW will

feature sixteen pages (the section on homo-

}

sexuality) of the much

discussed "Quaker Report."

This we consider to be

the soundest and most

OTHER U.S. ORGANIZATIONS WORKING IN THE FIELD OF SEX VARIANCE Los Angeles Mattachine Society, Inc., 806 South Robertson, Los Angeles 35, California. OL 5-9665.

Daughters of Bilitis, Inc., 1232 Market St., San Francisco 2, Calif., UN3-8196. One, Inc., 2256 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles 6, Califomia, RE5-5252. Mattachine Society of New York, 1133 Broadway, New York 10, N.Y., WA47743-

Mattachine Society of Washington, P.O. Box 1032, Washington 1, D.C. Janus Society, 34 South 17th. Street, Room 229, Philadelphia 3, Penna. Demophil Center, 15 Lindall Place, Boston 14, Massachusetts. Dionysus, P.0. Box 382, Fullerton, California.

League for Civil Education, Inc., 226 Embarcadero, San Francisco, Calif., SU1-8361.

Homosexual League of New York, P.O. Box 318, New York 9, N.Y. National League for Social Understand. ing, P.O. Box 29048, Hollywood 29,

objective view yet pubCalifornia.

lished on the subject,

and may well serve as

a manual for all

organizations working

in this field.

The REVIEW is grateful for newspaper clippings and press cuttings received from all over the U.S. and England, sent in by subscribers reg ularly. These items help immeasur ably in keeping the magazine abreast with what is going on in English speaking countries.

All readers are invited to join in this service of providing clippings of newspaper items in the sex sphere for use in future issues of the mag azine. Please be sure the publication, city and date are included with each clipping submitted.

•

LITERARY scene

An Informal column of reviews of fiction and non-fiction books on themes of sex variation

GENE DAMON

THE, DELINQUENT IS OFTEN CREATED because of the struggle against homosexuality. Much has been written about the walk-alike, dress-alike, community sex life antics of the "gang." Albeit these boys frequently fight or even kill if their "manhood” is questioned. These three relatively current novels each deal with delinquency as a substitute for homosexuality.

The sensational McCaffery by Charles O. Gorham, Dial, 1961 and reprint by Fawcett Crest, 1962, is an overdone novel on male prostitution ending in the old violent death solution to the problem. It unfortunately features a supporting cast of stereotypes but the protagonist, McCaffery, is very real and in some senses pathetic.

Early in the novel it is made clear that he is as much a homosexual as the anonymous pickup who calls him a "precious little darling."

The much more talented Edmund Schiddel in Scandal's Child, Simon and Schuster, 1963 (c. 1962) develops this theme fully.

Prentiss Rhoden, son of a college professor, buddies about with "town boy" Carlos Sheedy, popularly known as "The Snake with Eyeglasses." They are real tight, these two, and how they swag+ ger on heroin from the "slim steel needle which brings JOY." Dope and other activities are paid for by visits to the "old bone Daddy," a male, homosexual more advanced than Wing Biddlebaum-he pays them to masturbate in front of him.

It is perhaps sad that, worthless as they are, one of them kills the other over the suggestion that they may be homosexual-especi ally since they rob, take dope, and finally kill an innocent old wor man without any remorse whatever. Yet they cannot accept the sug gestion that they are indeed homosexual. (In a future column I will discuss Edmund Schiddel's much more compassionate earlier novels written before the famous Devil in Bucks County.)

For the male, homosexuality presents possibly a greater threat so the female delinquent counterpart of McCaffery and Prentiss and Carlos is less violent but equally pathetic.

Sonya Arcone's second heroine in The Golden Hammer, Athenium, 1963 (c. 1962) is Barbara Weiler. Daughter of the hero, 17 years old, possessor of all the love, protection and money anyone could want, she is unable to stem a precocious impatience. Because of the society we inhabit, she is unaware that her moods, etc., stem from her repressed Lesbianism.

mattachine REVIEW