None, except the performance of jail screening examinations. In many places, as mentioned above, blood tests and gonorrhea examinations are routinely made on jail inmates since we find a considerable number of new cases through this endeavor. However, cases found in this manner are not subject to punitive measures but merely are treated and cured of the disease, strictly as a medical procedure.

There are rare instances of problems with uncooperative patients known to be infected with a venereal disease which they are spreading and they refuse to stop spreading. In these exceptional cases, sometimes we're forced to contact the District Attorney for assistance to require the patient to stop spreading the disease. This happens not only with the venereal diseases, but more commonly happens with tuberculosis, typhoid fever, diphtheria and other communicable diseases when the public must be protected from infected persons who refuse to be sensible. Plague and smallpox, like the venereal diseases, rarely are involved in this manner. It is important to point out that our only concern is to prevent disease. In VD work, our success in finding cases and contacts in getting examinations and treatment for these contacts hinges on confidential information. If we can't keep the information confidential we know we cannot succeed, for it is understandable that patients will not be willing to come in if our intent is to do more than to keep them well. Our information and program must not in any way threaten a patient's employment or marital relations, cause police action or contribute to legal action. As a result, there are several laws and regulations in California, as in most other states, which protect strict confidentiality of all venereal disease information. There are laws which protect the private physician and his patients as well as the health clinics. In addition, since health clinics are public agencies, there are additional laws to assure confidentiality on the part of public officials and public venereal disease clinics. These laws and regulations have highest priority and have been upheld by the courts.

FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS

The Circle (Der Kreis)

Published monthly since 1932 in French, German, and English (no transla. tion duplications) Contains photos, illustrations, and art reproductions. Rolf, editor. Annual subscription $11 first class sealed. Bank draft or cash to Lesezirkel Der Kreis, Postfach $47, Fraumunster, Zurich 22, Switzerland. Arcadie

Monthly literary and scientific review in French. A. Baudry, editor. Subscriptions $9 per year. Address 74 Blvd. de Reuilly, Paris XII, France.

mattachine REVIEW

LITERARY scene

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

GENE DAMON

SEVERAL AUTHORS become quietly reliable includers of homosexual themes in their titles. I don't refer to the purveyors of newsstand tripebut the serious authors such as Frederic Prokosch, Mary Renault, Iris Murdoch and our present subject, James Purdy.

Readers of gay fiction are familiar with his two short story collections, The Color of Darkness and Children Is All (New Directions, 1957 and New Directions, 1962). Both include excellent homosexual stories.

In 1959, Farrar published Purdy's first novel, Malcolm, which was reprinted by Avon, 1960. It contains explicit but relatively minor references. His really major contribution to homosexual fiction is The Nephew, Farrar, 1960, Avon, 1963.

Alma and Boyd Mason, unmarried aunt and uncle to the nephew, Cliff, have raised and cared for him. He is an orphan. When Alma receives a wär department telegram announcing that Cliff is missing in action, her grief causes her to begin to write a memorial of his life.

She soon discovers that she knew him less well than almost anyone in their sleepy little town. Across the street lives Willard Baker, combination fop and slob and his "adopted" son, Vernon Miller. They are quite clearly a homosexual couple and we are treated to their quarrels and reconciliations on a shady elm tree, small town level.

The boy, Vernon, is a "captive," or is he? What about his affair (secret, of course) with a neighbor woman, is it really an affair? Alma stumbles along looking for clues to Cliff's life. Why were these two men his only friends?

Just as author Purdy has the reader convinced of one solution, he introduces another possibility. Then there is the fire in the, then vacant, room of Vernon Miller. The door is locked, and it must be broken down. What Alma. finds in the room provides the book's major denouement and I won't reveal that herez

Summer is coming, and heat does strange things to the civilized mind. The hero of George Sklar's The Identity of Dr. Frazier, Knopf, 1961, Popular Library, 1963, feels the heat on a holiday business trip to Mexico. In the twenty-four hour drunk which introduces this novel, Dr. Frazier nearly

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