LITERARY scene

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

GENE DAMON

OUT OF THE DOZENS OF TITLES each year which touch upon homosexuality ranging in length from a paragraph to the whole book, few indeed are very satisfactory. After one reads several hundred homosexual titles, they tend, with few exceptions, to blur together in a dull lumpy mass like the colored clay of childhood.

The exceptions for these we keep reading.

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Three young men and one young woman are the narrators of Imaginary Toys by Julian Mitchell, London, New Authors Ltd., 1961. Two of these young men, Jack and Charles, are heterosexual and friends of Nicholas, the homosexual. The fourth narrator, Elaine, is in love with Jack.

The story is basic: how school is, was, and will be-the day in and day out eternal theme of college life, students' viewpoint. It is a satisfactory homosexual novel in many ways. The theme is vital in the novel, not inserted or pasted over. While a major treatment, there is still objectivity and balance. If Nicholas is the most fascinating character, it is either in the eye of the reader or in the author's trick of recording Nicholas' chapters in the form of self-analytical diary entries. These chapters from the "notebook of Nicholas Sharpe" cover his sex life (actual and imaginary), his political beliefs, comments on his friends (normal and otherwise) and his philosophy on the state of being a homosexual. It is in these last entries (the philosophical) that he contributes most and somehow his feelings have an immediacy for the young or not so young male homosexual of today that no reading of Gide or Proust could satisfy as well.

Partly from affectation (admittedly), and partly to protect, he refers to his male loves by Greek letters (Phi and Delta). His love affair with Delta (Giles) is touching and lovely, quite special.

Possibly the only distracting note in the book is the long propaganda conversation that Nicholas has with Charles about homosexual love. It is excellent and belongs in the book but in the notebook chapters," not in the rest of the text.

The epilogue tells us the later years of the four main characters. Sadly, Nicholas and Giles have broken up after many years together (seven or mattachine REVIEW

eight) and Nicholas has decided simply to live alone. No reason is given for this ending of what has appeared to be a most happy affair. This is a really special title to make up for some of the disappointing ones. James Clavel's King Rat (Little Brown, 1962, Fawcett Crest, 1963) is a good novel on many levels. It is a war novel, specifically a prison camp story, and depends upon characterization more than action for its impact, Many kinds of homosexual love are depicted: the sublimated affection be tween two men who love one another just below the border of sexuality the male prostitute hospital orderly who sells his sex one moment and nurses tenderly, with the greatest love, the dying men another moment, and the story of Sean, a pilot, who is a complete transvestite and a homo sexual. Sean is the leading light of the local "drama" society (the only girl, after all) and is generally liked. His death is not the stereotyped (and much overdone) suicide; it is possibly the only solution for his particular problem in the here and now world.

Remember when movies didn't believe in faries? At least homosexuals were written out of many a story on its way to the silver screen. For example, in 1936, William Wyler produced "These Three,” an adaptation of Lillian Hellman's Children's Hour, substituting a wholly heterosexual tri+ angle for the homosexual plot in the original. Now we have a reverse trend apparently. Last year the movies took Nelson Algren's novel, A Walk on the Wild Side, and wrote out the fat Negro proprietress of the cat house and wrote in a brittle Lesbain (brilliantly played by Barbara Stanwyck), The novel was completely devoid of homosexuality, and the movie gave it the major portion of the plot.

This year we have the new Leslie Caron vehicle The L Shaped Room based on the novel of the same name by Lynne Reid Banks (Simon & Schuster, 1960, 61, Pocket Books, 1962). Much shifting has been done in this movie. In the novel there is a minor male homosexual character who does not appear in the movie. But in the novel there are no lesbians at all and in the movie they have taken a character from the novel, left certain sup erficial details the same, but written into her past life a big lesbian romance. Perhaps the "gay white way" has followed Horace Greeley's advice: "Go west...

Mary Stewart, a current bright star in the gentle mystery-suspense field, skirts homosexuality in her books. Her latest, The Moon Spinners (MillMorrow, 1963) has a male character described by one reader as a "twittery British pansy"; a very apt description at that. In her two novels, Thunder on the Right (Mill-Morrow, 1955, Fawcett Crest, 1962) and Wildfire at Mid night (Mill-Morrow, 1956, Fawcett Crest, 1962), variant women play minor