bert (Viking, 1963). Daisy is a young singer with more than enough hard knocks on her road to fame. Along the way she falls in love with Wade Lewis, a beautiful male leading man who is as "gay as a jay" and fighting it all the way. He likes Daisy and the reader is compelled to like him. They marry but Wade runs away, understandably, and begins to face up to his homosexuality. The marriage is unconsummated and the handling of the affair is very good. The author has resisted the opportunity to present Wade as a bastard. Just another novel pointing up the unnecessary hells many men go through to be able to throw off insidious sexual conditioning.

A really major literary event is the publishing of four short stories by Robert McAlmon in THERE WAS A RUSTLE OF BLACK SILK STOCKINGS, Belmont Books, 1963. The first of the four stories is the famous male story, "Distinguished Air", which appeared in the rare and now nearly priceless anthology, AMERICANA ESOTERICA, Macy-Masius, 1927. McAlmon was an American expatriate and a friend of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. His career has never received the critical attention deserved by his magnificent writing. The other three stories in the collection, "Miss Knight", "The Lodging House" and "The Highly Prized Pajamas", have never appeared in this country before, so far as I can determine by fairly extensive checking. "Miss Knight" describes the life of a "drag queen" in Europe after the "Great War" and it is both poignant and funny. In "The Lodging House", one character asks, “Are all the roomers at this place queer women, or buggers and fairies?” The best possible answer would have been "Yes, and that's not the half of it". "The Highly Prized Pajamas" tells of Yoland, a girl of the "half world" who prefers girls and of her brief affair with a psychiatrist who wants to cure her but ends up falling in love with her. All of the stories make light of love--normal or otherwise--but underneath there is that sad tone of the last drink at the last party, surrounded by ashtrays overflowing with yesterday's discards.

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Mystery fans will enjoy Dell Shannon's (Elizabeth Linington) DEATH OF A BUSYBODY, Morrow, 1963, for the presence of substantial characterization of the homosexuals of the cast in a genre given to rapid fire stereotypes for the sake of sensation or just speed or both. The flance of the deceased and his two friends are very important to the plot.

mattachine REVIEW

Not at all sympathetic, but very interesting.

It's a safe bet that if one had time to read the plethora of military and war novels, which have appeared in this country in the last 20 years, one would find some male homosexuality in the great majority of them. One previously overlooked title in this group, TROUBLING OF A STAR, by Walt Sheldon, Lippincott, 1952, 1953, Bantam, 1956, is a very substantial treatment with a major character and specific incidents. Collectors will like this better than the more famous war studies, more to this book, and less pages to wade through looking.

Muriel Spark's 1961 novel, THE BACHELORS (Lippincott), is a provocative satire, including some "bachelors for cause", of course. Mainly recommended for its funniness, a fairly rare thing,

D. H. Lawrence's loyal legion of fans do not admit that anyone touches on his ability but Robert Creeley, already famous as a poet, has written a good "Lawrencian" novel, THE ISLAND, Scribner's, 1963, available both in hardback and quality paperback. It is a situation similar to Lawrence's WOMEN IN LOVE, John and Joan and their friends, Artie and Marge, inhabit the island where they wish to "love free of a continuity of roads, and other places". The love, however, is mainly between the men in a muted tone. Even in the relationship of the men with their wives, the latent homosexuality is present. John prefers to be wooed, prefers the female position in bed. Artie is dominated and ridiculed by Marge. Only in the men's relationship with each other are they whole and except on the island the relationship is impossible. It can be hoped that Robert Creeley will spare some additional time from his poetry to write another novel. Colette, beloved and much missed student of human nature, recounts, among other things, her relationship with actress Marguerite Moreno in her last book, THE BLUE LANTERN, Farrar, Straus, 1963. This collection of essays and memoirs lacks the fire of the earlier Colette but for her fans it is amust. History will accord this remarkable woman her rightful place in literature. Four important things interested her and she mastered the psychology of all four: men, women, cats and nature. For any reader, even casually, she holds one great gift--she can be read again and again and again without tiring.

In the fall of 1964, Little, Brown, plans to publish a first