which they promulgate as having any reality or validity. Since they do not, of course, begin to understand what they are dealing with their publications carry with them the imprimatur of cynicism that ignorance always breeds. They arrange the same three or six perverse themes in the same expensive and unreal fashion with a positive genius for trite and witless palor, and with an intelli- genee that is as uninspired as it is immoral.

The stories found in this material--Gad!--and many of the personal histories, are wildly extreme. Would they were as orig- inal! Consider:

"Dear Editor, I thought that some of your readers might be interested in what happened to me last week. While strolling in the wealthy suburbs of a strange city, I felt a strange dizziness. A strange woman asked if she could help and I was escorted to a strange mansion and given some water and a place to rest. Imagine my surprise..." (I can't, hardly!) "...when my hostess said, 'You're going to have to pay for this hospitality.'' This imbecile penman then goes on to tell how he is forced to dress as a maid (circa 1880) and then shackled to a steel ring set conveniently in milady's dressing table. In this horrible (giggle!) position he is then made to polish his hostess's boots which have 27 inch heels and eleven buttons, or is it the other way around--or, with numbers like that, does it even matter? He is then lashed and experiences heart-rendering pain. (sic)

Aw, c'mon, Fella!

before it turns ranoid.

You'd better render that imagination, too,

Yet I have a kinder thought lest my cynicism hold unfair sway. Miss Ann Aldrich in an excellent assessment of the lesbian condit- ion (Carol, In a Thousand Cities. Gold Medal, 1960) gives a quite caustic appraisal of a magazine by and for lesbians. It occurs to me upon rereading that her critical views (and mine) may be invalid in terms of the material which we consider. These various fields are, after all, quite eireumsoribed. Perhaps fantasy is the only effective way to deal with them. Perhaps honest reality is too blunt a teol.

Perhaps, but I think not.

There is another grouping to be mentioned here. The largest

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