conflict between the heroine's omotions and hor religious and moral training; and this is reasonable, since such a conflict does exist in many cases and it requires a great deal of time, effort and intelligence to resolve it. Often, too, the conflict is in the author. We'd all like to see more books by authors who accept the idea that some people are normally homosexual just as others are normally heterosexual. We've mentioned Gale Wilhelm and Claire Morgan; there are also the characters of D.H. Lawrence, whose THE RAINBOW contains a moving episode between two young women; and of course Colette, whose adolescent girls in CLAUDINE AT SCHOOL are not concerned with the moral aspects of their youthful affairs, but only with keeping the stupid grownups from finding out what was going on.

If the truth about the homophile is ever to filter down to the general reading public, we need more books which begin with the idea that what's normal for you may not necessarily be normal for me and that our neighbor may be still another kind of person. Of course, Of course, this doesn't mean that the characters may not have emotional, ethical or religious conflicts in connection with their sex life. They will certainly have to be presented in relation to society and our own shifting and inconsistent social ethic. What we're getting at hero is the basic viewpoint of the author who chooses this field. It needs to be founded on a recognition of individual differences and a fundamental respect for human values.

We also need more recognition of the fact that while the reader may think that he is merely curious, he may have unadmitted but valid reasons for identifying with the people he is reading about. The correspondence ve mentioned earlier does indicate that some readers feel reassured and comforted when they discover that their own hidden feelings and secret experiences are actually quite common and not universally condemned. Probably some others come to their first understanding of urges and interests within themselves through reading.

Too many books sympathetic to the homophile are badly writton and poorly printed, so that an intelligent reader may find it difficult to accept the content because the style is so bad. On the other hand, som books are too obscure a charge often brought against the short novels of Truman

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