Man, from Song of Solomon by Cecil Buller

Man, from Song of Solomon (c1929)
Cecil Buller (Canadian, 1886-1973)
Wood Engraving
151 x 113 mm

My beloved is white and ruddy, he towers above ten thousand.

His head is as the finest gold, his locks black as the raven.

His eyes are as doves by the rivers of milk and plenty.

His cheeks are as a bed of spices, his lips like lilies wet with myrrh.

His arms are as gold set with beryl, his loins as ivory overlaid with sapphires.

His thighs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold.

His countenance is as Mount Lebanon, a man like a cedar!

His mouth is most sweet, he is altogether lovely.

This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

Song of Solomon

Chapter V, Verse 10-16

The Brothers by Rudolf Koppitz

The Brothers (1928)
Rudolf Koppitz (Austrian, 1884-1936)

Sigmund Lipinsky

Sigmund Lipinsky (1873-1940)

Mates by Tom Wakefield

London : Gay Men's Press, 1983

Len and Cyril meet during basic training and immediately have a connection. Mates tells the story of their lives together through a series of vignettes taking place at key moments between 1954 and 1983. In the early years, Cyril is ready to settle down but Len still feels he may be missing out. Trying to figure out what's possible during the 1950s and 60s is challenging.

Len’s father is very accepting of Len and Cyril’s friendship when they come for a visit … even giving up his double bed so that the 'mates' can stay together. At the end of the novel, Len is treated quite badly by Cyril's sister. Wakefield seems to be making a statement here about the earlier generation actually being a bit more accepting than the current generation (1980s). This makes some sense since in Britain, men who grew up in the early part of the 20th century would have had a very different experience. Tom Wakefield was born in 1935, so his father would likely have been born no later than the early teens.

Although published after Mates, many of the themes explored appear to have been worked out in the short stories in Drifters (1984). Not being on the same page about commitment or 'settling down' appears in the stories, The Nature Lover and A Man to Share. In the short story Gypsies, John and his partner Alan discover that John’s nephew-in-law (his niece’s husband) plans to have them sleep in separate beds on different floors, because he can't handle the thought of them sleeping in the same bed.

Mates is a truly touching novel. Each chapter feels genuine and shows the gay experience over the course of nearly 30 years.

Denton and Me by Sam Rowe

Denton and Me

by Sam Rowe

Summerhall, Edinburgh: 3-28 August 2016

The Single Twin by Robert C. Ray

New York : Comet Press, 1959

The novel opens on a wintry Chicago night in the late 1950s outside an art gallery on Michigan Avenue. The owner is always afraid that he has forgotten to lock the door upon leaving. On this night he has and a stranger slowly takes in the images on the walls and comes to rest on the one titled, The Single Twin. The artist receives a letter from a high school friend and the novel then shifts into a lengthy flashback beginning in the spring of 1940 and continuing through the United States' entry into World War II.

Three students nearing graduation in Summitville, IN are in a love triangle. Artistic, Sam, whose parents died when he was young, lives with his grandmother and is gay. (It's his gallery show that opens the novel.) Velma lives with her mother, with whom she battles on a daily basis. Her father abandoned them when she was young. Velma's boyfriend, Ramon is a gypsy from the wrong side of the tracks and also has a very close relationship with Sam. Ramon wants to marry Velma to please his father and Velma needs to get married because she is pregnant by another man. After the wedding, this secret quickly causes the rapid destruction of the marriage.

Robert C. Ray (b. 1926)
Author of The Single Twin

Written very much in the style of sensational novels of the 1950s, it has a bit of everything: a lounge singer, secret pregnancies, interracial relationships, abandoned babies, a hermaphrodite, prostitution, a gay man, a mental hospital, alcoholism and incest. The storylines resolve a little too neatly, especially given the geographic coverage (small-town Indiana, St. Louis, Louisville, Louisiana and Europe during the war years). Even if it is a little too perfect, it's still a page turner. The Single Twin was either a very small print run or was published by what used to be termed a vanity press. Only four libraries whose holdings are in WorldCat have a copy, and other than the copy I read, there do not appear to be any copies for sale online.

Robert C. Ray was born in Elwood, Indiana in 1926, attended the John Herron  Art Institute after high school and is a professional painter and an interior decorator.

The Medici Boy by John L'Heureux

New York : Astor + Blue, 2013

Florence during the Renaissance had a significant homosexual culture built around age-structured relationships. To discourage this behavior, in 1432 the city formed Gli Ufficio della Notte (Officers of the Night), to prosecute cases against those involved. By 1502, when it was dissolved, an estimated 12,500 men had been charged in this court with an estimated 2500 convictions for sodomy. Although serious penalties were available by law (forced castration, being burning at the stake), most convictions from this court resulted in a fine.

Against this historical backdrop, John L'Heureux weaves together Donatello's creation of his famous bronze David and the political intrigue surrounding the battle between the Medici and Albizzi families. Told from the point of view of Luca Mattei, an assistant in his workshop, it is the story of Donatello's passion for his model (and part time prostitute), Agnolo, who frequently finds himself on the wrong side of the Officers of the Night. Donatello's friend and patron Cosimo de'Medici can use his power to assist, but when Rinaldo degli Albizzi gains the upper hand in their battle, who will help Agnolo?

Young Bathers by Georg Pauli

Young Bathers (1914)
Georg Pauli (Swedish, 1855-1935)
Nationalmuseum - Stockholm

The Gallery by John Horne Burns

New York : Harper & Brothers, 1947

The emotional center of Burns' first novel is the Galleria Umberto,  August 1944. At the heart of Naples, with it's bombed out skylights, it is the gathering place for Allied soldiers and Neapolitans trying to survive.

Named The Saturday Review of Literature's best war book of the year, The Gallery is organized into a series of portraits showing the experience of the average person in occupied Naples. 

The Gallery reads as a collection of short stories built around a place in time. Momma (the fifth portrait) is often included on lists of pre-Stonewall literature due to it's overt gay content. The owner of the bar where gays, and to a lesser degree, lesbians gather is owned by an Italian woman, they affectionately call Momma. What's unique about the story is that it incorporates all types and the fact that everyone is gay doesn't mean that there isn't overt racism and xenophobia among the soldiers for which Naples is not home. 

It would be a mistake, however, to read Momma as a standalone piece, since it's power resides in it's inclusion within the larger work. The Gallery paints a picture, not of The Greatest Generation, but of soldiers who bring their own prejudices to a situation they never wanted to be in.

Bibliographies & Ratings: Cory (IV [Momma]); Garde (Primary, *** [Momma]); Mattachine Review (IV [Momma]); Young (522)

Orpheus with Laurels by Jean Cocteau

Orpheus with Laurels (1951)
Jean Cocteau (French, 1889-1963)
Oil on canvas

Red Sun by Arthur G. Dove

Red Sun (1935)
Arthur G. Dove (1880-1946)
Oil on canvas
20 1/4 x 28 in.
The Phillips Collection (Washington DC)

James Avati, Pulp Cover Artist

Signet #1064, The Descent by Fritz Peters [1953]

James Avati (American, 1912-2005)

28 x 24 in.

Collection of Françoise Berserik

Known as 'The Rembrandt of Paperback Book Covers," James Avati is probably the most well known paperback cover artist. For more information, see The Paperback Art of James Avati by Piet Schreuders and Kenneth Fulton (Donald M. Grant, 2005) or the documentary of the same name.

This painting is typical of Avati's style. It was used for the cover of the Signet paperback edition of Fritz Peters' The Descent, a novel that takes place on the roads and highways of the United States, ending in a catastrophic event in New Mexico.

The Feathers of Death by Simon Raven

London : Anthony Blond, 1959

The trouble began the moment Lieutenant Alastair Lynch laid eyes on 18-year-old Drummer, Malcolm Harley, who was participating in a boxing match aboard ship. After the first round, "[h]e went back to his corner flushed and quivering, though apparently not badly damaged. When he sat down on the stool, he leaned right back against the corner pad and stretched his legs out in front of him, so that, from where I was sitting, I could see right up his shorts to his groin." (p.12)

The ship carrying the 121st Mounted Infantry (also known as Martock's Foot) lands at the fictional port of Eirene. After settling in, Harley is discovered to be drunk during the guard of honour for the General's departure. Lynch defends him and agrees to take him into his troop (and under his wing). Privately, the other officers are confused why Lynch has stood up for this boy and greatly concerned about just what sort of feelings Lynch has for him.

In a conversation with one of his fellow officers, Michael Byrt, Lynch confirms his feelings for Harley. When Byrt suggests that he is meant to have grown up since leaving school, Lynch replies, "Not a very clever observation. Some people 'grow up', as you put it, much later than others. Some never grow up at all. Or perhaps growing-up has nothing whatever to do with it." (p.106)

Tasked with patrolling English settlements to protect them from Karioukeya's Brigade, a group of natives actively fighting the colonization of their lands, Lynch's troops come under attack. During the fighting, Lynch shoots Harley and is brought before the court martial to determine whether he is guilty of murder. The relationship between Lynch and Harley, known among the other men, becomes the focus of the proceedings.

Rules about fraternization with locals and the prohibition of the use of prostitutes, creates a closed all-male environment that feels more like a boarding school than the modern military, maybe not surprising since the officers are barely out of school. The author reinforces this with the use of Greek place names as well as references to classic Greek military campaigns.


Bibliographies & Ratings: Young (3212, *)

Les Freres Bruckman by Karel Bruckman

Les Frères Bruckman (1923)

Karel Bruckman (Dutch, 1903-1980)

Watercolor

25 x 18 in

A gift from Karel Bruckman to his twin brother Lodewijck upon his departure for America.

Fritz Peters near Utica, 1950

"What are we thinking about when we drive so fast over some of the most lovely countryside to be found anywhere?" he asked himself.  "Where are we all going?"

While researching what was to become his third novel, The Descent, Fritz Peters visited with friends in Clinton, near Utica, New York. His novel of America's roads and highways, whose final cataclysmic scene takes place in New Mexico, started its life with Peters observing and interviewing travelers along Route 20 in New York. Richard H. Costa composed a portrait of the author with accompanying photos by Dante O. Tranquille for the December 10, 1950 Sunday edition of The Utica Observer-Dispatch. The original photo negatives used in the story and two candid shots of the subject and the author are now part of a private collection.

Costa was a columnist-reporter for The Utica Observer-Dispatch in the 1950s, taught at Utica College in the 1960s and was later a professor of English at Texas A&M University.

Tranquille was a central New York photographer who also worked for many years as the staff photographer for The Utica Observer-Dispatch. Two of his photos were selected for 1949's The Exact Instant, a show of the 100 best news photographs of the century at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Fritz Peters uses a wire recorder to make notes
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0008]

Fritz Peters in the kitchen
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0009]

Fritz Peters with American, English and paperback editions of his first novel,
The World Next Door
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0010]

Fritz Peters leaving cabin 5 to begin research
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0004]

Fritz Peters leaving cabin 5 to
begin research (detail)
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0004a]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0003]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY (detail)
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0003a]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0001]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY (detail)
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0001a]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0002]

Fritz Peters along Route 20, NY (detail)
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0002a]

Fritz Peters interviews Mrs. James Erskine, proprietor of the
Madison Motor Court, NY
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0005]

Fritz Peters interviews Mrs. James
Erskine, proprietor of the Madison
Motor Court, NY (detail)
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0005a]

Fritz Peters correcting galley proofs of his second novel, Finistère
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0007]

Fritz Peters at the piano
November 27, 1950  [cat 3119-0006]

Fritz Peters and Richard Hauer Costa discuss The World Next Door
December 5, 1950  [cat 3899-0001]

Fritz Peters reads Richard Hauer Costa's notebook
December 5, 1950  [cat 3899-0002]

These images originally appeared in Gallery 2 on FritzPeters.info, December 21, 2006. 

Meditation N.33 by Alexej von Jawlensky

Meditation N.33 (1935)

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864-1941)

Oil on paper mounted on cardboard

20.5 x 13.5 cm

Im Obersteg Collection at the Kunstmuseum Basel

"My art in the last period has all been in small format, but my paintings have become even deeper and more spiritual, speaking truly through colour. Feeling that because of my illness I would not be able to paint very much longer, I worked like a man obsessed on these little 'Meditations . And now I leave these small but, to me, important works to the future and to people who love art."

Alexej von Jawlensky 

JD by Mark Merlis

Madison : Terrace Books, 2015

Jonathan Ascher was a radical writer from the 1960s, who over the years has been largely forgotten. When Philip Marks inquires about access to Ascher's papers, it sets his widow Martha on a journey of discovery where she finds the husband she hardly knew.

Having simply sent all of her husbands papers to an archive after his death, she had no idea what might be found there. Combining large excerpts from Jonathan's journals from the 60s and 70s with Martha's present-day reactions, Merlis weaves a complex family drama in which she discovers her husband's bisexuality and realizes that she really knew nothing of his relationship with their son.

The novel is set in the 1960s literary scene of New York. In an interview with Lambda Literary, Merlis acknowledges that he has used actual writers from the time as jumping off points for some of the characters of the novel, but is quick to point out that they are literally that - jumping off points, not biographical sketches of the actual people. The source for Jonathan Ascher is Paul Goodman. Gore Vidal was immediately obvious in the character of Edgar Villard - no doubt a nod to Edgar Box, Vidal's 1950s literary pseudonym used during his exile for having published The City and Pillar.

While some will find parts of the story shocking, those who have read Paul Goodman's Parent's Day (1951) will see that both Goodman's life AND writing influenced this story.

Male Bather with Fish by Kelly Fearing

Male Bather with Fish (1950)

Kelly Fearing (American, 1918-2011)

Oil on canvas

45.1 x 29.8 cm

Interior Figure (Egg Shell Chairs) by William Theophilus Brown

Interior Figure (Egg Shell Chairs) (1976)

William Theophilus Brown, (American, 1919-2012)

Acrylic on canvas

48 x 60 in

Different From the Others (1919)

Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others), 1919
Silent Film Directed by Richard Oswald

Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others) is a gay film from the silent era directed by Richard Oswald and starring Conrad Veidt. Based on the 1903 novel of the same name by Hermann Breuer (published pseudonymously under the name Bill Forster), it tells the story of Paul Körner, a concert violinist, who falls in love with his male student and falls victim to blackmail. Kurt Sivers, the student, upon realizing Körner's feelings flees.

Although the film includes the basic story of the novel, its focus is more targeted on the harmful effects of Paragraph 175 on homosexuals in Germany as well as the evils of blackmail (often leading to suicide). Noted sexologist, Magnus Hirschfeld, plays himself in the film and explains both homosexuality and the unjust law.

In 1920, a year after Anders all die Andern was completed, public outcry about the content of films being produced at the time led to the reintroduction of censorship in Germany. It was officially banned and all but one incomplete copy of the film, now held in a film archive in Russia, were destroyed by the Nazis. It is a combination of film and still photographs from the production with extensive intertitling explaining the action in the missing portions. 

Hermann Breuer's novel has been reissued in German as recently as 2009, but unfortunately does not appear to have ever been translated into English.


 

Goldie by Kennilworth Bruce

New York : William Goodwin, 1933

Of the gay novels of the 1930s, Goldie is the most elusive. Held by less than a handful of libraries (in special collections departments), one assumes that there are no more than an equal number being held by independent collectors. Some kind soul posted the image I include here on LibraryThing.

Synopses of this rare novel appear in three publications. Roger Austen's is the first and most complete in his Playing the Game: The Homosexual Novel in America (1977). James Levin's The Gay Novel in America (1991) and John Laughery's The Other Side of Silence: Men's Lives and Gay Identities: A Twentieth-Century History (1998) both rely on Austen (as I will).

A young man from the midwest, Paul Kameron, is an ace pilot with the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. Bailing out over Germany, he is 'brought out' while being held in a POW camp. After the war, he returns to New York with his lover, a furrier he met in Europe. Paul grows more comfortable with having entered 'Limbo' (his term for 'the gay life') when he discovers there are "more than four million others in the United States who dwelt in that twilight realm of sex."

Paul transforms into Goldie when he begins dying his hair. After his lover catches him with the shop janitor, he breaks it off and Goldie is left to hustle on Broadway. He later has an affair with a gangster and starts working in a gay restaurant in the Village.

Goldie's friend, Jack Shaw, has the idea to form a gay liberation club. Its first meeting takes place in the restaurant and draws six people, including Goldie. In drafting their resolution, they aim to abolish the laws in the State of New York that make 'inversion' a crime. They cite both France and Italy having both eliminated similar laws over 100 years ago. Thus, The Twilight League was born. And just as quickly it met its demise due to its members each having plans to exploit the League in different ways, up to and including running a connections service where "wolves could obtain fairies."

Laughery, in The Other Side of Silence, ends his synopsis of Goldie by asking the question "... in 1933 who knew any homosexuals who thought they had civil rights to agitate for?" George Chauncey's Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 (1994) offers a place to start answering this question.

FROM TOP TO BOTTOM: Magnus
Hirschfeld, Henry Gerber

It is accepted that the mass mobilization of American men during WWII and their exposure to more progressive attitudes about sexuality in Europe led gay men after the war to see new possibilities for their own lives, especially as they settled in New York and San Fransisco. The evidence also suggests that service members during WWI, albeit fewer of them, were also exposed to a cultural and political climate for homosexuals in both Paris and Berlin which far surpassed what they could have imagined in small-town America or even New York.

Magnus Hirschfeld founded The Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee (Scientific-Humanitarian Committee) in May 1897 to campaign for legal recognition of gay lesbian and transgender men and women and against their persecution (specifically Paragraph 175). It was the earliest gay rights group, but certainly not the only one in early 20th century Berlin. It continued its activities through 1933, when the Nazis destroyed The Institut for Sexualwissenschaft  (Institute for Sexual Sciences) which housed it's offices.

From 1920 to 1923, Henry Gerber had served with the Army of Occupation in Germany after WWI and had seen firsthand the openness of Berlin during this time and was upset about the way homosexuals were treated in the United States. In December 1924, now living in Chicago, Gerber founded The Society for Human Rights by filing a charter with the State of Illinois. Gerber chose to use the same name as was used by the german group he most closely identified with, Bund für Menschenrecht (The Society for Human Rights).

A police raid and subsequent arrests brought The Society for Human Rights abruptly to an end in the summer of 1925. Gerber's Society had concentrated  its efforts on the State of Illinois where they focused on reforming laws that criminalized homosexual acts. This sounds suspiciously similar to the goals of The Twilight League in the State of New York in Kenilworth Bruce's Goldie. After three costly trials for deviancy (all eventually dismissed), and the loss of his job with the post office, Gerber relocated to New York. One wonders if Kennilworth Bruce didn't borrow from Gerber's life when writing Goldie.

For more about Goldie and hustler culture, see George Chauncey's Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 (1994) and Mack Friedman's Strapped for Cash: A History of America's Hustler Culture (2003). For an excellent history of the gay rights movement in Berlin see, Robert Beachy's Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity (2014). For more about Henry Gerber and The Society for Human Rights, see Jonathan Ned Katz' Gay American History: Lesbians & Gay Men in the U.S.A., Revised Edition (1992).


Bibliographies & Ratings: Mattachine Review (P); Young (490,*) Note that the Mattachine Review rating of P is not defined in the legend but may be a typo for O, which means it was not examined but is believed to have pertinent content. Garde specifically excludes works that could not be examined.