Undue Fulfillment* by Kathleen Coyle

New York : William Morrow & Co., 1934

"It is not a crime to be a poet."

"No ... it places one on a plane where crime is so sublimated that it has another name."

In the vein of Birabeau's Revelation (1930), Undue Fulfillment is focused on a mother dealing with her son's relationship with another man. Although in this instance we hear from the son, the primary focus of the action is on the mother and her thoughts and feelings about her adult son's life and whether she has been successful at raising him.

Agatha's late husband served in World War I and having struggled since his years of service committed suicide while their son Lawrence was still young. As Lawrence grew up, Agatha held him close—too close she decided. For  fear that he would not be able to disengage from his relationship with his mother enough to find a wife, Agatha returns to the convent in Ireland where she grew up, leaving Lawrence their home in Paris.

Upon hearing that Lawrence's relationship with Lena has ended, Agatha travels to Paris in hopes of bringing the two back together. Upon meeting with Lena, Agatha learns the reason for the split—Lawrence's new close relationship with Cesar Brak, a poet from Lawrence's parent's generation. While the relationship is not labeled as gay or homosexual, it is clear from what is said (and what is not said) that the relationship is sexual.

Structured around Agatha's connection to the convent and her brother Owen being a monk, there is a strong religious morality to the story. Lawrence's father who committed suicide was named Judas and appears to serve as a symbol of betrayal of his wife and child. This is juxtaposed with Cesar Brak and his generation having served in the war which was so devastating that it is hard to reconcile with the existence of any god. This is a philosophical novel about the nature of motherhood and how we reconcile our spiritual life with the challenges of being human in an ugly world. 

* Also published under the title Undue Fulfilment by Ivor Nicholson & Watson Ltd., London (1935).

Bibliographies & Ratings: Cory (IV); Garde (P 50 *); Mattachine Review (IV); Young (839)

Finistère by Fritz Peters

New York: Farrar, Straus, 1951

Finistère was promoted as a divorce novel—focusing on the detrimental effects of divorce on children. While that may have been the company line and no-doubt created an opening for larger acceptance of the work, it cannot be denied that the focus of the novel is a gay relationship—an adolescent's first love and his family's response to it. An odd sort of boarding school novel, the story of the tragedy of divorce, and a classic of gay literature, Finistère has appeared in more editions than any other fictional work by Fritz Peters.

Peters' second novel focuses on the tumultuous adolescence of Matthew Cameron. As Gore Vidal noted in his much quoted book review in The Saturday Review of Literature (Murder of Innocence, v.34:no.8, p.13, February 24, 1951), the first third of this book lays out the many betrayals experienced by young Matthew. The middle third lays out the story of Matthew's relationship with Michel, and the final third follows the rapid disintegration of Matthew's world. 

It is the summer of 1927. Thirteen-year-old Matthew's parents are divorcing and he and his mother are relocating to Paris. She has decided Matthew is too attached to her and to Scott Fletcher, a close friend of the family so Matthew is to be enrolled in the boarding school, St. Croix École des Garçons. Soon after Matthew's arrival at the school, André, a classmate, shares some dirty pictures with him and they become friends. The headmaster approves of them sharing a room and before long they are having a sexual relationship—a relationship about which Matthew feels quite guilty.

While with his family at the Christmas holiday, Matthew meets his mother's new 'friend', Paul Dumesnil. While Paul makes an effort to include him in conversations and activities, Matthew now feels like an outsider. As a condition of his parents divorce, Matthew isn't permitted to see his father until he reaches age 16. His father effectively disappeared from his life, and now he feels he is losing his mother as well. 

By the following fall 1928, his mother marries Paul. Scott, whom Matthew has idolized for years, has become engaged to Françoise. Scott, who had always been available to him is now focused on his relationship with Françoise and seems to have no time for him. Françoise seems to be the only adult who recognizes Matthew's attachment to Scott for what it is.

After a summer with his family, Matthew returns to school in the fall of 1929, to discover that André has gone, having moved to a different school. Alone and without support from any of his relationships, he feels lost. Michel Garnier, a new athletic coach, has joined the school and upon the boys' first outing for a swim in the Seine, Matthew swims too far and seems to give in to the current pulling him under. The relationship with Michel begins after he saves the drowning Matthew and helps to nurse him back to health. Their relationship brings Matthew back to life, feeling true love for the first time without all of the guilt he felt about his relationship with André. However, Matthew is innocent and this idealized first love can't insulate him from the cruelty of the world or of the adults in his life. 

It is no surprise that the ending of a gay novel from this time is likely to end tragically—most (but not all) did. As might be surmised by the many editions over the years, Finistère was popular among gay men despite the ending. The central message of the novel isn't that gay people are bad, or in this case, the problem isn't that Matthew is gay. The problem is that the adults in Matthew's life are incapable of supporting him. 

TOP ROW FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: [1] London : Victor Gollanz, 1951   [2] New York : Signet/NAL, 1952   [3] Fin de la Tierra, Spanish translation by A. S. Glanz, Buenos Aires : Editorial Dintel, 1953   [4] The World at Twilight, New York : Lancer Books, 1964
[5] New York : Lancer Books, 1966   [6] London : Victor Gollanz, 1966.
⸻
BOTTOM ROW FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: [7] New York : Lancer Books, 1968   [8] London : Panther, 1969   [9] Los Angeles : Seeker
Press, 1985   [10] New York : Plume/NAL, 1986   [11] Vancouver : Arsenal Pulp Press, 2006.

Matthew's Happy Ending

Tobias Schneebaum (1922-2005), in his introduction to the 2003 re-release of his 1979 work Wild Man (University of Wisconsin Press), discusses the reception of his early work's gay themes and the ways in which authors, such as Gore Vidal and Fritz Peters conformed to expectations of publishers of the time. In 1965, a new edition of the 1948 novel The City and the Pillar was released "in order to return to it the strength, the temperament and the animus that Vidal had wanted in the first place." Schneebaum further states that Fritz Peters was forced by his editor to change his original happy ending for Finistère to "an ending that was tragic, to conform with contemporary ideas concerning what interested the public and what was obscene." 

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

As Fritz Peter's novels were published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, the business files related to his work are included in the Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. collection at the Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library. When I spent the day with the collection on December 14, 2002, I found that the collection did not include any manuscript material nor was there any correspondence that suggested a back-and-forth regarding the ending of Finistère. The files about this novel were limited to a copy of the original contract, lengthy and  ongoing correspondence regarding the republication of Finistère by publishers other than FSG, and correspondence with reviewers and prospective reviewers of Finistère.

Columbia University Libraries announced in the Our Growing Collections column in Columbia Library Columns (v.13:no.2 1964:February, p.55) that "Mr. Fritz Peters has presented the manuscript of his novel, Finistère, published in New York in 1951." Interestingly it was listed under the section for medical library gifts. It is now housed in Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library within the collection, General Manuscripts, 1789-2013. The type-written manuscript with minor changes in ink follows the published work, including the tragic ending.

If there was an original happy ending to Finistère, it appears to have been lost to history. What might Matthew's life have looked like, had Fritz Peters been free of the cultural and moral restrictions of mid-twentieth century American publishing?

Bibliographies & Ratings: Cory (IV); Garde (Primary, **); Mattachine Review (IV); Young (3019/3020,*)

Bibliographies & Ratings II: Austen (174); Gunn (American 54a); Levin (121)

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

New York : The Dial Press, 1956

When James Baldwin was asked about Giovanni's Room in a 1980 interview, he said that it was "not so much about homosexuality, it is what happens if you are so afraid that you finally cannot love anybody." 

Giovanni's Room is, at its heart, a psychological novel whose focus is an analysis of masculinity through the lives of its characters. We are first introduced to our narrator, David, a young blond man from Brooklyn who is now living in Paris. By providing the story of his childhood—a mother who dies while David is young, a womanizing father, and an early gay experience after which David effectively ends the friendship—Baldwin sets up the psychological parameters within which David attempts to live.

Now living in Paris, David's girlfriend Hella has taken some time away from the relationship traveling through Spain. Being short on funds, David reaches out to Jacques, an older gay man who can surely afford to help David out. When they go to a gay bar owned by Guillaume, David's inner dialogue about those in the bar says a lot about how he relates to gayness and his own inner struggle with his masculinity and sexuality. There are the older men who take younger men under their wing, young men who are selling their wares, and those who dress and act in a more feminine manner. David struggles in his own mind to understand why a man who is interested in other men would be interested in an effeminate one. It becomes obvious that  Jacques has become very interested in the new bartender, Giovanni. As the night progresses, however, it is clear that Giovanni, on the other hand, is interested in David. David's internal dialogue continues, wondering what it says about his own masculinity that Giovanni is so masculine. Nonetheless, that night, David begins living in Giovanni's Room. 

As Hella's return to Paris grows closer, David does nothing to prepare Giovanni for what David sees as the end of their relationship. With Hella's return, David abandons Giovanni without a word, kicking off a cascade of events that will affect nearly everyone.

In his 2019 New York Times article, 'Giovanni's Room' Revisited, Hilton Als discusses the initial rejection of Giovanni's Room by the publisher Knopf. "In his letter, the esteemed editor Henry Carlisle ... said the company was turning down 'Giovanni’s Room' not because it lacked fine writing, but because it had so few credible characters and would do nothing to serve Baldwin’s reputation. And that the book’s failure had nothing to do with its subject matter."

Carlisle's inability to see the characters as credible says a lot about the lack of understanding of gay life in America. In addition, gay life in Europe, especially in a major city like Paris was quite different than anything in the U.S. and this is really in many ways at the center of the problems between David and Giovanni. In post-war Paris, homosexuality wasn't illegal, although it would have been considered a moral problem. The openness of the sexuality and the normalization of the various ways gay men got by financially would have been seen as very foreign, a bit vulgar, and maybe not believable from a U.S. editor's perspective. That's the beauty of what Baldwin's experience living in France brought to this story.

Bibliographies & Ratings: Cory (IV); Garde (P, 141***); Mattachine Review (IV); Young (158*)

The Prince's Boy by Paul Bailey

New York: Bloomsbury, 2014

Written in form of a memoir in 1967, The Prince's Boy tells the story of Dinu Grigorescu's life of the past forty years in Bucharest, Paris and London.

Razvan Popescu, a Romanian peasant boy of 11 whose father is deceased and whose mother is struggling with many children, is adopted away from his difficult home situation by a Romanian prince around the turn of the 20th century. The prince hires the best tutors who educate Razvan in literature and the arts. When they relocate to Paris, this boy of peasant ancestry begins to operate in society and is known as the prince's boy. After the prince’s death, Razvan inherits an apartment but is forced to provide sexual favors for cash.

In 1927, Dinu Grigorescu is sent to Paris by his wealthy father to become a great author or poet—to experience la vie de Boheme, but mainly to help him move on from his mother’s death 5 years earlier. While there, he is drawn to the Bains du Ballon d'Alsace, a notorious establishment where men of a certain class can procure sexual services that are a bit more out of the ordinary. It is here that Dinu meets Honore (Razvan), who supplies these services. Immediately becoming something much more than sex worker and client, and feeling a strong connection through their mutual Romanian ancestry, they fall in love.

Covering the forty years after their initial meeting, Dinu relays the internal struggle to form a permanent relationship with Razvan against the backdrop of the beginnings of obvious anti-semitism in Romania, Romania's alliance with the Nazis, and all of the social changes that come with the horrors of World War II. As an aesthete, Dinu's life is more influenced by literature and the arts. The work of Marcel Proust plays an important role in his life and how he sees the world. His close relationship with his own mother meant he connected easily to Marcel's relationship with his. As well, the work of Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu is a major influence.

Told in very plain language, this is a melancholy work. Dinu describes himself as "Romanian by birth, French by choice, and English by accident."  He really seems to be a man out of time and place, a man heartbroken by the past and unable to move into the future.