Items

• The coming out party : a novel
  Jaded by West Hollywood gay life, long-term lovers Cal and Sidney yearn for a new distraction. In this queer reworking of ‘My Fair Lady' they find one in a young gay man, overweight college student, Hal. They take him on as a project, schooling him in Tennessee Williams, ‘Brideshead Revisited’ and E.M. Forster’s ‘Maurice’ and putting him through a punishing programme of physical transformation. Republished in 2001 via self-publishing platform iUniverse, this second edition is described as “A novel so outrageous it was banned in England!”, a possible reference to ‘Operation Tiger’. The blurb also claims Caffey won a PEN Award for an Outstanding First Work of Fiction, receiving a Special Commendation in 1983. However, no evidence either for this specific award or this commendation can be found.
• The journey
  This knowingly ahistorical lesbian feminist Western, set in Canada and the US in the nineteenth century, is dedicated to “all the little girls who always wanted to [...] grow up to be cowboys”. Teenager Anne leaves home and teams up with sex worker Sarah. Travelling together across the Pacific Northwest, they become lovers, have a child and receive support from a matrilineal group of Indigenous people. Despite reversing gender roles, the novel is in other ways a romp through the stereotypes of the Western genre – wagons, guns, vigilante justice. Anne Cameron (1938-2022) was a prolific writer of fiction for adults and children, as well as poetry and drama for stage and screen. Born Barbara Cameron, she later wrote under the name Cam Hubert. ‘The Journey’, her third novel, was reissued in 1986 by feminist press Spinsters/Aunt Lute.
• The joy of gay sex : an intimate guide for gay men to the pleasures of a gay lifestyle
  A collaboration between Dr Charles Silverstein (1935-2023) and novelist Edmund White (1940-), “by gays, for gays”. Structured as an A-to-Z guide to gay life, from Androgyny to Wrestling, plus a short bibliography, it is illustrated throughout by Michael Leonard, Ian Beck and Julian Graddon. Riding high on the popularity of ‘The Joy of Sex’ (1972), it sold out its first print run of 75,000 copies. Some commentators, however, were critical of this apparent mainstreaming. “If we have reached a point where cultural interests include the marketing of our sex lives, it would be nice for some basic civil rights to come along with that,” wrote Michael Bronski in ‘Gay Community News’ in November 1977. “You can still get arrested for having a good time.” The book was later used in healthcare during the AIDS crisis, and ‘The New Joy of Gay Sex’ (1993) was substantially updated with safe sex information.
• The joy of lesbian sex : a tender and liberated guide to the pleasures and problems of a lesbian lifestyle
  Published a year after ‘The Joy of Gay Sex’, the subtitle of this volume introduces the “problems” as well as “pleasures” of lesbian life in marked contrast to its gay male counterpart. Written by Dr Emily L. Sisley (1930-2016) and novelist and Daughters, Inc. founder Bertha Harris (1937-2005), and illustrated by Yvonne Gilbert, Charles Raymond and Patricia Faulkner, it follows the formula set by ‘The Joy of Sex’ in 1972. It covers all aspects of lesbian life and sexuality from “Alcohol and sex” to “Water, water, everywhere”, followed by a bibliography. It had a smaller initial print run than ‘The Joy of Gay Sex’ – 50,000 rather than 75,000 copies – and its reception was mixed. One (lesbian) reviewer objected to its misandry while another suggested its “authors cling to the concept of a penis”. It was also criticised for its omissions, “myths and misconceptions”, particularly around disability, race and class.
• The Lord won't mind
  This is the opening book in a gay romance trilogy by Gordon Merrick (1916-1988), first published in 1970. Young, handsome and improbably well-endowed Charlie Mills is introduced to the equally attractive Peter Martin in late 1930s New Jersey. It is love – and lust – at first sight. Advertised in ‘The New York Times’ as “the first homosexual novel with a happy ending”, the book spent sixteen weeks in the ‘Times’ top ten, becoming a bestseller that secured Merrick’s fortunes. Criticised for its misogyny and as “corny, oddly dated and saccharine” by a discerning reviewer for ‘Gay NYC’, it nonetheless became a guilty pleasure for generations of gay men.
• The Nazi extermination of homosexuals
  This book, which is held in several UK academic libraries, outlines the treatment of gay men in Germany during the Third Reich. Much of the research is based on secondary sources which expose increasing societal homophobia, culminating in the imprisonment of gay men in concentration camps where they were forced to wear a pink triangle stitched to their clothing and undergo horrific, brutal treatment. The final two chapters focus on personal, pseudonymous testimony from men who survived, including an extract from a 1972 German book, published in English in 1980, entitled ‘The Men with the Pink Triangle’. By the 1980s, the pink triangle symbol had been reclaimed by LGBTQ+ activists.
• The New York diary of Ned Rorem
  The ‘New York Diary’ begins with Ned Rorem (1923-2022) returning home from Paris and is the second volume of Rorem’s diaries, covering the period 1955-1961. As with the previous volume, Rorem uses the diary form to discuss the – often famous – people he meets, his thoughts on the life of an artist and his own personal life, including his relationships and alcoholism. Rorem noted that these New York diaries were “less frivolous and more outspoken” than those he wrote in Paris. The exhibition shows Rorem’s diaries in two separate volumes, although in the list of books seized from Gay’s The Word they are listed as one title. It is likely, therefore, that the combined edition published by US paperback imprint Avon was the one seized.
• The quirk
  As with other Gordon Merrick (1916-1988) novels published by Avon Books, the cover of ‘The Quirk’ is the work of artist Victor Gadino. The style of these Avon paperbacks alludes to the romances published by Mills and Boon in the UK (or Harlequin in the USA), but in this case, they are aimed at gay readers. Gadino used male models as the basis of his illustrations which, unusually for the time, depict the men together and looking at each other rather than separate and isolated. In this instance, the full illustration wraps around the front and back covers. This novel centres on Rod, a bisexual artist in 1960s Paris who has relationships with men and a woman during the novel.
• The rose exterminator : a novel
  This gay sado-masochistic mystery novel was the third and final work of fiction by William Carney (1922-1987), after ‘The Real Thing’ (1968) and ‘A Year in a Closet’ (1974). If it seems a niche subgenre, it was one Carney carved out for himself successfully, alongside employment as a university teacher of French – ‘The Real Thing’ was influenced by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s eighteenth-century epistolary novel ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’ – and as a restorer of Victorian and Edwardian houses. As well as being a guide to the S/M lifestyle and the first generation of West Coast ‘leathermen’, Carney’s books provide an insight into late 1960s and 1970s gay life in San Francisco more generally. Carney’s papers are now held at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
• The story of Harold
  Underground classic ‘The Story of Harold’ was written under the pseudonym Terry Andrews by acclaimed children’s author George Selden (1929-1989), best-known for ‘The Cricket in Times Square’, winner of a Newbery Honor in 1961. It describes the mostly doomed, often sadomasochistic affairs of a bisexual children’s author named Terry Andrews – whose children’s book, ‘The Story of Harold’, is wildly popular – but who is otherwise on the verge of emotional and physical breakdown. Andrews finds healing by re-working incidents in his own life through stories about his character, Harold, which he relates to the young sons of his friend and lover. The novel is illustrated with several full-page pen-and-ink drawings by Edward Gorey, known for ‘The Gashlycrumb Tinies’ and ‘The Doubtful Guest’ among other works.
• The vampires
  This novel is the second by Mexican-American author John Rechy (1931-) to be seized during the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids. The vampires of the title are metaphorical, as a disparate group of people gather on a Caribbean island and unleash their darkest desires via Satanic rituals and witchcraft. The novel is filmic in style and has a character list which includes actresses, priests (Voodoo and Catholic), a “madam”, a possibly murderous male sex worker and “a drug goddess”. In one of their catalogues, Philadelphia gay bookstore Giovanni’s Room described this novel as a departure for Rechy, particularly as it was “non-gay”, although ‘Gay Times’ noted it still had enough in the contents to be interesting to gay readers.
• Treasures on earth : a novel
  This novel is a fictionalised depiction of a real expedition to Machu Picchu in Peru which was undertaken by Hiram Bingham in 1911. Running parallel to the main narrative is the story of the trip’s photographer, Willie Hickler, who discovers his sexuality when he falls in love with the expedition’s Peruvian assistant, Ernesto. Author Carter Wilson (1942?-), who later became an academic and Professor of Community Studies, described this book as “my coming-out novel”. The book was published by the well-established Knopf imprint and received good reviews, including from Christopher Isherwood who compared it to E. M. Forster’s ‘A Passage to India’.
• Tricks : 25 encounters
  “Homosexuality”, Renaud Camus (1946-) reminds the reader of ‘Tricks’ in his foreword, “has a history, and of course, a geography”. These stories of sexual encounter, translated by distinguished gay poet Richard Howard (1929-2022), move from late 1970s Paris to Milan to the United States. In the preface, literary theorist Roland Barthes notes these short narratives’ simplicity, their repetitive nature, and also their status as literature rather than pornography. Each begins with a name and a date, before detailing a sexual liaison between Camus and a man he has never met before. Each ends with a note on their subsequent relationship (if any). Previously a columnist for ‘Gai Pied’ and a socialist, Camus is now a conspiracy theorist and white nationalist, who developed the far-right ‘Great Replacement’ theory.
• What Dillinger meant to me
  This poetry collection from Robert Peters (1924-2014), his eighteenth, contains a mix of new poems and some that were published in earlier books and little magazines, such as ‘The Berkeley Poetry Review’. This volume is autobiographical, focussing on the poet’s childhood, family and society in rural Wisconsin during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The American gangster John Dillinger was involved in a shootout in the nearby Little Bohemia Lodge – his image adorned the young Peters’s bedroom wall, and he appears throughout this collection. Peters’s burgeoning sexuality is explored in poems such as ‘Tommy McQuaker’, about a local gay man who defiantly “walked like a woman down Main Street”, inspiring both fear and desire. Published by the Sea Horse Press, the book is dedicated to Peters’s parents.
• Who was that masked woman?
  Bertha Harris, co-author of ‘The Joy of Lesbian Sex’, described this coming-of-age novel as “an authentic slice of lesbian Americana”. The novel follows young lesbian Tretona Getroek, from her childhood on a farm amidst religious Revival meetings, through to university and travels that take her to Turkey and England. She also explores her sexuality while combatting the prejudices of the church, education and psychiatric establishments. Tretona is the masked woman of the title, hiding her identity. Noretta Koertge (1935-) wrote a sequel to this novel, 1984’s ‘Valley of the Amazons’, and was part of the Daughters, Inc. publishing collective. She is currently Emeritus Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine at Indiana University.
• You are the rain : a novel
  When a hurricane strikes an all-girl canoe trip in the Florida Everglades, athletic Crash and introvert June become separated from the group and must depend on each other to survive. The novel is described as being “Of lesbian interest” in the 1975-76 catalogue of women’s bookstore First Things First, although the relationship is implied rather than overt. The novel is endorsed on the back cover by lesbian poet Adrienne Rich, with several references to the poetry of Emily Dickinson throughout. The title is taken from a May Swenson poem – “I will be earth you be the flower / You have found my root you are the rain”. Swenson and R.R. Knudson (1932-2008) were lovers in the mid-1960s. They collaborated on the collection ‘American Sports Poems’ (1988), and Knudson was Swenson’s literary executor on her death in 1989.