Items

• Cross sections from a decade of change
  Elizabeth Janeway (1913-2005) was a novelist, pro-abortion campaigner and prominent second-wave feminist. In this book, which has minimal LGBTQ+ content, Janeway discusses the process of social change regarding women’s personal and public lives and rights in sections entitled ‘History’, ‘Work’, ‘Sexuality’, ‘Literature’ and ‘Dailyness’ (which she describes as “the homely details of ordinary life”). Published in 1983, the book is an unillustrated collection of Janeway’s writings, including essays and reviews, with one piece – a review of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel ‘Lolita’ – dating from 1958. A book named ‘Cross Sections’ was listed, minus author and publisher, in a Defend Gay’s the Word briefing document about the seized titles. It is likely it was this book.
• The boy who picked the bullets up
  Charles Nelson (1942-2003) served as a Marine in the Vietnam War and claimed that some of this novel was autobiographical. The story follows medic Kurt Strom during a year he spent stationed in Vietnam. Strom’s experiences as a gay Marine are relayed via letters he sends home to his family and friends. One reviewer described the novel as containing “endless humour and devastating realism”, while the gay perspective was praised for presenting “decidedly different” insights on war. The novel’s title is taken from the poem of the same name by Arthur Rimbaud. Published by William Morrow, the book’s dust jacket shows a soldier’s trousered backside, with a blue bandana in the left pocket, alluding to ‘flagging’, a coded means of expressing sexual preferences.