"Palm Sunday" ss in collection _The Sunnier Side_, pbr Berkley nd and others, also in Cory, _21 Variations_.
+ JACKSON, SHIRLEY. _Hangsaman._ Farrar, 1951. Frightening, macabre story of a lonely girl who conjures up a thrilling companion-who looks and acts like a boy but is clearly a girl.
They meet secretly and engage in wild conversation and loveplay, and only slowly, with dawning horror, does the reader realize that the child is a split personality and the two girls are one and the same.
_The Haunting of Hill House._ Viking, 1959. During the investigation of a reputed "haunted house", two of the investigating party-Theo, an admitted lesbian, and Eleanor, a lonely, inhibited spinster-go through a curious, subtly delineated relationship wavering, with the intensity of the "haunting" of the house, from attraction to intense love to unexplained revulsion. Macabre; good of its kind.
JAMES, HENRY. _Turn of the Screw._ Macmillan 1898, hcr Modern Library n d, Pocket Books and other editions. Available everywhere. Some authorities consider subtle and understated lesbianism to be the mysterious motivations behind the scenes of this curious psychological ghost story of the struggle of a governess for the souls of two young children.
_The Bostonians._ Century Magazine 1885, hcr Dial 1945.
JOHNSON, KAY. _My Name is Rusty._ Castle Books, 1958. Allegedly a novel of a woman"s prison, complete with glossary of "prison slang"-but if the author has ever been inside a woman"s prison, or even done any authentic research, your editors will eat a copy of the book, complete with cover jackets. Brief plot; butchy Rusty makes a pa.s.s at prison newcomer Marcia, in order to share her commissary credits. When Rusty gets out of prison she marries and goes straight and Marcia kills herself. Read it and weep.
JONES, JAMES. _From Here to Eternity._ Scribners 1951, pbr Signet ca. 1952, (m).
KASTLE, HERBERT D. _Koptic Court._ Simon & Schuster 1958, pbr tct _Seven Keys to Koptic Court_, Crest 1959, (m).
KEENE, DAY and Leonard Pruyn. _World Without Women._ pbo Gold Medal, 1960, Science-fictional evening waster; all the women in the world die off, except a few, who must be carefully protected as potential mothers of the human race. One episode involves all the surviving lesbians, who barricade themselves in a prison. Good of type.
KENNEDY, JAY RICHARD. _Short Term._ World, 1959. This one is just out; reviews indicate some lesbian content, but this could be anything from a paragraph to three chapters. BAYOR.
KENT, JUSTIN. _Mavis._ Vixen Press 1953, pbr Beacon 1960. scv.
"Mavis is married to a lush, so she dallies and so does he, and they are really a pair of dillies dallying...."
+ KENT, NIAL. (pseud of William LeRoy Thomas) _The Divided Path_, (m). Greenberg 1949, Pyramid pbr 1951, 1952, 1959. For once the plus is used to promote personal prejudice; various authorities call this book overly sentimental. But when this hardened reviewer finds herself in tears, she"s apt to think there must be something to it. Childhood, adolescence and manhood of Michael, a young h.o.m.os.e.xual, and his long-continued, scrupulously self-denying relationship with a boyhood friend who does not suspect his friend"s "difference".
KENYON, THEDA. _That Skipper from Stonington._ Messner, 1946. A juvenile novel, strangely enough, found in a high school library.
The hero runs away to sea as a small boy and is protected by a man who is obviously h.o.m.os.e.xual, though the boy does not know it; the other men on the ship, suspecting that this relationship is unhealthy (it isn"t) hound the boy"s protector to suicide.
KEOGH, THEODORA. _Meg._ Creative Age Press 1950, pbr Signet 1952, 1956. Sublimated lesbianism in a very young girl.
_The Double Door._ Creative Age 1950, pbr Signet 1952, (m).
KESSEL, JOSEPH. _The Lion._ (trans. from French by Peter Green).
N. Y. Knopf 1959. One editor saw subtle variant emotion in the mother"s attachment to a school friend.
KING, DON. _The Bitter Love._ Newsstand Library Magenta Book, 1959. Rather good evening waster about a supposed double murder, gradually solved by the slow revelation of the affair between Brenda and her 16 year old stepdaughter.
KING, MARY JACKSON. _The Vine of Glory._ Bobbs-Merrill, 1948. This won a prize as the best novel on race relations by a Southern writer for its year. A repressed, inhibited, small-town girl, Lavinia, at the mercy of elderly tyrannical relatives, forms a close friendship with a Negro man who was her only childhood friend. The friendship between Lavinia and Augustus is purely platonic; she attends a school he has set up for colored girls who wish to improve themselves, and he helps to find her a job; but enraged small-minded bigots bring on a lynching. Early in the book a preparation is laid for Lavinia"s lack of friends of her own s.e.x and status by her unfortunate friendship with Dixie Murdoch, teen-age daughter of a Holy-roller preacher. While spending the night, Dixie attempts to make h.o.m.os.e.xual advances to the younger girl, and Lavinia becomes hysterical. The episode is brief, condemnatory and very realistic.
KIN, DAVID GEORGE. _Women Without Men._ Brookwood, 1958. The author calls this "True stories of lesbian life in Greenwich Village". It represents a roundup of a dozen or so famous literary and artistic figures, presented as case histories. They are presented, picture after sordid picture, without a glimmer of understanding or real insight, though he sometimes shows smug sympathy for a few he claims to have reformed by something he calls "cultural therapy". He baldly states in the preface: "I take my mental hygiene from Moses, rather than Freud, and have the Mosaic horror of h.o.m.os.e.xuality". Despite this vicious slanting, the book is explicit, funny in places, and presumably verifiable-but certainly makes h.o.m.os.e.xuality look like a Fate Worse Than Death. The writing is straight from the tabloid newspapers.
KINSEY, CHET. _Kate._ pbo, Beacon 1959. scv.
KOESTLER, ARTHUR. _Arrival and Departure._ Macmillan 1943. A man makes the most important decision of his life on the rebound of disillusion after discovering that a woman who risked her life to save him is a lesbian.
+ KRAMER, N. MARTIN (pseud. of Beatrice Ann Wright). _Hearth and The Strangeness._ Macmillan 1956, pbr Pyramid 1957. An excellent novel of the fear of inherited insanity in a family. The youngest child, Aliciane, becomes a lesbian; this is one of the few realistic and unromanticized portraits of the factors in the development of h.o.m.os.e.xuality from childhood.
_Sons of the Fathers._ Macmillan 1959, (m).
LACRETELLE, JACQUES DE. _Marie Bonifas._ (trans. from the French of La Bonifas) London & N. Y., G. P. Putnam"s Sons, 1929. Cla.s.sic novel of feminine variance. Exclusively lesbian characters are rare in French literature (although bis.e.xual women are relatively common), and this was one of the best known; it follows the heroine from childhood to old age.
LACY, ED. _Room to Swing._ Harper Bros. 1957, pbr Pyramid 1958. A colored detective is retained by a pair of lesbians to solve a murder; is instead accused of committing it. Good.
+ LANDON, MARGARET. _Never Dies the Dream._ Doubleday, 1949. An unmarried woman missionary in Siam incurs criticism and suspicion when she shows marked favor to an unfortunate American girl at the mercy of the Orient; later, when she risks her own life by isolating herself to nurse Angela through typhoid, she loses her own position. Neither the author nor the heroine of the novel admit the faintest tinge of lesbianism to the relationship, which is full of warmth and selfless sacrifice, and India angrily denies the accusation when it is made; but the high emotional intensity of the whole story bring it well within the boundaries of the field and place it high on the list.
LA FARGE, CHRISTOPHER. _The Sudden Guest._ Coward-McCann, 1946.
The human driftwood blown up by a hurricane includes a pair of lesbians, stirring latent memories in the novel"s heroine-an embittered, abandoned spinster.
+ LAPSLEY, MARY. _Parable of the Virgins._ R. R. Smith, 1931.
High-keyed novel of many emotional fevers, hetero and h.o.m.os.e.xual, in a woman"s college.
LAWRENCE, D. H. "The Fox", ss in Dial Magazine 1922, also in hcr but NOT in pbr edition of _The Captain"s Doll_, Thomas Seltzer, 1923.
_The Rainbow._ Modern Library 1915, 1943, pbr Avon 1959, 1960. In a long, three-generation novel of the Brangwyn family, one variant episode between young Ursula and a teacher.
LAURENT-TAILHADE, MARIE LOUISE. _Courtesans, Princesses, Lesbians._ (Trans. from French by G. M. C.) Paris, Libraire Astra.
Casanova-ish memoir; French pamphleteering of Pre-revolutionary days. Bitter, explicit and mildly disgusting; mentioned mostly to state emphatically that the French Libraire Astra, and the Astra"s Tower Checklist, have NO connection.
LE CLERQ, JACQUES. _Show Cases._ Macy-Masius, 1928. Offbeat short stories, dealing with male and female h.o.m.os.e.xuality.
LEAR-HEAP, WINIFRED. _The Shady Cloister._ Macmillan, 1950. Quiet, understated and sympathetic story of feminine relationships in a school setting-but without the melodramatic atmosphere of tragedy which usually surrounds such stories.
+ LEE, MARJORIE. _The Lion House._ Rinehart, 1959. Well-written attempt to capture and doc.u.ment the confused and shifting morals of modern suburban living. Brad, husband of Jo, starts the story by flirting with Frannie; this backfires when Frannie and Jo become friends. As the relationship grows more intense, it proves so disturbing that even after Frannie has admitted its nature Jo cannot accept it; Frannie attempts to solve her problems via psychoa.n.a.lysis, while Jo continues floundering in her unresolved conflicts. This year"s best new novel.
LEE, GYPSY ROSE. _Gypsy, a Memoir._ Harper Bros. 1959, pbr Dell 1959. In a fascinating, probably largely fictional autobiography, the ex-burlesque queen/novelist shows one thoroughly comical lesbian character. This is really minor, but marvelously funny, and anyone who plows through all the crud we mention will get a real break from this.
LE FANU, SHERIDAN. "Carmilla" in _Green Tea and Other Ghost Stories._ Also in Vol III of "The Forgotten Cla.s.sics of Mystery", ent.i.tled _Sheridan Le Fanu, the Diabolical Genius_. Also in _Strange and Fantastic Stories_, ed. by Joseph Margolies, McGraw Hill, 1946. Fantastic lesbian vampire.
LEIBER, FRITZ. "The Ship Sails at Midnight", in _The Outer Reaches_, ed. August Derleth, Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisc. 1951.
Science-fiction or fantasy of a strange, unusual woman who captivates a whole group of college students; tragedy is touched off by their jealous rage when it is discovered that she has been making love to all of them-not simultaneously of course.
Extremely well done, hint of allegory.
LEGRAND, NADIA. _The Rainbow Has Seven Colors._ N. Y. St Martins, 1958. After the death of the heroine her life is reviewed by seven people who loved her (as with _Of Lena Geyer_) including a lesbian who loved her and a young girl who wanted to.
+ LEHMANN, ROSAMOND. _Dusty Answer._ N. Y., Holt, 1927. Still in print. Well-known novel in which the heroine"s whole life is conditioned by her love for a college cla.s.smate. Delicate, beautifully written.
LENGEL, FRANCES. _Helen and Desire._ Olympia Press, Paris, 1954.
scv, and you can"t buy it in this country legally. If you locate a copy you"ll know why we say you aren"t missing a thing. Seamy novel of a nymphomanic --ing her way around the world. (It"s not worth going to Paris to read.)
LESLIE, DAVID STUART. _The Man on the Beach._ London, Hutchinson 1957, (m).
LEVAILLANT, MAURICE. _The Pa.s.sionate Exiles._ (trans. Malcolm Barnes.) Farrar, Straus & Cudahy 1958. Historical "dual biography"
of Madame de Stael and Madame Recamier.
+ LEVIN, MEYER. _Compulsion._ Simon & Schuster 1956. pbr Pocket Books 1958, (m).
LEWIS, SINCLAIR. _Ann Vickers._ Doubleday, 1933. One important lesbian episode in a novel of woman suffrage, viciously condemnatory.