But I do recommend the book – and will be eager to hear your reaction!

Practically the whole student group in the music dept are fruity – most of them very unpleasantly so.

I have been reassured that the school discussed really does exist, and that most of the characters are thinly veiled copies of their proto-types must be some school! In many respects it reminds me of Princeton, or of what I see of Princeton – many of the same types are evident. It's a finely written piece of work, tearing apart a boys school – the sort of thing that has been done before, but I doubt if any author has used such finesse with characterization and so forth. He's a member of an odd sort of 'ménage a trois' – would be fun to break it up, but the healthy influence of Lois is being felt and my urges are well under control.Īnother member of this same ménage, and ex-student here at the Choir College has lent me a book you would be most interested in, I'm sure – 'Lucifer with a Book,' by John Horne Burns. Have met one very pleasant chap here in town – a new salesman at the Music Shop, who works with radio and television. The editors of Bachelor, in its inaugural issue, announced that it would be 'A visual expression of contemporary thought––mirroring the varied interests of the discerning cosmopolite.' The magazine featured covers by artists like Paul Cadmus, Luigi Luccioni, and Charles Baskerville photos of male celebrities including Cary Grant, Tyrone Power, and a swimsuit-clad Larry Crabbe and articles by such arbiters of taste as Lucius Beebe.įor gay men who were 'aware and out,' the designer Neel Bate recalled in a 1982 interview in The Advocate, 'Here at last was what looked like 'our' publication, with an editorial staff and contributors who, if not actually gay and out themselves, expressed our interests.' As these illustrations suggest, late nineteenth and early twentieth-century modes of dandyism, aestheticism, elitism, athletic masculinity, bachelorhood, and misogyny converged in this early attempt to appeal to an emerging urban gay subculture.

Quatrefoil by James Barr