A MILESTONE IN GAY FICTION Phillip Froelich is in trouble. The year is 1946, and he’s traveling to Seattle where he will face a court martial for acting insubordinate to a lazy officer in the closing days of World War II. On the way to Seattle he meets Tim Danelaw, and soon the court martial is among the least of Phillip’s concerns.... So begins Quatrefoil, a novel originally published in 1950. It marked a milestone in gay writing, with two of the first non-stereotyped gay characters to appear in American fiction. For readers of the Fifties, it was a rare chance to counteract the negative imagery that surrounded them. Today, Quatrefoil ranks as a classic work of gay writing, a novel that is still as gripping and enjoyable as ever. It is of extra interest to the modern reader for the vivid picture it draws of what life was like for gay men in our recent but little-known past.

In this work, respected pop culture historian Anthony Slide resurrects 50 early 20th century novels with gay themes or characters and discusses them in carefully researched, engaging prose.

Examining the development of gay American fiction and providing an essential reading list, this literary survey covers 257 works--novels, novellas, a graphic story cycle and a narrative poem--in which gay and bisexual male characters play a major role. Iconic works, such as James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room and Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man, are included, along with titles not given attention by earlier surveys, such as Wallace Thurman's Infants of the Spring, Dashiel Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, Julian Green's Each in His Darkness, Ursula Zilinsky's Middle Ground and David Plante's The Ghost of Henry James. Chronological entries discuss each work's plot, significance for gay identity, and publication history, along with a brief biography of the author.

From going AWOL to collaborating with communists, assaulting fellow servicemen to marrying without permission, military crime during the Cold War offers a telling glimpse into a military undergoing a demographic and legal transformation. The post-World War II American military, newly permanent, populated by draftees as well as volunteers, and asked to fight communism around the world, was also the subject of a major criminal justice reform. By examining the Cold War court-martial, Defending America opens a new window on conflicts that divided America at the time, such as the competing demands of work and family and the tension between individual rights and social conformity. Using military justice records, Elizabeth Lutes Hillman demonstrates the criminal consequences of the military's violent mission, ideological goals, fear of homosexuality, and attitude toward racial, gender, and class difference. The records also show that only the most inept, unfortunate, and impolitic of misbehaving service members were likely to be prosecuted. Young, poor, low-ranking, and nonwhite servicemen bore a disproportionate burden in the military's enforcement of crime, and gay men and lesbians paid the price for the armed forces' official hostility toward homosexuality. While the U.S. military fought to defend the Constitution, the Cold War court-martial punished those who wavered from accepted political convictions, sexual behavior, and social conventions, threatening the very rights of due process and free expression the Constitution promised.

An extraordinary modern novel in the Victorian tradition, Charles Palliser has created something extraordinary—a plot within a plot within a plot of family secrets, mysterious clues, low-born birth, high-reaching immorality, and, always, always the fog-enshrouded, enigmatic character of 19th century—London itself. “So compulsively absorbing that reality disappears . . . One is swept along by those enduring emotions that defy modern art and a random universe: hunger for revenge, longing for justice and the fantasy secretly entertained by most people that the bad will be punished and the good rewarded.”—The New York Times “A virtuoso achievement . . . It is an epic, a tour de force, a staggeringly complex and tantalizingly layered tale that will keep readers engrossed in days. . . . The Quincunx will not disappoint you. It is, quite simply, superb.”—Chicago Sun-Times “A bold and vivid tale that invites the reader to get lost in the intoxicating rhythms of another world. And the invitation is irresistible.”—San Francisco Chronicle “A remarkable book . . . In mood, color, atmosphere and characters, this is Charles Dickens reincarnated . . . It is an immersing experience.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “To read the first pages is to be trapped for seven-hundred odd more: you cannot stop turning them.”—The New Yorker “Few books, at most a dozen or two in a lifetime, affect us this way. . . . For sheer intricacy and ingenuity, for skill and clarity of storytelling, it is the kind of book readers wait for, a book to get lost in.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

A collection of gay erotic writings tracing the development of a gay identity from the late 19th century to just before the Stonewall Inn riots Long before the rise of the modern gay movement, an unnoticed literary revolution was occurring, mostly between the covers of the cheaply produced pulp paperbacks of the post-World War II era. Cultural critic Michael Bronski collects a sampling of these now little-known gay erotic writings—some by writers long forgotten, some never known and a few now famous. Through them, Bronski challenges many long-held views of American postwar fiction and the rise of gay literature, as well as of the culture at large. CONTENTS Part One Mainstream Fiction: Not Particularly Hiding in the Shadows Harrison Dowd, The Night Air, Dial Press, 1950 Lonnie Coleman, Sam, David McKay, 1959 Part Two The New Gay Novel: Happier Homos and Happier Endings James Barr, "Spurr Piece" from Derricks, Greenberg, 1951 Jay Little, Maybe—Tomorrow, Pageant Press, 1952 Part Three Truly Pulp: "Gay" Life in the Shadows Michael De Forrest, The Gay Year, Woodford Press, 1949 Vin Packer (Marijane Meaker), Whisper His Sin, Fawcett Gold Medal Books, 1954 Ben Travis, The Strange Ones, Beacon Book, 1959 James Colton (Joseph Hansen), Lost on Twilight Road, National Library, 1964 Jeff X, The Memoirs of Jeff X, Zil, 1968 Part Four Out of the Twilight World: The Sexual Revolution Goes Lavender The Boys of Muscle Beach, Guild Press, 1969 (reprint from the 1950s) Richard Amory, Song of the Loon, Greenleaf Classics, 1966 Carl Corley, My Purple Winter, PEC French Line, 1966 Jack Love, Gay Whore, PEC French Line, 1967 Chris Davidson, A Different Drum, Ember Library/Greenleaf Classics, 1967 Part Five The World Split Open: Life and Literature After Stonewall Marcus Miller, Gay Revolution, Pleasure Reader, 1969 Bruce Benderson, Kyle, Crusier Classics, 1975 Victor Jay, The Gay Haunt, Traveller's Companion, 1970 John Ironstone, Gay Rights, El Dorado Editions, 1978 Appendix: Gay Novels, 1940-1969 Bibliography