Checklist Part 4

Hilarious novel of confused ident.i.ty, dealing with both male and female h.o.m.os.e.xuality.

DES CARS, GUY. _The d.a.m.ned One._ pbo Pyramid, 1956. A member of French aristocracy, ambiguously s.e.xed enough to be cla.s.sified as female at birth, grows up unequivocally male but retains the name, dress and character of a female to avoid scandal-which comes anyhow when _she_ carries on with an eccentric Englishwoman.

DEUTSCH, DEBORAH. _The Flaming Heart._ Boston, Bruce Humphries, 1959, (m).

DEVLIN, BARRY. Acapulco Nocturne. Vixen Press, 1952.

Cheating Wives. Beacon pbo 1959 (copyright 1955).

Fire and Ice. Vixen Press, 1952.

Golf Widow. Vixen Press, 1953.

Lovers and Madmen. Vixen Press 1952.

Madame Big. Vixen Press 1953.

Moon Kissed. Green Farms, Conn. Modern Pubs 1957, Vixen Press 1953, pbr tct _Forbidden Pleasures_ Beacon Books 1959.

Too Many Women. Vixen(?) 1953, Beacon pbr 1959.

These are all the same sort of thing, evening wasters or scv, depending on taste. Big handsome men of incredible stamina, engaging incessantly in that one activity besides which all else is as naught, with a succession of beautiful women, blonde, brunette and redhead. Now and then this procession of affairs is varied a little by letting the girls sport with one another to give the heroes a breathing spell. In short, s.e.xy books for people who like reading s.e.xy books. Adults only, please.

DE VOTO, BERNARD. _Mountain Time._ Little, Brown & Co 1946-47, fco. One very brief overt lesbian episode.

DE VRIES, PETER. _The Tents of Wickedness._ Little, Brown & Co, 1959, Minor episode in a very funny literary satire-Army colonel who talks pure Hemingway turns out to be a WAC in disguise.

DIBNER, MARTIN. _The Deep Six._ Doubleday 1953, pbr Permabooks 1957, (m).

DIDEROT, DENIS. _Memoirs of a Nun._ (trans from French by Frances Birrell). London, Rutledge & Sons 1928, hcr London, Elek Books, Book Centre Ltd, N. Circular Road, Neasden, London, N. W. 10, England. Cla.s.sic French novel _La Religieuse_, written in 1760, published in 1796. Reflects the very bitter anti-clerical sentiment of the times just before the Revolution. A "cornerstone"

t.i.tle.

DINESEN, ISAK. _Seven Gothic Tales._ N. Y., Smith & Haas, 1943, hcr Modern Library n.d.

"The Invincible Slave Owners", ss in _A Winter's Tales_, Random House 1942.

DIXON, CLARISSA. _Janet and her dear Phebe._ Stokes, 1909. Girls story of two loving little chums, separated by a misunderstanding between their families, and re-united as women. Though never explicit, the story is emotional and intense. It is highly unlikely the author was quite aware of the type of attachment she was portraying.

DJEBAR, a.s.sIA. _The Mischief._ Simon & Schuster 1958, pbr Avon 1959 tct _Nadia_. Very brief but well-written novel of a young girl who falls in love with a former schoolgirl friend, now married.

+ DONISTHORPE, SHEILA. _Loveliest of Friends_, Claude Kendall 1931, pbr Berkley 1956, 1957, 1958, due for another. Boyish Kim captivates young happy-housewife Audrey and wrecks her life.

Preachy outburst against lesbians toward the end. Read it with a hanky handy. (Curiously enough, in spite of the anti-lesbian bias of the ending, and the overdone sentimentality of the Swinburnian writing, everybody seems to enjoy this one-all the Checklist editors included.)

DOWD, HARRISON. _The Night Air._ Dial Press, 1950, (m).

DRESSER, DAVID. _Mardigras Madness._ G.o.dwin 1934. One lesbian episode in an evening waster about Carnival.

DRUON, MAURICE. _The Rise of Simon Lachaume._ Dutton, 1952; hcr as part of the trilogy _The Curtain Falls_, Scribner 1960. One episode in lengthy novel of a French family involves the duping of an elderly roue by a pair of young lesbians.

+ DU MAURIER, ANGELA. _The Little Legs._ Doubleday, 1941. Sad and devastating results from a long variant enslavement. "This is a lovely book if you enjoy crying, and I do," says one reviewer.

DURRELL, LAWRENCE. _Justine._ N. Y., Dutton, 1957.

_Balthazar._ N. Y., Dutton, 1958, (m).

_Mountolive._ N. Y., Dutton, 1959, (m).

_Clea._ N. Y. Dutton, 1960. The last volume of now-famous tetralogy, just released, winds up all of the loose ends of the other three.

The lesbian element is minor, but all four novels are excellent.

EICHRODT, JOHN. "Nadia Devereaux", ss in _s.e.xtet_, ed by Whit & Hallie Burnett. N. Y., McKay Co. 1951.

EISNER, SIMON. (pseud of Cyril Kornbluth). _The Naked Storm._ pbo, Lion Library, 1952, 1956. Mixed bag of pa.s.sengers on a transcontinental train, including a lesbian who tries to captivate a young girl and is murdered by another pa.s.senger to give her intended victim "a chance at real happiness with a man."

ENGSTRAND, STUART. _More Deaths than One._ Julian Messner 1955, pbr Signet 1957. Mannish woman defending effeminate husband against charge of rape by kidnapping his victim and hiding her out, goes through a nervous breakdown involving a morbid and macabre attachment to the girl; horrible.

_Sling and the Arrow._ Creative Age 1947, hcr Sun Dial n.d., pbr Signet ca. 1951, (m).

EMERY, CAROL. _Queer Affair._ pbo Beacon Books, 1957. Dancer Draga moves in with mannish Jo, runs into complications when she tries to desert Jo for a man. Evening waster but very good nevertheless ... the author got in some good att.i.tudes and philosophies when the publisher wasn't looking.

ENTERS, ANGNA. _Among the Daughters._ Coward McCann, 1955.

Autobiographical novel of a girl who, like the author, finally becomes a dancer and ch.o.r.eographer. A good deal of s.p.a.ce is devoted to a friendship between Lucy and another girl; the story is tinged with variance but never explicit.

ESTEY, NORBERT. _All My Sins._ A. A. Wyn, 1954. pbr Crest 1956.

fco. Few very minor variant episodes in a long novel of the French courtesan Ninon l'Enclos.

EUSTIS, HELEN. _The Horizontal Man._ Harper 1946, pbr Pocket Books 1955. Offbeat psychological murder mystery.

EVANS, LESLEY. _Strange are the Ways of Love._ pbo Crest 1959.

Love among the guitar-playing, folk-singing beatniks, with the lesbians playing Musical Beds. Evening waster.

EVANS, JOHN (pseud. of Howard Browne). _Halo in Bra.s.s._ Bobbs-Merrill 1949, pbr Bantam 1958. Hardboiled detective story; private eye Paul Pine is hired to locate runaway girl with no boy friends and many girl friends. Suspenseful, nice way to spend (not waste) a lazy evening.

EWERS, HANNS HEINZ. _Alraune._ John Day, 1929. Alraune is Evil incarnate-symbol of the Mandrake Root, destroying love in everyone with whom she comes in contact, bringing out their innate evil. Among those destroyed by Alraune are a pair of lesbian lovers. High-quality fantasy, unfortunately rare and rather expensive.

FADIMAN, EDWIN JR. _The 21 Inch Screen._ Doubleday 1958, pbr Signet 1960. TV bigshot Rex Lundy has woman trouble-his wife, his mistress, and his teen-age daughter. The latter is seeking the love she doesn't get at home from a Greenwich Village lesbian friend. Excellent modern fiction.

_The Gla.s.s Play Pen._ pbo Signet 1956. Rich girl loses her parents, loses her money, and turns expensive call girl. One lesbian episode, treated with tenderness and sympathy.

see also EDWINA MARK.

FAIR, ELIZABETH. _Bramton Wick._ Funk & Wagnalls 1954. fco. Cozy little story of cozy little English village, including two maiden ladies who have lived together for many years. "It is all very light and airy and your old-maid aunt wouldn't think it at all odd." Apt to be in libraries.

FAREWELL, NINA. _Someone to Love._ Messner 1959, pbr Popular Library, 1960. One brief, incomplete lesbian episode in a long, interesting novel of a woman's continual search for real love in a life filled with fleeting liaisons.

+ FERGUSON, MARGARET. _The Sign of the Ram._ London, Philadelphia, The Blakiston Co, 1944-45. Sherida comes as companion-secretary to crippled Leah, pa.s.sionately adored by her whole family including sixteen-year-old Christine. Subtly playing on Christine's emotions, Leah spurs her to the point where she attempts to murder Sherida. On the surface, the motivation is simply the love of power, but Christine's emotions are clearly variant; when the book was filmed, they carefully cast Christine as a girl of eleven, to make it unmistakable that her adoration was only "childish."

FIRBANK, RONALD. _The Flower Beneath the Foot._ in Five Novels, New Directions, 1949. "Light and fluffy ... pure fun".