Checklist Part 8

LEVERIDGE, RALPH. _Walk on the Water._ Farrar, 1951, pbr tct _The Last Combat_, Signet 1952, Pyramid 1959, (m).

LEWIS, WYNDHAM. _The Apes of G.o.d._ N. Y., R. M. McBride & Co, 1932, London, Arthur Press 1950, London, Arco, 1955. Satire, including sharp studies of h.o.m.os.e.xuality, male and female.

LIN, HAZEL. _The Moon Vow._ Pageant Press, 1958. A Chinese woman psychiatrist, attempting to solve a patient's problems, is led into seamy byways of Peking, including a somewhat gruesome lesbian cult.

LINDOPS, AUDREY ERSKINE. _The Outer Ring._ Appleton 1955, pbr Popular Library tct _The Tormented_. (m)

LINGSTROM, FREDA. _Axel._ Boston, Little, Brown & Co., 1939.

Wealthy man adopts two boys and a girl. One boy, Valentine, has h.o.m.os.e.xual affair with an older boy, Teddy, who later commits suicide; the girl, Auriol, studying music in Germany, lives with 2 older women, one of whom is very innocently but very ardently in love with her. Well-written.

LIPSKY, ELEAZAR. _The Scientists._ Appleton-Century-Crofts 1959, pbr Pocket Books, 1960. Minor character in a long novel is a vaguely treated, but explicit lesbian.

LIPTON, LAWRENCE. _The Holy Barbarians._ Messner, 1959. Love among the beat generation, including all kinds of h.o.m.os.e.xuality.

LITTLE, JAY. _Somewhere between the Two._ Pageant, 1956, (m).

_Maybe Tomorrow._ Pageant, 1952, (m). Amusing.

LIVINGSTON, MARJORIE. _Delphic Echo._ London, Andrew Dakers, 1948, (m). Minor, in a novel of ancient Greece.

LODGE, LOIS. _Love Like a Shadow._ Phoenix Press, 1935.

Purple-pa.s.saged novel of a lesbian seeking true love.

+ LOFTS, NORAH. _Ja.s.sy._ Knopf 1945, pbr Signet 1948, others.

Roughly a third of this novel, about a young English girl who, herself innocent, brings tragedy on everyone, is lesbian in emphasis. In a girl's school she comes between Mrs. Twysdale, a rather slimy, neurotic woman who has adored her boyish cousin, Katherine, for years. Katherine, chafing at this adoration, turns to Ja.s.sy for undemanding friendship and Mrs. Twysdale connives to have her expelled-which spurs Katherine to precipitate a long-desired break with her.

_The Lute Player._ Doubleday, 1951; pbr Bantam 1951, (m). Fine historical of Richard III, based on the thesis that he was h.o.m.os.e.xual.

+ LONG, MARGARET. _Louisville Sat.u.r.day._ Random 1950, pbr Bantam 1951, 53, 56, 57, 59. A study of women in wartime includes a brief study of a woman's acceptance of a variant friendship (the sections t.i.tled GLADYS).

LORD, SHELDON. _A Strange Kind of Love._ N. Y., Midwood-Tower Pubs pbo 1959. Evening waster about a writer who discovers that two of his (dozens of) girl friends are involved with one another.

_69 Barrow Street._ Midwood-Tower pbo 1959, scv. Love, if you can call it that, in Greenwich Village.

+ LOUS, PIERRE. _Aphrodite._ (Many editions, of which the standard English translation seems to be The Collected Works of Pierre Louys, Liveright, 1926, still in print. Also various Avon paperbacks.) The beautifully written story of an Alexandrian courtesan also includes the story of two young Greek girls, Rhodis and Myrtocleia, no more than children, who wish to marry one another.

_The Adventures of King Pausole._ As above. Fine, funny, highly risque story of the king of a strange country, who has a thousand wives, like Solomon, and believes in freedom for everybody except his daughter, Aline-who eventually runs away with a "boy" who is really a girl.

_The Songs of Bilitis._ As above. Prose or poetry, depending on translation, and perhaps the cla.s.sic story of lesbianism in an ancient setting.

LUCAS, RICK. _Dreamboat._ pbo, Berkley, 1956, 1957. scv.

LYNDON, BAREE, and Jimmie Sangster. _The Man who Could Cheat Death_, based on the screenplay, for the recent movie, which in turn was based on a play, The Man in Half Moon Street. Without the fantastic photography which made the movie superb, this is a remarkably silly pseudo-science thing about a man who finds away to survive indefinitely by glandular transplants. To camouflage his deathlessness he pulls up his roots and moves every ten years and during one such interlude he falls for beautiful Avril Barnes, who turns out to be a lesbian. He converts her, and she becomes such a pest that he murders her. Shocker, silly.

MacCOWN, EUGENE. _The Siege of Innocence._ Doubleday, 1950, (m).

And minor lesbian element.

MacKENZIE, COMPTON. _Extraordinary Women._ Martin Secker, London; Macy-Masius N. Y. 1928, hcr New Adelphi 1932. The Winston Book Service offered this for sale quite recently. Amusing, satirical and well-known novel of lesbians.

_The Vestal Fire._ N. Y. Doran, 1927, (m). However, in this novel of Americans living abroad, there are also important lesbian characters.

MacRAE, KEVIN. _Nikki._ Vantage. 1955. Not to be confused with the rubbishy book by the same t.i.tle by Stuart Friedman, this is a story of Nikki, who loses her beloved in an air raid in London and nearly cracks up before finding a home in a lesbian "colony" in Southern California; silly, but a lot of fun.

+ MacINNES, COLIN. _Absolute Beginners._ London, MacGibbon & Rae, 1959. A novel about London teen-agers, told in Soho idiom-a sort of b.a.s.t.a.r.d hip-talk. The characters in this novel include several male h.o.m.os.e.xuals, and one lesbian, Big Jill. Enough s.p.a.ce is devoted to social problems, by an author who is quite obviously one of the "angry young men", to give this novel real status.

McMINNIES, MARY. _The Visitors._ Harcourt, Brace 1958. A diplomat's wife abroad, fancying herself as Madame Bovary, attempts to use everyone around her for her own purposes. She has an affair with an American correspondent and also captivates Sophie, a countess, and an extremely well-portrayed character. One of the most sympathetic portraits of a lesbian in recent fiction, as well as a ruthless portrayal of women who enjoy flirting in both fields.

+ MAHYERE, EVELINE. _I Will not Serve._ Dutton 1959, 1960. This book, boycotted by many major reviewers, was written by a young Frenchwoman who committed suicide before its publication.

Precocious, nonconformist Sylvie has been expelled from a convent for writing, in a letter, that she loves one of the nuns. The story deals with the unfolding pattern of Sylvie's meetings with Julienne, an older novice in the convent. The conflict is clear; Sylvie's creed is "I will not serve"-a statement of her refusal to become a good wife and mother-and she wants nothing of life but Julienne. Julienne, has given herself to G.o.d. Refusing to accept this, Sylvie commits suicide. The book is profound and sincere, and on the basis of this one work the author's premature death was a loss to the field of literature.

MAINE, CHARLES ERIC. _World Without Men._ pbo, Ave Books 1958.

Science fiction of a world thousands of years in the future, where the men have all died out, reproduction is scientific and the women, having no one else to love, love one another. In defiance of all conceivable theories of heredity and environment, a few women still think this state of affairs is "unnatural" and band together to create a male birth, a.s.suming everyone will turn normal overnight. Silly.

MALLET, FRANcOISE. _The Illusionist._ (Trans. by Herma Briffault).

Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1952 tct _The Loving and the Daring_, Popular 1953. (pbr). Now well-known novel, by a young French writer, of a girl captivated by her father's mistress.

_The Red Room._ (trans. by Herma Briffault). Farrar, Strauss & Cudahy 1956, pbr Popular 1958. Sequel to the above.

MALLOY, FRED. _The End of the Road._ Woodford Press 1952, pbr Berkley tct _Wicked Woman_, 1959. Good evening waster about a girl who is picked up by Charlotte, a truck-driver "dike" type; Charlotte gives Alice a home, but eventually Alice runs off with a man who is worse than she is. Surprisingly, for this type of thing, the author implies that there _is_ a fate worse than lesbianism.

MANNING, BRUCE. _Triangle of Sin._ Intimate Novel (Universal Pub.) 1952, pbr Beacon Books 1959; same t.i.tle, but author listed as Manning Stokes. Evening waster.

MANNIX, DANIEL P. _The Beast._ pbo Ballantine Books 1959, (m).

MARECHAL, LUCIE. _The Mesh_ (trans. by Virgilia Peterson.) Appleton 1949, pbr Bantam, 1951, 1953, 1959. Excellent novel of a Belgian family; the weakling son marries, brings his bride into home dominated by his mother, shadowed by his lonely sister.

Eventually sister takes the young woman away from her brother.

MARLOWE, STEPHEN. _Homicide is My Game._ Gold Medal 1959 pbo.

Hardboiled murder mystery involving a teen-age s.e.x club-a businessman is involved of running it, but the real culprit is his daughter, Liz. She is also a lesbian. Evening waster.

MARK, EDWINA. (pseud of Edwin Fadiman jr). _My Sister, my Beloved._ Citadel 1955, pbr Berkley 1956. Two young sisters, daughters of a drunken lush of a mother, fall into a too-close relationship as Eve, the older, protects young Sheila from their mother's beatings and tantrums. Sheila plays around and gets pregnant; mother, at the stage where alcohol will kill her, is given a big drink by Eve, who then arranges for Sheila to have an abortion and the two of them to live happily ever after; instead, Sheila marries the boy and Eve is whipped half to death by one of her mother's gigolos. One of _those_ books-where anything from abortion to rape is preferable to lesbianism.

+ _The Odd Ones._ Berkley pbo, 1959. Jean, small-town girl running away, comes to New York and falls in with Sherri, tied to a crazy husband. Rather good and not condemnatory at all; rather restrained for a pbo, although of course it has the obligatory s.e.xy stuff.

MARR, REED. _Women without Men._ Gold Medal pbo, 1956. Naive, if not too intelligent girl sent to a woman's reformatory, encounters the usual hardening experiences-corrupt matrons, police-court-type lesbians, trusties and well-meaning officials who have their lives to live and can't or won't do anything to better conditions. Good of its kind.

MARSHE, RICHARD. _A Woman Called Desire._ (Orig. pub. 1950 under t.i.tle of _Wicked Woman_) Berkley pbr 1959, scv.

MARSTON, JOHN. _Venus With Us; a Tale of the Caesars._ N. Y.

Sears, 1932. pbr Universal Pub. 1953 tct _The Private Life of Julius Caesar_. Fast, funny, risque historical novel-or romance-with approximately six historical errors per chapter, but a lot of fun nevertheless. The scenes laid in the College of Vestals are exclusively lesbian; there are both serious, emotional affairs between women, and funny light-hearted ones in the manner of King Pausole. Good of kind.

+ MARTIN, KENNETH. _Aubade._ London, Chapman & Hall 1957, (m).

MASEFIELD, JOHN. _Mult.i.tude and Solitude._ Macmillan 1909, 1916.

Ma.s.sIE, CHRIS. _The Incredible Truth._ Random, N. Y., 1958, pbr Berkley 1959. Victorian husband narrates, many years afterward, his wife's successive attachment to two woman friends.

MAUGHAM, SOMERSET. _Theatre._ Doubleday 1937, Bantam pbr tct _Woman of the World_, 1951, pbr Bantam tct _Theatre_ 1959.

Theatrical novel of a worldly actress, Julia, contains brief mention of a fat, elderly lesbian admirer who finances her works; one amusing scene where Julia's husband advises her on how to manipulate Dolly's feelings. Smart, brittle.