Autobiography of an Englishman by “Y” (Paul Elek, 1975)

A rather sad and dispiriting book, published anonomously, purportedly a true autobiography of an Englishman (Paul Yeager) born early in the 20th century. From a young age he is attracted to and fantasizes about beautiful young boys and continues this desire into his adult life, although he marries a woman and fathers two daughters. He is preoccupied with sex, masturbation, and flagellation but is rarely sexually active: he finds male genitalia unattractive and seems to seek only a cuddly warmth and affection from boys and young men. He does have an affair with a young woman at his office that seems both desperate and depressing.

His wife conveniently dies in a car cash, allowing him, at the age of 70, to form a relationship with a pretty 22-year-old young man. He (the narrator) is not an appealing, sympathetic, or particularly interesting or insightful man and his self-delusion prevents him from writing honestly or convincingly about himself.

An unpleasant book in just about every sense.

The Rack by A. E. Ellis [Derek Lindsay] (Penguin, 1979)

The Rack, originally published in 1958, chronicles the two years Paul Davanet, a young Englishman (27), spends at a TB sanatorium in the French Alps shortly after the end of the WWII.

Paul arrives at the sanatorium with a group of international students all suffering from TB; they are sponsored by an international organization and are sequestered from the private patients (although midway through the novel Paul receives a legacy that allows him to become a private patient). Since life at the sanatorium involves little more than periods of rest alternated with various grueling and painful (and usually ineffectual) treatments, not much happens in the book. Paul does meet and fall in love with a vivacious young (17) Belgian girl who is also suffering from TB. Her treatment is more successful than Paul’s and she returns home to Belgium, leaving Paul to what appears to be a never-ending sequence of brutal and debilitating treatments that stretch forever into his future. He attempts to kills himself by overdosing on tranquilizers he has secretly hoarded but is rescued before the drugs can have their fatal effect.

The Rack is chiefly a book about different characters: the patients and doctors surrounding Paul and the small and claustrophobic world they inhabit. These portraits are all vivid and engaging, and the descriptions of a relentlessly and monotonously institutional life are powerfully written. A sad, upsetting book about the spiritually debilitating effects of living a half-life.

The Hustler: The Story of a Nameless Love from Friedrichstrasse by John Henry Mackay (translated by Hubert Kennedy, Alyson Press, 1985)

This book was originally published in 1926 (in German) and only translated and published in English in 1985. Because it deals with controversial subjects — not only homosexuality but also man/boy love, it was originally published under a pseudonym.

It’s an engaging and engrossing novel about two young men — well, a young man (22) and a teenaged boy (16) — in Berlin. Gunther, the boy, comes to Berlin to escape a miserable life in the provinces because he hears that attractive boys can easily make money. He quickly finds out how this is done, and embarks upon a life of prostitution. But then he meets Hermann, an intelligent and sensitive young man of modest means who has come to Berlin for a job with a publisher.

Hermann is immediately beguiled by Gunther and quickly convinces himself that he is in love with the boy. Unfortunately this kind of love is of no interest or use to Gunther, and most of the book is dedicated to Hermann’s long, expensive, and ultimately tragic courtship of Gunther, which results in a brief happiness that cannot be sustained, for their worlds are too incongruous to allow for any safe or common ground.

The portraits of both Hermann and Gunther are complex, interesting, and the two would-be lovers are surrounded by a gallery of vivid characters from all strata of Berlin society. Mackay (who was born in Scotland with a Scottish father and German mother and raised in Germany) seems unable or uninterested to conceive of a version of homosexuality that does not depend upon pedophilia, and this shortcoming seriously limits the book’s effect and appeal. The final introduction of a long-lost aunt of Hermann’s who was married to a pedophile and sympathetically understands and condone’s Hermann’s condition (to the extent that she leaves him a legacy) only makes the underlying premise of the book that much more disturbing.

An Eye for an Eye by Anthony Trollope (Stein and Day, 1967)

An atypically short, melodramatic, and somewhat risque novel by Trollope. Unlike most of his longer novels, An Eye for an Eye has only one tightly-focussed plot.

Fred Neville becomes heir to Scroope when his ne’er-do-well cousin dies without an heir. He is embraced by the present Earl and his second wife, who regard him as a son and expose him to the ways and reasons of nobility. Fred is a soldier and returns to Ireland to complete his commission, and then plans to return to and reside at Scroope Manor.

But while in Ireland he meets, falls in love with, proposes to, and impregnates a beautiful and innocent country lass, Kate O’Hara, who lives with her fierce widowed mother in an isolated cottage on the cliffs of Mohr. Fred has promised his uncle he will never marry a woman who would make an unsuitable Countess, which, with her dubious breeding and uncultured ways, is exactly what Kate is.

How Fred manages this impossible situation by attempting to keep his promise to both Kate and his uncle is the swift and dramatic action of this book. Unfortunately, none of the characters are well-developed. The book’s brevity and its emphasis on plot prevent Trollope from developing them with his usual empathetic complexity. They are, however, engaging and the book climaxes with an inevitable but somehow still surprising tragic ending at the perilous edge of the cliffs.

Robinson by Muriel Spark (Macmillan & Company, 1961)

I found this hardcover edition of an early Spark novel I had never heard of at the Owl Pen bookstore in Greenwich NY earlier this summer. It’s very slight and negligible, but there are a few moments of wit. The setting, a remote and (almost) uninhabited island in the Azores onto which a plane crashes leaving three survivors (2 men and a woman) to be rescued by the island’s two inhabitants (a solitary man and his adopted son) is fun, but the plot, which involves a murder, is second-rate and the book offers little delight or satisfaction. A curiosity — no wonder I had never heard of it.

A Sand Fortress by John Coriolan (Gay Sunshine Press, 1984)

A bizarre and bloated novel about gay life in and around New York City in the 1960s and 70s. It focusses on the sexual lives of its two protagonists — Alex and Mike — in a way that suggests that they have not other life, spending all their time cruising and hooking up or talking about cruising and hooking up. Everyone in this book is obsesses with huge cocks (both Alex and Mike have big ones) and the number of blowjobs described, or remembered, or imagined, is bludgeoning.

Coriolan, a pseudonym for William Corington, attempts to add psychological depth to his characters but their obsession with sex and physicality prevents them from ever seeming human. An inexplicable and completely unnecessary final chapter, set ten years later in 1980 was added to the book when it was republished by Gay Sunshine Press in in 1984. (I read another John Coriolan novel — The Eros of a Smile? — sometime ago but of course remember nothing about it.)

Children is All by James Purdy (New Directions, 1971)

A collection of stories and a short play. Elegant and eccentric, but nothing in this book had an effect like his better novels.

Valentino and Sagittarius by Natalia Ginzburg (Holt & Company, 1988)

Another book I read several months ago and barely remember. I did find these two novellas engaging, about interesting people in unusual relationships. Although I can’t recall what made them interesting and engaging. But I’d definitely like to read more Natalia Ginzburg.