Playing the Game

Roger Austen

Austin has traced the history of the homosexual novel from its murky beginnings in the dim past, into the hesitant 20s, the gay pulps of the 30s, the breakthrough in the 40s, the rising (and hostile) reactions of the critics in the 50s, and the decline that began in the 60s. In a literate, perceptive account, laced with dry, iconoclastic humor, he described some two hundred novels written during these decades. With Kraft-Ebing et alia relegating homosexuality to the realms of psychopathic behavior, gay literature was almost totally in the closet until the 1920s. Even through the 1950s, the writers had to add a tone of "respectability" to their novels in order for them to be even partially accepted by straight readers and critics. They "played the game" by changing pronouns or by tossing their protagonist to the wolves: more than one of the star-cross'd lovers at book's end (1) saw the light of day and married the girl next door, or (2) committed suicide. All of this changed with the emergence of honest writers like Rechy, Isherwood, Vidal and Capote, and with the growing confidence of the gays themselves. This literary genre has finally come out of the closet.