Checklist Part 11

+ SANDBURG, HELGA. _The Wheel of Earth._ McDowell, Oblensky 1958.

Roughly a third of a long novel of Midwestern rural life deals with the lengthy attachment between Frankie Gaddy and an older woman, Genevieve.

SARTON, MAY. _A Shower of Summer Days._ Rinehart, 1952.

SARTRE, JEAN-PAUL. _No Exit._ Knopf 1947, qpb Vintage 1955. Play.

SAVAGE, KIM. _Girl's Dorm._ Vixen Press 1952.

_Baby Makes Three._ Vixen, 1953. No reports on either of these, but in view of the publisher they are probably evening wasters at best.

SAYERS, DOROTHY L. _The Dawson Pedigree._ Harcourt 1928, fco.

+ SCHIDDEL, EDMUND. _Girl with the Golden Yo-Yo._ pbo Berkley 1955, 1959, (m). Also contains some brief a.n.a.lysis of lesbian jazz circles in Germany after WWI.

_The Other Side of the Night._ pbo Avon 1954-5, Berkley 1959, (m).

SCHMITT, GLADYS. _Confessors of the Name._ Dial, 1952, pbr Permabooks ca. 1953-55. A relatively minor lesbian character in a long novel of ancient Rome, with explicit lesbian scenes during a Saturnalia orgy.

_A Small Fire._ Dial 1958. (m.) minor.

_Alexandra._ Dial 1947, pbr Pocket Books 1949. Very vague and minor threads of contact in a novel of intense friends.h.i.+p between two women. Emotionally high.

SCOTT, LES. _Twilight Women._ Arco 1952, pbr Beacon 1956.

Evening-waster suspenseful adventure story of a chase-type kidnapping: Rance, the hero, pleasantly entangled with two beautiful Polynesian girls, who eventually take him to a Utopian tropical island where he happily marries both of them. The contact between the girls is incidental and included simply to heighten excitement for male readers, but it's good fun in a Sax Rohmer-ish way.

_Three Can Love._ Arco, 1952.

_Touchable._ Arco, 1951. Probably much the same as above.

SCULLY, ROBERT. _A Scarlet Pansy._ N. Y., Faro, 1933, Hesor 1937, hcr. Reprinted and completely rewritten by Royal, no pub. no date, Baltimore, Oppenheimer, 30s and 40s. In 1950, D W Cory called this "the low point of the h.o.m.os.e.xual novel". A lot of trash has been written since, which makes this look simply silly. (m). A confusing novel of the "gay" world, including some butchy and peculiar lesbians.

SEELEY, E. S. _Sorority Sin._ Beacon pbo, 1959. scv.

SELA, LORA. (pseud of Carol Hales) _I Am a Lesbian._ Saber pbo, 1959. Would-be shocker about a poor innocent girl being pushed into love affairs with brutal boys, raped, etc, by cruel relatives and friends, when all that G.o.d wants of her, according to the author, is for her to be a Happy Well-Adjusted n.o.ble Lesbian. This isn't even scv, since the writers of s.e.xy trash usually know something about s.e.x or trash or both. Read it and snicker.

SETON, ANYA. _Katherine._ Houghton, 1954. (m. minor)

SHAW, WILENE. _The Fear and the Guilt._ pbo, Ace, 1954.

Softball-playing Ruby brings sweet-leech Christy to her Tobacco Road home. There, to disarm suspicion, Christy allows herself to be first seduced, then married, by Ruby's father. Sympathetic for a shocker, but oh, my!

SIDGWICK, ETHEL. _A Lady of Leisure._ Boston, Small, 1914. A pa.s.sionate, but quite innocent, attachment between women in their twenties.

SIMENON, GEORGES. _In Case of Emergency._ Doubleday 1958, pbr Dell 1959. A common theme-a good man enslaved by a worthless girl-is treated here by a very good European writer. A subplot deals with the attachment between the girl and her maidservant.

SINCLAIR, JO. (pseud. of Ruth Seid) _Wasteland._ Harper Bros.

1946. This is the excellent and heavily lauded Harper prize novel of that year. Told on the psychiatrist's couch, it concerns the failure of Jewish Jake Braunowitz to live up to his manhood ...

which forces this job onto the shoulders of his sister Debbie, a lesbian. The psychiatrist discovers that he ran from his responsibilities in the first place due to feeling weaker than the masterful intelligent Debbie; then, after forcing her to take a man's role in the family, he turns around and feels guilt and shame at her adjustment to the situation. Excellently done.

SPEERS, MARY. _We Are Fires Unquenchable._ Murray and Gee, Hollywood 1946. fco. A badly written, almost illiterate novel, the first few scenes of which are laid in a girl's college swarming with luridly treated lesbians and in an a.s.sortment of Bohemian settings.

+ SMITH, ARTEMIS. _Odd Girl._ Beacon pbo, 1959. The blurb reads "Life and love among warped women", but don't let it scare you.

This is one of the better and more serious approaches to the writing of a serious novel of lesbians through the stereotyped pattern of the paperback novel. The basic plot concerns Anne, and her experiences in trying to find out for herself, the hard way, whether she is a lesbian or whether she can successfully adjust to life as a normal woman. The story ends with the surprising, but growingly popular affirmation that "adjustment" is not always to be desired at all costs. The cover also calls this a story of "society's greatest curse", meaning h.o.m.os.e.xuality; but for once it isn't treated that way.

_The Third s.e.x._ pbo, Beacon, 1959. Most of the remarks made above also apply to this one, though the heroine is Joan, a college girl who fears that she is becoming a lesbian, and fights it by redoubling her affairs with men. Slightly more sensational than "Odd Girl", but well written, well thought out and generally excellent.

SMITH, DOROTHY EVELYN. _The Lovely Day._ N. Y., Dutton, 1957.

Interesting novel of an English village on a choir outing, contains a minor but funny account of an unconscious lesbian's decisions.

SMITH, Sh.e.l.lEY. (pseud. of Nancy Bodington.) _The Lord Have Mercy_, Harper 1956, pbr tct _The Shrew is Dead_, Dell 1959.

English mystery story; a major subplot involves a pair of lesbians.

SNEDEKER, CAROLINE DALE. _The Perilous Seat._ Doubleday, Doran 1929, marginal (m) in a juvenile of ancient Greece; the hero, being sold into slavery, attempts to disfigure himself to escape "the fate of handsome boys among the Persians."

STAFFORD, JEAN. _Boston Adventure._ Harcourt, 1944.

STEIN, GERTRUDE. _Things as They Are._ Banyan Press, Pawlet, Vermont. (Very rare; $25 and up second hand.) A novel by the well-known surrealist poet ... possibly her only coherent work ...

dealing with lesbianism.

STONE, SCOTT. _The Divorcees._ Beacon pbo 1955, released 1959 Evening waster about a racketeer who specializes in quick divorces, and his girl-friend who flirts with all the women as he disengages them from their husbands.

_Margo._ Beacon pbo 1955, released 1959. scv.

_Blaze._ Berkley pbo or pbr, n. d. no data except "trash".

SOUBIRAN, ANDRe. _Bedlam._ Putnam 1957, pbr Pyramid 1959, (m) minor.

STONEBRAKER, FLORENCE. _Sinful Desires._ pbr Bedside Books, 1959.

(previous paperback, publisher unknown, ca. 1951). Silly novel about a married woman briefly captivated by a stereotyped lesbian.

+ STURGEON, THEODORE. (pseud. of Edward Hamilton Waldo). "Affair with a Green Monkey". Venture Science Fiction May 1957; also in _A Touch of Strange_, Doubleday 1959.

"The s.e.x Opposite". in _E. Pluribus Unicorn_, Abelard 1952, Ballantine pbr 1953.

"The World Well Lost" in _E Pluribus Unicorn._ Many of Sturgeon's other short stories and novelettes touch on extremely strange, offbeat relations.h.i.+ps.

+ SWADOS, FELICE. _House of Fury._ Doubleday 1941, pbr Lion 1955, Berkley 1959. One of the better paperbacks, dealing with racial tensions and muted lesbian attachments in a girl's reformatory.

SWINBURNE, ALGERNON. _Lesbia Brandon._ Falcon Press 1952, edited and annotated by Randolph Hughes. A famous incomplete novel by the well-known poet, for students rather than readers. Really only a handful of scattered chapters, too sc.r.a.ppy to judge; see also poetry supplement.

SYDNEY, GALE. _Strange Circle._ Beacon Books pbo 1959, 1960. Grace Garney, feeling unwanted, gets a job with Mrs. Flocke, a repulsive lesbian, and repels a pa.s.s; this, however, revives childhood memories, and during a rift in her affairs with a man, she has a brief affair with Inez, a friend with an unsatisfactory husband.

Evening waster.

SYKES, GERALD. _The Center of the Stage._ N. Y., Farrar 1952, pbr Signet 1954. Witty novel of the theatre, with a minor lesbian character.

TAYLOR, DYSON. _Bitter Love._ orig. copyright 1952, Pyramid 1958, (m). Worldly woman marries a h.o.m.os.e.xual who wants her for a "front".

TAYLOR, JOHN. _Shadows of Shame._ Pyramid 1956, 1959, (m).

TAYLOR, VALERIE. _Whisper Their Love._ Crest pbo 1957.