Nights Beneath The Nation

Denis Kehoe

Serpent’s Tail

ISBN 9 781846 686795

This is a novel about ‘Daniel Ryan’, who is in his late sixties, written by Denis Kehoe, who is in his early twenties.  The blurb on the cover of this edition quotes a review by David Norris.  He says, among other things, that it is a “a feat of creative memory”.  The ‘memory’ is what disturbs me, rather than the ‘creative’.  Daniel Ryan is from a hick town in south west Ireland.  The people who live there are boring and lead dull straitened lives.  The Spanish Civil war erupts into the narrative at one point.  A “red faced” priest denounces the Spanish Republic and urges support for a man called Franco.  Daniel’s father, who fought in the War of Independence (but appears never to discuss the matter), for no clear reason wants to go and fight against Franco.

Franco (not particularly prominent at the start of the military rebellion) and the Falange (which he gutted of its radical politics) were not nice, but there are problems with this cliché.  The pro-Franco Irish Christian Front was a mass movement, and the Connolly Column (whose personnel included an Irish Christian Brother) was small.  The Spanish Republic might have become the ‘last great cause’ in the Irish Republic relatively recently, but contemporary Christians had a right to be affronted by the behaviour of some of the Republic’s supporters.  They burned down churches, monasteries, and nunneries, and killed priests, nuns and other ‘religious’, in their thousands.  They alienated the peasants who would have supported the Republic if it had simply redistributed the land.

Some other matter does not ring true.  Daniel’s father is a barber by trade, young Daniel helping out on busy days.  The men talk dreary ‘culchie’ talk of the sort one would hear in any market town.

Really?

Was this the only town ‘Éire’ that did not have clashes (especially one would have thought on market-day) between the Blueshirts and the IRA?

Did nobody discuss Fianna Fáil’s policies, like redistribution of the land into thirty acre parcels, the introduction of Búnreacht Éireann (De Valera’s Constitution – ‘bunreacht’ implies ‘fundamental law’)?  Did the ‘Economic War’ between Éire and the UK pass these agricultural producers by?  Was nobody in this (cough) bog-standard Irish town interested in ‘the Missions’, that gigantic enterprise which absorbed the energies of millions of Irish Catholic women and men over generations?

On a mundane level was it only town in the ‘Free State’ not wangling for a sugar factory?

There are other un-truisms.  Már shampla, WW2 was ‘the Emergency’.  A trip to the National Library and a squint at war time newspapers (they were the size of restaurant menus) would demonstrate this to be drivel.  So, too, would a scan of Parliamentary Reports.  Debates, in the Dáil and the Seanad, about – nearly everything – contained references to ‘the war’.  ‘Emergency’ regulations were introduced.  Technically, some were not lifted until 1973.  That would certainly have been made the occasion to belittle ‘Ireland’, if the pretence about the war had not proved more useful.

A fib bruited about over decades is still a fib.

In 1950 Daniel goes to Dublin as a civil servant, (Department unspecified), it too, is full of dreary people.  He joins the Dramatic Society.  It is going to put on Easter Parade.  That seems a bit unlikely.  A recent (1948) musical Easter Parade would have needed singing actors, dancers, dance directors, a choreographer, musicians, a full orchestra, music directors and a conductor.  Possibly another music director would be needed for the chorus.  The composer, Richard Rogers’s contribution is pretty lavish.  This is apart from an over-all producer / director, and money for royalties.

Most amateur drama societies in Ireland were, (and are), quite ambitious.  A number of projects, Belfast’s Lyric Theatre and Circle Theatre (the latter burned to the ground in 1970) arose out of purely amateur endeavours.  The denizens of Donaghmore in deepest culchie-land (Tyrone) built themselves a theatre – because they wanted one.  The Stephens Boyd and Rea, Liam Neeson, and many others, were graduates of this amateur endeavour.  A Civil Service Department DramSoc would probably have had something substantial in mind.

Daniel mentions (p 163) “political plays from England” — in 1950?  English theatre had been plunged into verse drama, stretching the word ‘drama’ a rather long way, for some years by 1950.  It was apolitical (meaning reactionary-to-conservative).  ‘England’ here may stand for the whole of Great Britain.  Wales produced political plays — in Welsh.  Scotland produced some too, mostly written by Paul Vincent Carroll, a native of Dundalk.  John Whiting wrote fairly ‘political’ (prose) plays, he was, and still is, unpersonned.  (The UK’s establishment makes the erstwhile USSR’s look like the rank amateurs they were, at this game).

Daniel joins a ‘real’ AmDram Soc.  It is putting on Lorca’s Blood Wedding.  (Purely as ‘theatre’ is Blood Wedding all that superior to Easter Parade?  I only ask…).  The group is run by ‘Bohemian’ types, one is a Gay man who fought in Spain.  He is famous in Dublin, (‘Ireland’ being put in its culchie, uncultured, box), for being Gay and a former International Brigader.

Both of which seem somewhat unlikely.

Also involved in this, let’s be serious, rather precious venture is Anthony.  He is a perfect example of an ‘Ascendancy’ left-over.  He’s not.  He is from a wealthy Catholic background.  He hates his parents and will repudiate his family.  Just as soon as he gets his (expensive) degree, from Trinity [College, Dublin - TCD].  Why would his backward mere Irish parents allow him to attend TCD?  It wasn’t much ‘cop’ as a tertiary college at that time.  A Fianna Fáil government saved it from closing down.  It gave Trinity a huge grant and sent in the building restorers to save and preserve the fabric of the place.  (The ‘Inter-Party’ Government of the late 1940s engaged in straightforward, (tight-fisted), sectarianism in regard to TCD.)

Anthony’s parents send him to see a psychiatrist because of his homosexuality.  This is deemed to be reactionary and unenlightened.  (In the UK and the US in 1950, he would have been given electric shock ‘treatment’, put in baths of ‘dry ice’, or possibly subjected to lobotomy.   The latter involves flipping the scull-cap off the head, exposing the brain – then flicking a scalpel through the frontal lobes.  These – essentially magical – practices allegedly ‘cured’ the ‘defect’. They often reduced the ‘patient’ to a ‘vegetative’ state – or induced forms of epilepsy.

Were psychiatrists’ particularly prominent in post-WW2 Ireland?  Would not these sad benighted people (his parents) be more inclined to send him to a priest?  Possibly even a priest-psychiatrist.  Though possibly not a Freudian, the Pope (Pius XII)’s denunciation of the ‘pan-sexual’ implications of Freudianism used to be brought forward as evidence of the reactionary nature of Popery.  Then feminists began to say much the same thing…

Daniel becomes starry-eyed about Anthony.  Among other things he can “speak three European languages” whereas Daniel can only speak English and Irish (two European languages, surely?).  Anthony eventually commits suicide in a manner that would satisfy the most demanding drama-queen.  This is made the platform for another attack on Irish mores of the time.  A big fuss is made of the suicide and of the homosexual nature their relationship.  But surely that sort of gross publicity was characteristic of the British press?

When the British stopped sending people to prison for attempting to commit suicide, they took to sneering at Irish attitudes to suicide.  Irish courts and coroners tended to imply that, (to British journalists’ at least) grossly obvious suicides were accidents.  This was due to ingrained stupidity and the (RC) Church’s inculcation of horror at self-murder.  That such verdicts forced insurance firms to shell out money to the deceased’s relatives never struck them.  There was also a tendency, in Ireland, to discretion about such matters.  Ripping open still-throbbing psychological wounds was a Fleet Street speciality.  The police connived at this sort of ‘cover up’.  Daniel, (despite the trauma he has suffered), is put on the boat to America by his loving, but uncomprehending parents.  They (being culchie chumps) had presumably never encountered the names and reputations of Roger Casement or Oscar Wilde.

Daniel rails about Ireland being backward and, in a vague way, not left wing.  In New York City he becomes a wealthy businessman.  Presumably he jettisoned his implied political principles in mid-Atlantic.  (Leftist nice guys don’t make fortunes in New York City).  He returns to Ireland half a century on – and is still annoyed by the place, largely for the same reasons.  The place is still backward.  (The usual expatriate’s reason is that too much has changed — Ireland, and in particular Dublin changed drastically – spectacularly – between 1950 and 2000 – and not necessarily for the better).  He strikes up a relationship with ‘Gerard’  (Denis Kehoe?  Is there a touch of the roman-á-clef about this artistic endeavour?).  Gerard is compiling a history of queer Ireland.  (Or maybe just Dublin.  After all, a queer history of Ballymena or Ballydehob is simply unimaginable).  A lot of the action of the book involves Daniel and Gerard’s – ‘testy’ is the only word – relationship.

This book, you might gather from the above critique is rubbish — it isn’t — it is very well written and is a lively read.  So long as the reader bears in mind that the ‘Ireland’ presented here is as fanciful as the one presented in John Ford’s film The Quiet Man.

Homo Jihad

Timothy Graves

Paradise Press

ISBN 978-1-904585-15-2

Timothy Graves studied Drama and English, his central character David Underwood studied English and Drama and teaches in a London primary school.  Mr Underwood does not come across as a particularly pleasant individual.  (It is clearly something of a roman-á-clef.  To preserve to the editor’s peace of mind, the rest of this review will be carefully worded).  Underwood, like Timothy Graves, lives and works in east London, specifically Bethnal Green (there is a reference to “the ‘Respect’ party” – note the suitably slighting single quotes around the name).  He gives every indication that he has not met any of the large, local (mainly Bengali-origin) Muslim community, in a social situation.

He has encountered at least one Muslim in his adventures in London’s sweaty, drug-laden Gay discos.  He admits to himself at one point that he absorbs industrial quantities of (apparently, industrial solvent).  This is a diverting aspect of this novel, Timothy Graves, one suspects, sat down to write a book denouncing Islam – and realised that his own life was not all that wonderful.  It consists of doing his minimal duty as a primary school teacher (the school being full of ‘third world’ – mostly Muslim – kids) and getting off his tits in discos most weekends.  He appears not to have much of a social life outside of that, not even encountering his neighbours in laundrettes or supermarkets.  (I recall the look of distaste on a young Muslim man’s face having to handle pork – even when wrapped in plastic – it was the ‘Co’ [-op, for the uncultured] on Mile End Road).  Maybe he doesn’t like plebes of any description. (Non-English people don’t really ‘get’ the ‘Anglo’ obsession with class).

One Muslim he does encounter is ‘Ahmed’ a suitably classy Arab, he recounts a journey to north London to find Ahmed, it’s unnecessarily complicated.  He travels from Bethnal Green to Crouch End or Muswell Hill.  One complication is that Ahmed is, of course, about to be forced into an arranged marriage (that the woman involved is in the same boat as him doesn’t strike either man, or the author).  There are hopes that his smooth, civilised, ‘westernised’ parents might relent and let him become a partner of a drug-ridden lower middle class Brit.  (They don’t – and Ahmed has to escape back to that well-known oxymoron ‘Western civilisation’.)

David has had a relationship with an Israeli, who survived a Palestinian ‘human-bomb’ attack.  This is presented as the sort of anti-human thing a Muslim might be expected to do.  Though some such people have been of Christian origin.  He travels to Israel to visit his lover.  He discovers why Palestinians might be inclined to engage in (essentially, counter-attacking) the Israelis.   They are forced to live in vile conditions.  Ahmed appears in Jerusalem.  He has dual citizenship with his Emirate and Egypt.  The Israeli passport authorities are decidedly un-welcoming.  What they would have done if he told them he was going to meet a Gay lover from England is left unsaid.

The above may seem a bit offhand, even hostile, but I enjoyed reading this.  There is certainly plenty of action and the characters develop over the period of the narrative.  Timothy Graves is, one hopes, hard at work on another narrative

Paradise Press is I’ve been told, designed for first time authors.  I’ve also been told TG forked-out three hundred quid (£300!) to a sub-editor.  He should bring whoever it was to the Small Claims Court.  On page 188 – chosen randomly – there is a mention of a ‘bloc’ of flats, with ‘rizzlas’ lying about the stair well.  There are other – infelicities – but this is a vigorous, readable narrative.  You will almost certainly  – ‘enjoy’ is hardly the word – be moved, reading it.

Seán McGouran

G•A•A•Y

Jarlath Gregory

Sitric Books

ISBN1-903305-15-20

a son called gabriel

Damian McNicholl

Legend Press

ISBN 9 781906 558079

These two books, published 2005 (G•A•A•Y), and 2008 (a son called gabriel), date from the days when (presumably snooty / numpty editors from the more salubrious bits of Dublin or London) told potential authors that the GAA was simply everything that was wrong with ‘Eye-land’. Then Dónal Óg Cusack came out and the hairy yahoos of the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) greeted this with a subdued ‘good on you, mate’. Oops! ‘…new balls, please’.

Of the two books G•A•A•Y is the livelier and somewhat better written. The central character is Anto Broderick, whose means of making a living – he works in a call centre – and of disporting himself when not working, (he is big on competitive disco dancing), are explained. Anto is a child of the Celtic Tiger (since publication of G•A•A•Y subject of serious mange) and calls his twitter account Capitalist Kid. The only ‘political’ element in the book is a sneering reference to badly dressed ‘Lefties’ (they actually seems to be Greens) whinging about… something.

In so far as there is a story (he lusts after his sister’s boyfriend – but really gets nowhere) it is about Anto (not quite) growing up. It is written in a very lively mode, but not, thank the Abstract Entity in working class ‘Dublinese’ (Trainspotting is a probably a great read, I gave up two pages in… plebeian Edinburgh (actually Leith) patois defeating me). There are (very small) elements Jarlath Gregory ought to have reconsidered, possibly the standard-issue ‘fag-hag’, and certainly the lesbophobic reporting if an incident concerning his GAA-mad mother. Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the GAA (represented in every parish on the island of Ireland) must have realised it is a very ‘broad church’. Sectarian abuse of Protestant players in the North was very quickly nipped in the bud. (A big problem for those witch-hunting ‘anti-gay’ sport is that soccer is the worst offender, and English soccer is outstandingly homophobic.)

Nobody would accuse Jarlath Gregory of being particularly subtle, neither is Damian McNichol, but at one point in his narrative his character Gabriel realises that his (you guessed it — GAA mad) father is inarticulate rather than disapproving. But on the whole this is a rather lumpily-written book. His mother, at one point denounces homosexuality as an ‘abomination’ (one can only assume that said numpties in his London-based publishers told him that’s how people in the Ulster countryside described such things. Ulster country – and urban – mothers might avert their eyes from early-adolescent fumblings. Hysteria about such things was the remit of the middle classes. There is other use of language that struck me as over-blown, partly as if the author thought people ought to use the sort of language appropriate to an Important Theme.

Gabriel is a bookish boy in a fairly sporty family ('sporty' and 'bookish' are still antinomies for Anglo publishers.

The story is pretty straightforward, Gabriel is a bookish boy in a fairly sporty family (‘sporty’ and ‘bookish’ are still antinomies for Anglo publishers. Despite the fact that most – male – English authors seem to be sports- (in particular soccer-mad)). He gets to a grammar school and does – by and large – well academically. He has problems with bullies and, of course, encounters a priest who gives him a blow-job. Then, because Gabriel ‘touts’ on him, is sent to be ‘cured’ somewhere in England. Quite why he isn’t sent to the US or ‘the South’ is not explained. Gabriel seems to be somewhat snobbish. He decides to go to university in England (this may be ‘Ulster-speak’ for Great Britain – even when Plaid Cymru and the SNP are flying high – we tend to overlook the bits stuck on the end of ‘England’), and not a local or a ‘Southern’ one.

It’s difficult to understand why Gabriel decides on do this – he has a kind-of relationship with an upper middle class Protestant girl – maybe he hopes he’ll be ‘cured’ by having heterosex with her. He might look forward to becoming a ‘plastic Paddy’, minus giveaway accent and with an Oxbridge degree. (The sort of person most English people can spot at half a kilometre’s distance.) He might simply take the same attitude as most British students. In the days between the ending of National Service and the re-introduction of fees, they attempted to get as far away from their parents as possible. (Male) students in Northern Ireland take their washing home at the weekend.

This is a pleasing book and generally well written, (but the climax of the tale is melodramatic and not really believable). I don’t want to give a bad impression of it, but some elements in this novel simply do not ring true. A working class boy (culchie or town-bred) would not have Gabriella’s attitude to his own sexuality. That is not to say that he would not have guilt problems – but this is set in the 1970s, for Heaven’s sake. Gabriel (‘in real life’) would have phoned Cara-Friend’s telephone service for advice about what was available in the university and environs, he was intending to depart to.

Read the book and make up your own mind. You won’t feel that you’ve wasted your time – and may feel that I have been unfair to it. Contact us and tell us your own attitude to this — and everything else we deal with.

Seán McGouran

Joy Melville

Haus Publishing

ISBN9781-90591-91-0

Diaghilev and Friends

I wondered about the price (£20) of this lavishly produced book. Then noticed it was Printed in China. Another cohort of Western workers to be made redundant! The book has 290 thick, glossy pages. There are 29 full colour reproductions of portraits and costume and set designs and 59 black and white drawings, ‘snaps’ and portraits of Diaghilev and various friends (and enemies). The fly cover has on the back a ‘colourised’ photo-portrait of Sergei Pavlovitch (looking very pink -faced — he was noticeably pale). The front of the fly-cover (and page 40) bears a portrait (by Serov) of Diaghilev in a peasant shirt. And a vaguely ‘camp’ pose.

Joy Melville insists that he did not like camp or effeminate men. She writes (page 33) “[h]omosexuality was not encouraged within the Ballets Russes… Diaghilev’s own homosexuality and his love affair with Nijinsky left its stamp on ballet and created a lasting question about male dancers, whose public image has for years been unfairly regarded as homosexual.” Why “unfairly”? She gives, in ‘Gentlemen’s Mischief’, a history of (male) homosexuality in Russia. The first anti-Gay laws, introduced in the early eighteenth century, were a bow to western Europe’s ‘modernity’, Russia rushed to ‘keep up’. The suicides of Gogol and Tchaikovsky are noted. So are the laws and bourgeois social views of ‘the West’, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the US, (states in which the Ballets Russes tarried for lengthy periods) Argentina and Brazil could be added to the list.

Diaghilev took an interest in peasant art – but wasn’t especially sentimental about ‘Holy Russia’. His first act as an ‘impresario’ was organising a great exhibition of paintings from western Europe. Russia having, still, something of a ‘cultural cringe’. (Belfast gets a mention in this context in relation to one of the exhibitors, John Lavery). Sergei Pavlovitch’s great success was an exhibition of Russian art. He bustled through great – and not so great – houses throughout Russia to find this material. The Tsar, Nicholas II, supplied money for some of Diaghilev’s enterprises. He, Nicholas, may not have been quite the dunderhead he has been pictured as, by the Bolsheviks — and the Brits. He may have grasped the ‘soft power’ implications of Russia being seen as a cultural powerhouse.

Diaghilev first brought this material to Paris, then an opera company, which had an important effect. But he decided in 1908, to put all his efforts into a ballet company, prior to this he hadn’t been particularly ballet-conscious. The Ballets Russes focused all of his previous work. He used untried composers (like Stravinsky and Prokoviev) and the painters he had cultivated in Russia. He also found a choreographer, Fokine, whose talent was on a level with Stravinsky’s.

Diaghilev and Friends

The history of the company is, for the uninitiated well told, but a bit unsatisfying for those with some knowledge of this unique phenomenon. The sexual politics of Diaghilev’s love life is touched on. Nijinsky has been pictured recently as less of a Holy Innocent than previously thought. Nijinsky produced some remarkable ballets. The Rite of Spring‘s choreography caused as much outrage as Stravinsky’s score (Stravinsky tended to talk-down Nijinsky’s contribution to that famous event). Nijinsky married his Hungarian ‘fan’ Romola de Pulszky in Buenos Aires. Diaghilev was outraged (he was in mourning to an extent) and cast him into the exterior darkness. (This has been disputed in other texts.)

He later gave Nijinsky the job of managing the Ballets Russes on a tour of the USA. Vaslav Fomitch was not up to running the company in Sergei Pavlovitch’s absence. Nijinsky was already suffering the mental incapacity which led to his being institutionalised for three decades. (There were other problems like Nijinsky’s house arrest in Hungary as an ‘enemy alien’. Diaghilev mobilised several Presidents and the Pope to ‘spring’ Vaslav Fomitch). Diaghilev’s later choreographers / lovers Massine and Lifar were, to an extent, using him.

This shouldn’t be over-egged they were both in their teens when he decided to become their patron. Massine is described as being “overworked” by an English patron of the Ballets Russes. Both had successful professional lives after Diaghilev. Anton Dolin (Patrick Healey-Kay) had an affair with Serge Pavlovitch. He later formed what is now the English National Ballet. George Balanchine (culturally probably entirely Russian, but ethnically Georgian — he had a composer-brother) didn’t have sexual relations with him. Nor did Nijinsky’s sister Bronislava Nijinska. (Massine sneered about Diaghilev being sexually rather easily pleased.)

This emphasis on the sexual aspect may read rather oddly – but this is a Gay publication – and it is rather important. Diaghilev was one of the first public figures, anywhere, to take the attitude that the public had to lump his homosexuality or leave it. The long-term effect of that was liberationist. The short-term effect in ‘Anglo-Saxondom” was that real masculine males (people whose sexuality is often quite fragile) did not take up ballet. A fair number of up-front, talented queers did. There was no great artistic loss. Despite nervousness on the part of some commentators, including, it seems Ms Melville, author of a number of biographies of strong women.

Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes became somewhat less ‘Russes’ after the 1917 Revolution. He became, for a time, avant grade for the sake of being avant garde. But much of this material has stood the test of time. The choreographers are noted above (and some produced useful work for decades after Sergei Pavlovitch’s death. Some founded or restored great companies, the New York City Ballet, the (British) Royal Ballet, the ballet of the Paris Opéra, and their many spins-off. The artists included Picasso, de Chirico, Léger, Dalí, the composers Satie, Poulenc, Constant Lambert and many others. There were still plenty of Russians, in the background, as well as up front, on stage, or providing the music or ideas for the ballets.

The text is very well written and provides all the information a reader would need (possibly a chronology of Sergei Pavlovitch’s work could be added). A small (not to say tiny) irritant is Joy Melville’s shoving bits of general information into the text for ‘context’ presumably. Some of it is misleading, on page 174 it is claimed “the IRA was founded” in 1919. The Irish Republican Army (which fought the War of Independence) was founded on April 28th 1916. Ms Melville writes (of the IRA) it was formed “in Ireland”. The Fenians in America formed an Irish Republican Army after the Civil War. It staged a – credible – invasion of Canada. Belfast’s second mention is on this page “there were shipbuilding strikes in Belfast an on the Clyde”. It was a huge strike, spearheaded by Belfast, and included London, involving railway workers and miners. The Orange-Unionist authorities broke the strike using sectarian violence. There was no ‘Red Lagan’ to go with Red Clydeside.

Áine ni Phól

* In Gay’s The Word

Book Review

• Understand what you are reading
• Gather information on the book as you read it
• Find out more about the author and any previous works
• Begin with an introduction
• Break the review into sections:

1. First section, brief history of the author and some relevant data,
2. Second section outline the plot of the book, but remember don’t spoil it for the future reader
3. Third section write a paragraph explaining your opinion of the way the book was written
4. Use the final paragraph as a summary of the whole review.  Give your star rating of the book, i.e.

Details of book also required:  Title, No of pages, HB/PB,  cost (if known), ISBN No.

Include your name and email address, and if you want a small bio on yourself

Title of book:

Author: Barbara Gibson

Publication date: 1995

Pages: 172

The plot:

• Male order is a collection of life stories from people who sell sex on the streets of London
• The stories range from those on the fringe of society to those with all the riches necessary for a high lifestyle.

The characters:

• Madser from Ireland
• Jason/Zoe from Wales
• Paul from Wales
• Simon/Simone from Woodford
• Ryan from North London
• Adam born in Germany but British

Highlights:

All of these boys/men have suffered during their life, both during their childhood and later as adults.  Society has not done them any favours!  All suffer from various illnesses at various times, and all have a potential which due to their circumstances have not been fulfilled.

Be prepared for shocks and on occasion’s revulsion, but don’t put the book down

Any weak bits?

• The book is now dated and it is reflected in both the writing and also because you are left wondering if it is relevant to today.  A not very specific search on the Internet threw up these various articles, e.g.
• 11 year olds selling gay sex as rent boys
• A rent boy’s story
• Boys of 15 forced into sex trade

It would seem that life hasn’t changed to a large degree – and with the current recession in all probability the incidences will grow!

Unputdownable?

• It is not show stopper of a book, but it is worth persevering with.

Your rating (1-5 star): 3 ½ stars

Bel Ami by Howard Roffman

Bruno Gmünder

ISBN 9 783867 870375

This is what used to be called a ‘coffee table’ book – they tend to be ‘art’ books or big fat books about graphics, dance, the cinema and such like.  This one contains a couple of hundred pages of photographs of young men (mostly, probably, in their teens) naked.  Or at least not overdressed.  The ‘private moments’ include doubles, trebles and foursomes.  In the Bel Ami manner the boys are not extraordinarily handsome.  They aren’t plug-uglies either.  Some have ‘interesting’ rather than blandly ‘handsome’ faces.

The ‘private moments’ aren’t intensely sexual either, though the target audience -Gay men – almost certainly, wouldn’t mind interposing their own bodies between some of these.  They mostly aren’t ‘muscle Mary’s’ either.  Though a boy in the first set of ‘moments’ has the look of a jolly young Hercules.  Some of the boys pictured within look quite fragile.  There are only three people with dark hair – and only one with darkish skin – I realise this is not a sociological study… but.  One of the dark haired boys is something of a Nicholas Hoult look-alike.

The facial expressions range from the cheeky, to slightly shy (even holding another chap’s virile member) to boys who obviously ‘fancy themselves’.  Most are just charmingly friendly – unlike a lot of Gay porn.  The membra virile look as if they are attached to human beings — unlike the air-brushed items one sees in (mostly, American) porn.  Some of the boys are ‘well made’.  Nobody is particularly weenie.

It is clear in some cases that not much is really happening on the sexual front.  In one picture, one boy is clearly not sucking off the other — but that may have to do with the photographer enabling the spectator to imagine himself in the place of the other, crouching, boy.  But the book is not ‘raw prawn’.  There is some mild[ish] porn in some wanking scenes.  The fact that the boys are masturbating themselves is slightly alienating – though one (twenty-something?) boy looks, apparently, rather longingly at his fellow-poser’s cock.  There are a number of pages showing two very attractive boys engaging in mutual masturbation.

Howard Roffman in some of the outdoor scenes produced an effect of deep perspective, as in paintings.  (Jim Sweeney of Gay’s The Word bookshop suggested I should have something ‘arty’ in a review.)  The individual pictures are beautiful.  The human figures in them do help, quite a lot.  It is useful if Aunt Megs (the one with the money) discovers it in your grisly gaff – it is ‘art’ after all.  Roffman used a digital camera to produce these genuinely exquisite images.  I have decided I am deeply in lust with a chunky boy with longish dark hair.  (Sad, really, isn’t it?)

If you have a mate who likes photography, loitering about art galleries and attractive boys with no clothes on – buy him this book.  Or buy it for yourself – you’ll enjoy it.

Seán McGouran

Simon Gage

Lisa Richards

Howard Wilmot

Thunder’s Mouth Press

distributed by Publishing Group West

ISBN 1-56025-377-0

This big chunky ‘coffee table’ book is authored by three Brits, and published in the US of A.  That’s about as cosmopolitan as it gets.  It is very colourful, but reads more like a collection of articles from the airhead end of queer journalism.  Gay News is described as “hokey and… worthy” which is inaccurate.  The book dates from the good old pre-’credit crunch’ days.  We were all escalating into post-Soviet capitalist Nirvana.  Then the escalator — malfunctioned.

The authors are resolutely low brow (despite the fact that they almost certainly have at least one university degree apiece) and personality-bound.  I can’t really be the only Gay person to think that Absolutely Fabulous was quite funny, on a good night.  And that Judy Garland was a tiresome lush who couldn’t really sing.

We get Hollywood and Queers.  Who really gives a toss what Hollywood thought of queers?  There’s a string of articles about Gay women and men in pop – but not really in rock – music.  Opera singer Maria Callas is mentioned, in passing, as a ‘diva’.  Gay composers aren’t, but there have been plenty of them, Barber, Britten, Boulez — Tchaikovsky is mentioned as exotica, and to push-up the ‘non-Anglo’ count.

For some reason (Art College background?) painters are pretty prominent.  But not film directors.  Ballet is mentioned in relation to Nureyev, Man in pantyhose.  It’s a fairly glib gallop through his career.  The writer is not (or pretends not to be) interested in ballet as a form.  A third of this short piece is about his attitude to the AIDS that killed him.  The article is decorated with a silhouette of a (female) dancer, complete with tutu.  Don Milligan’s website’s Home Page has a fabulous nude photograph of the twenty-something Nureyev.  In his prime he was physically stunning.

Peter Tatchell is mentioned in relation to ‘outing’, as is NGLTF (the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (US)).  The pervading personality cult is not followed through on the political end of things.  We are, probably, meant to infer that reforms just happened, presumably through the gratuitous grace of straight legislators.  The relations between Gay News and CHE (the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (Britain, i. e. England and Wales)) and NIGRA are not noted.  Not even Stonewall is mentioned.  And certainly no non-Anglo-Saxon Gay liberation or rights groups.  Scandinavia was ahead of the pack on our rights by at least twenty years.

It’s a prettily produced book — and it’s your money — buy it if you want.

Seán McGouran

(Ed.) Michael Ford

DartonŸLongman+Todd

ISBN 0-232-52561-7

This is a series of interviews with (mostly male) Gays about their relationships with each other and various Christian churches.  The churches are mostly the Anglican and the Roman Catholic.  The striking cover is supplied by Christiaan Snyman (Christiannsnyman@yahoo.com ) a former member of the Dutch Reformed Church.  The latter is described as “the state religion” in Apartheid South Africa, which isn’t quite accurate.  England’s colonies may have had (Anglican) Established churches the Dutch Republics did not.  Apartheid was also backed by the Most Reformed Church.  The anti-Apartheid jibe was ‘Deformed’ and ‘Most Deformed’.  Christiaan is now what Michael Ford describes as a “mystical” Christian, as opposed to a member of a formal church body.  Being a member of such a body means many things.

Michael Harank is interviewed.  Belfast people may recall he was a speaker at our first Pride ‘ethical’ discussion.  He described himself then as “an American queer Catholic”.  Someone phoned BBC Radio Ulster’s Talk Back to say he didn’t want to hear Michael.  He hated all three items in the self-description.  Michael’s contribution is up beat – a ‘must read’ – he is a long time member of the Catholic Worker Movement.

Belfast comes into Disclosures by way of PA MagLochlainn, President of NIGRA (the NI Gay Rights Association).  PA comes across as rather dry and cerebral.  He isn’t.  As those of us who’ve been at the receiving end of his excruciating puns well know.  But he has made up his mind.  At the other end of the scale – in terms of age, if not belief – is ‘Julian’.  He is a music student and interested in Roman Catholicism.  This book was published in 2004.

Advice is probably now redundant.  He should ‘suck it and see’ to coin a phrase.  He will find the average ‘Papist in the pew’ usually has a radically different attitude to Gay women and men than do the bureaucrats in the Vat.  There are a number of stories here about Catholic priests (‘secular’ and ‘regular’ – meaning ordinary parochial priests and members of Orders) who have had very bad experiences, with the Church as a bureaucracy.  Woytola (John Paul II) great man though he was, imported aspects of the Kremlin’s outlook into the Vatican.  He wanted to look out and see a Church like a machine in the hands of man at the top.

He provoked Catholics in the Rhineland by directly appointing bishops.  There had been a centuries (nearly a millennium)-old input from the faithful.  He refused to shake the hands of a Cabinet Minister in Nicaragua (a priest and adherent of Liberation theology).  The current incumbent of the Throne of Peter is pursuing the same policies, without his predecessor’s great charisma, which made some of his sins against the virtue of charity forgivable.

The date of publication may account for the (somewhat, somewhat – it appears to me) smug attitude of (some) Anglicans.  They may have been made aware of the fact that many in their ranks are like the more obviously Evangelical sects.  They tend to know that queers are destined for Hell fire.  Roman Catholicism, (traditionally anyway), is rarely as prescriptive — ‘twixt the stirrup and the ground something lost and something found’ and all that — (a reference to Saint Paul).

Michael Ford found a lot of his interviewees (a cold word for what in some cases must have been intense encounters — as well as some heartening ones like those with Michael Harank and Patrick Mulcahey in San Francisco) in London.  They include the one representation of Orthodoxy in the book.  One lesbian couple – living in Macclesfield – are Evangelicals.  They have had problems with other Evangelicals, and with the local press, which enjoys sensationalising homosexuality.

The latter seems to be the case nearly everywhere — Northern Ireland’s Sunday World and Sunday Life, are cases in point.  The pompous Belfast Telegraph pontificates, mostly negatively, and takes Cara-Friend’s money for regular advertisements.  It has some columnists who are pretty homophobic.  Admittedly the Irish News and the NewsLetter have always taken a reasonable line on matters Gay.  And the younger generation of journalists have no problems reporting said matters positively.

On this subject, Michael Ford writes, “conservative views are… deeply embedded in… Protestant and Catholic communities” in Northern Ireland.  This is demonstrably not accurate.  It is true to say that in opinion poll after opinion poll locals claimed they are not fond of fairy folk.  (In the 1970s nobody admitted that they would vote for Sinn Féin.  When they got a chance to vote SF they did so in increasing numbers).  Recently, the percentage of persons responding to an opinion poll who took a dim view of queers, increased dramatically.  But so did the crowds coming out to view the Pride Dander.  As does the number of local politicians who want to be seen walking with the queers.  (And, the May Day demonstration has Pape, Prod, Jew and “Turk”, and non-believers on it.  It’s as well not to get too precious about our Dander.)

Practically any Gay woman or man would benefit from reading this book.  I am an atheist (but probably better described as agnostic – not that it matters) and was fascinated by it.  I was particularly fascinated by the intense cultural hold religion has over people.  Noisy ‘secularists’ would probably describe such people as, — in effect, childish, — or as suffering from a psychological need, due to a failure to be as adult as they are.  Most of the people of this book are not from a ‘hard science’ background.  Patrick Mulcahey, mentioned above, has won Emmy awards for is television scripts, young ‘Julian’ is a musician, Christiaan is a professional singer as well as painter.

A person with a specifically scientific background would have been interesting.  The ‘two cultures’ business is not endemic to the whole ‘Anglosphere’, Ireland seems to have avoided it.  Father Austin Eustace, a parochial priest in deepest Tyrone (and not Gay, so far as one knows) has a doctorate in physics from MIT.  He founded Tyrone Crystal a co-operative enterprise.  He was moved from a lectureship in Coleraine to Tyrone.

Seán McGouran