A Different Stripe

"The uncomplaining homosexuals"; or, The difference between J.R. Ackerley and Philip Roth

Both Mr. Roth’s book and Ackerley’s are sexual “confessions.” In both, sexual honesty is a first premise: presumably, if we are honest about our sexual selves, we cannot be false to any man or woman, and we are on the way to saying something useful about the general life of feeling, perhaps even about the general life of humankind. It turns out, however, that strangely different enterprises can proceed from the same premise. Portnoy, full of complaint because of his sexual fate, is bent on tracking down the source of his grievances. He needs a culprit and he finds it, or them. The “myself” of My Father and Myself has no complaint against anyone or anything. He is innocent of all impulse to place blame for his sexual situation–unlike Portnoy, who thinks his parents took the id out of Yid, it never occurs to Ackerley to accuse his parents of putting the oy in Goy.

This from Diana Trilling's joint review of Portnoy's Complaint and My Father and Myself published in Harper's in 1969. Now that Lionel Trilling is getting rehabilitated, maybe it's time to take another look at Diana. Her essay is clear, intelligent, and entertaining, plus, she prefers the book we publish, or at least deems it the "more masculine–if that word still has meaning–of the two books" under review. She also has a surprisingly ho-hum take on homosexuality:

There are men who want women, and men who want men: the variation between the two is no more remarkable than the variations among the many ways in which a person exercises this primary sexual choice.

Read the full article.

Now the good news: Jan Morris and Elizabeth Morris remarry

The Chronology

1926  James Morris born in Somerset, England
1944  Joins the army and serves until 1947
1949  Marries Elizabeth Tuckniss (five children)
1953  Accompanies Hillary's expedition to Mt. Everest
1972  Has sex-reassignment surgery to become "Jan Morris";  legally divorced from Elizabeth
1974  Writes Conundrum, a memoir examining her life-long discomfort with the sex she was born with and decision to become a woman.
2008  #15 on Times list of best British writers since World War II; obtains civil union with Elizabeth

In Conundrum Morris  describes her marriage with Elizabeth having "no right to work, yet it worked like a dream.” She made the announcement of her civil union on a BBC program last week, saying:

"We were married when I was young... and then this sex change thing so-called happened, so we naturally had to divorce - so we were divorced but we have always lived together anyway." [listen to a clip from the interview]

World domination, one translation at a time

The site Well-Mannered Frivolity points us to Unesco's magnificently named Index Translationum, which attempts to catalog all books in translation everywhere (or at least among its hundred-odd member states), a Borghesian task.

Our own Georges Simenon comes in at #16 on the list of most translated writers, with 1,959 translated books to his name. He's right after Isaac Asimov and just before Pope John Paul II. The index is worth looking at, and the Translationum database could proove be a very useful resource, indeed.

As Ms. Well-Mannered Frivolity comments, "Authors who write prolifically have a distinct advantage here," which explains why Barbara Cartland outranks the New Testament.

The photograph above shows M. Simenon (for once without his pipe) adding another volume to his "all-Simenon" bookshelf.

Oakley Hall, 1920–2008

We learned today that Oakley Hall, author of Warlock, has died. Warlock was among Oakley Hall's most famous books, it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, became a film starring Henry Fonda and Anthony Quinn, and struck the fancy of a young Thomas Pynchon. Warlock''s dark vision of the wild west and its allusions to the paranoia and strife surrounding the McCarthy hearings led us to describe it as a postmodern Western—though Oakley didn't warm to the designation.

Like Elaine Dundy, Oakley Hall was active and vibrant up until the end. Last September he appeared on a double bill with his namesake, the band Oakley Hall, and only last month he wrote in to ask for some copies of his book and to request a copy of Rex Warner's Men and Gods. We hear that he was working on another book when he died.

There's no point in giving all the details of Hall's life here, when he does it himself at his own website, housed by the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, which Oakley Hall founded nearly forty years ago.

Elaine Dundy in the Telegraph

The Telegraph has printed an obituary for Elaine Dundy. It's quite long, and, in the great British obit tradition, does not shy away from the unsavory. In this case that means devoting an undue amount of space focusing on her sex-life with husband Kenneth Tynan.