21 VARIATIONS ON A THEME

From the delicacy of Henry James, to the rude realism of James Farrell, these pieces on sexual inversion reflect a literary rather than sensational preoccupation with this theme. From a father's impotent silence towards his son, to another parent's shocked disgust after a weekend with his boy, to two women- in uniform- at a bar, to the tenuous affection between a tutor and his charge, etc. etc. these stories reflect the many phases of homosexuality from personal heartbreak to social guilt. The contributors include Sherwood Anderson, Isabel Bolton, Paul Bowles, John Horne Burns, Christopher Isherwood, D. H. Lawrence, de Maupassant and Verlaine, Stephen Spender and Stefan Zweig, and the Priest and the Acolyte wrongly attributed to Wilde.