ON BEING DIFFERENT: What It Means to be a Homosexual

by Merle Miller ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 14, 1971

This is essentially the article which appeared a few months ago in the New York Times Magazine in which Merle Miller came ""out of the closet,"" goaded by an anti-homosexual piece which had appeared earlier in Harper's. His is both personal and discreet at the same time -- about the boy whose mother had ""to make do with him"" since she had wanted a girl; about his stigmatized years in school in a small town in Iowa; and about the next decades spent in guarded silence. Here and there remarks are dropped on the new movement, on a shortlived marriage, on the failure of psychiatry and many psychiatrists including Edmund Bergler. There's a short coda on reactions -- his and others' -- after his piece appeared and while Miller is well beyond any Gay Lib-erating stomp, the statement he has finally made is more likely to reach just those straights who've imposed a cordon of distasteful avoidance around the homosexual or as paraphrased here -- the fag as the homosexual gentleman who has just left the room.

Pub Date: Oct. 14, 1971

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1971

Categories: NONFICTION