9 MUSICIANS
.
a symphony orchestra. Contrast the vio- long been particularly decried in the field
lin. Although this instrument canbe played of conducting, where the role seems to call
solo, the vast majority of violinists earn for macho assertiveness. Nonetheless, the
their living playing in string ensembles in Greek conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos
orchestras. This contrast between solo and (1896-1960) quietly defied the ban, at the
group activity has its counterpart in the same time taking risks in championing
world of sport, where swimmers and run- avant-garde music. His protkgk, Leonard
ners are more likely to be homosexual Bemstein (1918- ) has broken the mold
than baseball and hockey players. Like all altogether, insisting on his right to live
such generalizations, this one has excep- openly as a gay man. Active also as a
tions. Nonetheless, gay musicians and and composer and educator, Bernstein has
athletes seem more drawn to individual probably also attained the status of the
performance than to team participation. most successful conductor of all time-
Many contemporary gay pianists certainly the wealthiest. His achievement
and organists, for understandable profes- is a beacon of light to countless young
sional reasons, have chosen to keep their musicians.
sexual orientation private. This is not the See also Music, Popular; Opera;
casewith the great Russian virtuoso Vladi- Punk Rock.
mir Horowitz (1904- ),who has not ob- Wayne R. Dynes
jected to Glenn Plaskin's frank biography
of 1983.A child prodigy, Horowitz' homo-
sexuality became evident in his early MYSTERYAND
maturity in Russia and Germany. In the FICTION
DETECTIVE
1930s the pianist came under the influ- The impression that homosexual
ence of the charismatic Arturo Toscanini, and lesbian characters and situations are
who encouraged him to marry his daugh- rare in mystery and detective fiction is
ter Wanda. Despite the husband's resort to true for earlier decades, but not for more
psychoanalysis,the marriage proved troub- recent ones. Lesbian characters can be
led, and Wanda objected toHorowitzlclose found in some British mysteries of the late
relationships with a series of young men. 1920s, including Dorothy L. Sayers' Un-
The pianist's temperament became legen- natural Death and Strong Poison, and gay
dary: he would cancel concerts at the male characters began to appear in the
shortest notice, sometimes apparently in next decade. In most of the early fiction,
order to complete a sexual rendezvous. In however, the homosexual characters are
the 1970s, responding to New York's incidental, often introduced to complicate
upscale version of the counterculture, the plot.
Horowitz became more gregarious, and The "Hard-Boiled" NovelandAf-
his sexual tastes became widely known. ter. Gay male characters begin to appear in
Accompanied by his lover, the aging pian- the work of those American writers classi-
ist essayed frequent trips to gay bars and fied as "hard-boiled" because sexuality of
clubs. all sorts along with drugs, alcohol, and
Less clear is the instance of the violence were displayed without moraliz-
distinguished harpsichordist Wanda Lan- ing in these naturalistic novels. The first
dowska (1877-1959), who revolutionized examples is in Rex Stout's 1933 novel
the aesthetics of baroque music. Her Forest Fire. The protagonist is a macho
companion seems to have been lesbian, forest ranger who is sexually attracted to a
but Landowska's own orientation is un- summer helper. Stout then proceeded to
certain. the Nero Wolfe novels where homosexu-
There is one exception to the ality seems sublimated in misogyny, gour-
solo-group contrast. Homosexuality has met meals, and cultivating orchids. More
MYSTERY AND DETECTIVE FICTION 4
typical of the hard-boiled school treat- emotionally deformed killers and villains.
ment of gay men is the work of three of its Such works as Ellery Queen's The Last
leading practitioners, James Cain, Ross Woman in His Life and Roderick Thorp's
Macdonald, andRaymond Chandler. Gays The Detective are examples.
are effeminate (often cross-dressers) and After Gay Liberation. After the
unhappy. Cain's Serenade features a bi- advent of the modern American gay
sexual hero and a homosexual villain who liberation movement, there was a radical
is killed in the end. Chandler's The Big change. Joseph Hansen had written his
Sleep and Macdonald's Dark Tunnel in- first gay mystery novel, Known Homosex-
clude weak and psychologically impaired ual, in 1968, but in 1970 he published
gay men, but the extreme examples of Fadeout featuring David Brandstetter, a
effeminate gay men and masculine women gay detective in Los Angeles drawn in the
occur in the works of Mickey Spillane, hard-boiled tradition of Phillip Marlowe
especially I, the lury. and Lew Archer. The enormous success of
About the only exception to these the work led to a series numbering about
negative views in the earlier detective ten novels as of 1987. Within a few years
fiction are three excellent whodunits by there were also excellent whodunits pub-
Gore Vidal, written under the pseudonym lished by openly gay writers Richard Hall
of Edgar Box. Death in the Fifth Position (ButterscotchPrince)and JohnPaulHudson
(1952)includes the first attractivegay men (SuperstarMurderJ. These works depicted
in mystery fiction and also includes some the gay subcultures of New York and Los
realistic pictures of the gay subculture. Angeles as well as any fiction of the time,
However, otherworks of the 1950ssuch as in addition to being excellent representa-
Margaret Millar's Beast in View, Meyer tives of the mystery genre. A popular
Levin's Compulsion, and Anne Hocking's novelist who was less gay identified, James
A Simple Way of Poison show the influ- Kirkwood, Jr., published the successful
ence of psychoanalytic ideas of homosexu- P.S. Your Cat is Dead in 1972. The novel
ality as an illness that can lead the unbal- had a gay man as a protagonist. At the end
anced individual into murder. of the decade Felice Picano utilized the
The number of homosexual char- secret agent concept in The Lure, and Paul
acters in mystery fiction grew enormously Monette recreated the secret panels and
in the 1960s, and the picture was slightlj. hidden caves of older adventure novels in
less negative. Lou Rand's Rough Trade is the brilliant satireof Hollywood, The Gold
an early example of a novel with a gay Diggers, all within a highly professional
detective and a gay setting published for a whodunit.
gay readership. George Baxt's three Phar- The success of these works led to
aoh Love novels reached a general audi- an explosion of mystery fiction featuring
ence. Love was a black gay detective and gay characters and settings in the 1980s.
the novels included other gay characters At least three writers followed Hansen's
and pictures of the gay subculture pre- plan of a whodunit series featuring the
sented in a comparatively positive man- same gay detective. Richard Stevenson's
ner. Several novels by Patricia Highsmith Don Strachey novels are set in Albany,
in the fifties and the sixties including New York; Nathan Aldyne's Daniel Val-
Strangers on Train and The Talented Mr. entine books take place in Boston and
Ripley include gay men as their main Provincetown, and Tony Fennely's Matt
characters, but the homosexuality is so Sinclair novels utilize a New Orleans
cunningly described that it was often background. All these whodunits present
avoided by those who did not care to see it. an accurate picture of the gay subculture
However, in most mysteries homosexual in the area and a range of gay characters.
men and lesbians were still pictured as Probably intended for a mainly gay audi-
4 MYSTERY AND DETECTIVE FICTION
ence, they are all such good examples of with his attributes and passions. Since
the genre that they reach a much broader paiderasteia was institutionalized in Greek
cross-section of readers. Many other mys- civilization, boy-loving gods and heroes
teries intended for gay audiences (usually figure prominently in Greek mythology,
of a far less professional character] have in contrast with the suppression of the
appeared. Gay and lesbian characters are homoerotic theme in the Judeo-Christian
also much more prominent in the general scriptures.
mystery fiction of the two decades after The Loves of the Gods. Zeus, the
1970in both theunited States andBritain, father of the gods, is renowned principally
their numbers far too numerous to men- for his love of the Phrygian boy Ganymede,
tion. Such well known authors as Ian Flem- the fairest of mortals, whom the god car-
ing, Ngaio Marsh, Ruth Rendell, Josephine ried off to make him his cup-bearer. By the
Tey, John MacDonald, and Amanda Cross time of Pindar Ganymede is enshrined as
have included both lesbian and gay charac- the eromenos, the beloved boy of his heav-
ters in their novels. In most cases the gay enly patron. In earlier myth Ganymede is
characters are far more well-rounded and abducted by a whirlwind, but from the
emotionally balanced individuals than fourth century B.C. onward he is seized by
those created in earlier decades. Zeus in the form of an eagle. This later
The success of mystery novels became a common theme of literature and
with gay male detectives has also led to an art, despite the unlikelihood that an eagle
increase in novels with lesbian characters could carry an adolescent boy in its talons.
The name Ganymede was also extended in
and at least one series with a lesbian detec-
tive. Three novels by Heron Carvic pub- time to any handsome boy with a male
lished between 1968 and 1971 featuring lover and protector. Moreover, Ganymede
Miss Seeton as the detective have lesbian never ages; he is the mythical embodi-
characters, as do three mysteries by Peter ment of the puer aeternus, the pederast's
Dickinson published between 1972 and dream of the beloved lingering forever in
1976, and three well-received works of P. the prime of his adolescent beauty. An-
D. Jamespublishedbetween 1971and 1980, other theme that appears in the following
including Death of an Expert Witness. The centuries is the rivalry of Ganymede and
well known mystery novelist Robert Parker Hera, which suggests that in the Greek
wrote about lesbian characters and the household theeromenos and the wife could
lesbian subculture in his 1980work Look- find themselves competing for t h e
ing for Rachel Wallace. In the early 1980s, husband's favors. Ultimately the opposi-
Vicki P. McConnell started a series of tion served for debates over the merits of
whodunit novels featuring the lesbian homosexuality (boy-love)and heterosexu-
detective Nyla Wade. ality (woman-love].By contrast, Zeus has
See also Novels and Short Fic- no heavenly mistress; his amorous adven-
tion. tures with mortal women are conducted
James B. Levin solely on earth.
The pederastic affairs of the other
MYTHOLOGY, CLASSICAL gods, while mentioned sporadically in
The concept of mythology in classical literature, never attained the
Greek civilization refers not merely to the celebrity of Zeus' passion for Ganymede.
gods, but to the demigods as well-the However, Poseidon, according to Pindar,
heroes renowned in song and story. Nine- preceded Zeus in loving Pelops, the son of
teenth-century German scholars, revers- Tantalus, the ancestor of the Atrides.
ing the formula that "God created man in Tradition had it that his father cut the boy
his image," held that man had created the into pieces and served him to the gods, but
gods in his own image, endowing them only Demeter, famished and distraught,