Lipton’s Journal/December 31, 1954/156: Difference between revisions

And this is usually any originality of mind. So, too, is the pure homosexual—and I suspect that pure homosexuals are invariably very unfleshly.  People like [André] Gide,{{refn|A major French novelist and autobiographer, [[w:André Gide|Gide]] (1869-1951) won the Nobel Prize in 1947. {{NM}} cited the influence of Gide’s ''Corydon'' (Paris: Nouvelle Revue Française, 1924) on his self-interviews collected in ''[[The Presidential Papers]]'' (1963) and ''[[Cannibals and Christians]]'' (1966). One of the epigraphs to ''[[The Deer Park]]'' is Gide’s advice to his critics: “Please do not understand me too quickly.”}} Ivan Von Auw,{{refn|Literary agent (1903-91) at the Harold Ober Agency.}} etc. They are mind, they have denied their bodies, and sex is invariably painful to them, although in recompense their minds have saintly qualities. ({{ins|Gide and}} Gertrude Stein).{{refn|NM’s opinion of [[w:Gertrude Stein|Stein]] (1874-1946), one of modernism’s major figures, fluctuated over the years. He wrote of her androgynous appearance and relationship with Picasso in ''[[95.38|Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man]]''.}}

But the bi-sexual who has a very strong sense of {{del|the}} sex in their souls, of the creatively sexual content or quality of their souls, which we describe crudely by saying this person is sexy or vital, {{ins|or seductive,}} usually leads a life which is nominally heterosexual. Thus, I who am profoundly bi-sexual, have not had a homosexual contact since I was fourteen; so, too, Jonesie [James Jones];{{refn|NM met [[w:James Jones|James Jones]] (1921-1977) in 1952, shortly after he gave an admiring blurb to Jones’s 1951 novel, ''From Here to Eternity''. They became close friends almost immediately, in part because of the experiences they shared. Both were young and had written war novels set in the Pacific; both books had enjoyed fantastic sales and reviews; both became famous overnight. NM said later, “We felt like the touchdown twins.” Although it would be brief, his relationship with Jones would be the most intense male friendship of his life.}} so, Adele; so, Bob; so, Johnnie [Lindner’s wife] (I think);{{refn|Eleanor “Johnnie” Johnson (1910-1996) met Lindner while he was a graduate student at Cornell University. They were married in 1937.}} so, Adeline [Naiman];{{refn|A college friend of NM’s sister Barbara at Radcliffe, Adeline (née Lubell) Naiman (1925-2011), was a junior editor at Little, Brown in 1946 when she heard about NM’s novel from her. In January 1946, before he was discharged, she asked to see a rough draft, and in September, NM sent her the first 184 pages. She told her superiors it would be “the finest American novel to come out of the war.”}} so, Bea; so, Gandy [Brody];{{refn|A painter known for sensuous, figural paintings done with impasto technique, [[w:Gandy Brodie|Brody]] (1925-65) met NM in the early 1950s, and visited him several times in Mexico.}} so, Miles and Barbara Forst;{{refn|Miles Forst (1923-2006), an artist and teacher, was an important member of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. He and his first wife, Barbara, divorced after 14 years of marriage.}} so, Mickey Knox.{{refn|NM met [[w:Mickey Knox|Knox]] (1921-2013), an actor, during his first trip to Hollywood in 1948. They became good friends and in June 1951, NM accompanied Knox on a cross-country drive to California. On the way to Hollywood they made a 20-minute detour through Palm Springs, which NM was scouting as a possible setting for the novel that became ''The Deer Park''. NM wrote more letters to Knox, a blacklisted actor and acting coach who lived in Rome for decades, than to anyone else except his first wife, Bea. See Knox’s memoir, ''The Good, the Bad, the Dolce Vita: The Adventures of an Actor in Hollywood, Paris and Rome'' (2004).}} He fled the consequences of bi-sexuality{{del|, as indeed I still do}}.  

{{ins|On the other hand,}} there are many bi-sexuals {{del|with “sexual souls” who are nominally homosexuals}}{{ins|who seem to be entirely homosexual}}. Toby [Tobias Schneebaum],{{refn|[[w:Tobias Schneebaum|Schneebuam]] (1922-2005), was an artist, AIDS activist, and anthropologist who wrote a memoir, ''Keep the River on Your Right'' (1969) about his trip to Peru, where he lived with a cannibal tribe. NM wrote that Schneebaum, his New York neighbor, lent him [[w:Edward Sagarin|Donald Webster Cory]]’s ''The Homosexual in America'' (1951), the reading of which led NM to revise his views on gays.}} Mike [Harrington],{{refn|American political theorist and the author of a groundbreaking study of poverty in the U.S., ''The Other America'' (1962), Harrington (1928-1989) and NM met at editorial meetings of ''Dissent'' magazine, and became friendly.}} camps, queens, and athletes. Invariably, they are {{del|very}} handsome men, who in their adolescence began to sense with inner terror what it meant of have sexual soul in a sexless society. It meant that their instincts to screw many women and, too, many men, (and the ease with which they could do it, given their beauty) would bring them into outrageous conflict with society{{ins|, violent conflict with society}} because ''finally'' the tendency of the bi-sexual person is to look for the orgy which at its best could be the physical expression of the communion of souls.