Gordon Merrick and the Great Gay American Novel

Joseph M. Ortiz is associate professor of English at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Joseph Ortiz’s book about Gordon Merrick is a meticulously researched and beautifully written biography. Merrick was a Broadway actor who spent time in OSS during World War II before becoming one of America’s earliest and most successful gay novelists. This is not only a rich portrait of an important and previously neglected cultural figure: it is also a terrific social history spanning fifty years of the 20th Century. Anyone curious about the gay culture that flourished in the decades before Stonewall will have a wonderful time reading this book.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Autobiography of a Gay ReaderChapter One: An American DynastyChapter Two: Et Ego In Arcadia: PrincetonChapter Three: The Great White WayChapter Four: The SpyChapter Five: The Postwar NovelistChapter Six: Connecting with ForsterChapter Seven: The Protest NovelistChapter Eight: The Dancer from San FranciscoChapter Nine: The Island of DreamsChapter Ten: The Great Gay American NovelChapter Eleven: Getting It PublishedChapter Twelve: The Irene Rockwood PhenomenonChapter Thirteen: Going Greek, or Making a Gay MythologyChapter Fourteen: A Return to the StageChapter Fifteen: Adventures in the EastChapter Sixteen: Rewriting the PastChapter Seventeen: Merrick vs. KramerChapter Eighteen: Imperfect FreedomAfterword: Gay Literary CanonsBibliographyAbout the AuthorIndex