HINDU KUSH 1959 BY FOSCO MARAINI

ANON   Monday, 20 September 2021

This brings me back to my own travels in Pakistan.  I even remember the border town Chitral.

And I remember the two very cute and very little boys who kept plucking their butts, as though lifting them in the air on strings, and asking us, "Do you want Pakistani funny ride?"

A Review of Fielding Gray by Simon Raven, London, 1967

Bernard   Monday, 30 August 2021

Fielding Gray is one of the best of Simon Raven's many novels (An Inch of Fortune is another) and very rich and juicy it is too.  For all of 'Special Friendships' bittersweet charm that you mention, Raven is arguably better at conveying the full prep-and-public-school experience of so many boys (Peyrefitte is also a wonderful writer, but I can see why his book isn't in print today—it's rather hard to get through, lovely as the sentiments contained therein may be). 
 
Raven writes wonderfully about late '40's and early '50's English public schools—something that not many other writers have done—and Christopher Roland, Fielding's beloved, is not in fact quite as dim as you suggest, just hyper-conventional like so many upper-middle class English boys of the time.  The 'ten minutes of indifferent batting, and an eternity of love' that Fielding experiences, while contemplating his willowy and flannelled young schoolboy friend on the cricket pitch, is just one of many sentences that make this a book to remember.

FICTION AND DRAMA

ANON   Wednesday, 18 August 2021

Burroughs’ Wild Boys should be added to this list. 

* * *

Editor   Thursday, 19 August 2021

I realise there are many references to sex between boys in Burroughs' The Wild Boys, but can you explain why you consider it pederastic?

SPECIAL FRIENDSHIPS: THE CHILD AS CATASTROPHIC FRIEND

PJ   Wednesday, 14 July 2021

There's a book to be written about "brat-worship" in Hollywood, and in American culture generally. I think the female brat is a good deal worse than the male, and is worshipped more abjectly.

SPECIAL FRIENDSHIPS: FRIENDLY NO MORE

ANON   Sunday, 04 July 2021

This was written by the Steven Freeman who died this year from Covid? 

* * *

Editor   Monday, 05 July 2021

Yes, indeed. This book drew on a mere fraction of his knowledge of film, some of which is gradually being posted here as the Asher Archive. All his work was suspended seventeen years ago, but I hope the little of it that is being preserved here will serve as a permanent reminder of the loss for all brought about by the untimely and brutal end to a creative and intellectually vibrant life.

THE HANGING OF JAMES NEHEMIAH TAYLOR, 1809

ANON   Sunday, 30 May 2021

Hello - I think you'll find that Thomas Ashton was not a boy under fourteen but rather sixteen or seventeen when he had intercourse with surgeon Taylor. Ashton was also charged with a crime and would certainly have been punished if he had not succeeded in escaping before his court-martial.

See footnote 23 of “ ‘A natural passion?’ The 1810 reflections of a Yorkshire farmer on homosexuality”, Eamonn O’Keeffe, Historical Research, Volume 94, Issue 263, February 2021, Pages 181–190, doi.org/10.1093/hisres/htaa037

"According to research by Alan Miller based on Admiralty records, Thomas Ashton was a cotton spinner from Stockport who enlisted in the Royal Marines in December 1807, aged fifteen. He was also arrested for participating in anal sex in Taylor’s cabin but escaped from custody when the ship was moored in St. John’s harbour, Newfoundland in October 1809. See The Pink Paper, 30 Sept.–6 Oct. 1989, pp. 12–13."

HUMOUR

ANON   Wednesday, 26 May 2021

An alternative I heard of one of them:

There was a young man of Madras,
Who was having a boy in the grass,
“It looks kinda thick,
So I’ll give it a lick,
Before you start to tear up my ass”

And an addition:

Between two boys there’s no mention
Of feelings when relieving their tension
So when clashing their swords
They avoid all sweet words
And focus on their lower inflation

* * *

Helen   Thursday, 06 February 2020

Jonnie comes home from school one afternoon, all excited. "Hi Mom!" he shouts, throwing off his satchel and bounding into the kitchen. "Hi Jonnie!" say mother, giving him a kiss. "Here, sweetie, I've got some hot chocolate all ready for you." "Aw Gee, thanks, Mom!" Jonnie swigs the hot chocolate and gets a chocolate milk moustache. "Guess what, Mom! Today me and the fellahs went out back behind the the school during recess and compared weenies. And guess what: mine was the biggest!" Mother replies: "Well of course, Jonnie. You are their teacher."

* * *

Daemonic Rise   Saturday, 25 November 2017

There was a young man of today
Who wondered if he were gay.
But he clicked on "greek-love",
Found it fit like a glove,
And his boy gave a mighty "Hooray!"

THE MEMOIRS OF JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

ANON   Thursday, 11 March 2021

I remember reading an excerpt from the memoirs of I think a roughly contemporary figure (quoted in some sort of scholarly book), about how older boys were having sex with tarts on the school train (possibly in the mail car or something like that?), and something about people slipping and sliding from all the sperm on the floor. I thought i was Addington Symonds, but evidently not. Do you happen to have any idea what/whose that account might be?

* * *

Editor   Friday, 12 March 2021

No, I'm afraid not. The nearest I've heard to that was Lytton Strachey telling in one of his letters of an Eton school tart who went to the lavatory as soon as the school train departed so that he could receive every boy there in turn before the train arrived.

ICELAND, AN ANONYMOUS STORY, 1991

Helen   Tuesday, 02 February 2021

I think we can be fairly sure the story isn't true. The country is nothing like what he describes; the sun does not rise late in the morning and set early early in the afternoon in August, and Church of Iceland is Lutheran, not Anglican, and so on. But it has its charms nonetheless!

* * *

Michael Rice   Monday, 08 February 2021

I should think someone who had had a confused understanding of the origins of the Church of Iceland before he went to the country, and was as uninterested in Christianity as he sounds from his tone, could easily spend several months there without having his understanding of it corrected.

On the other hand, it is so very well known that the summer days are long in the far north that his saying the sun rose late in August seems to me more likely a confusion of seasons in his writing than the sort of genuine ignorance that would have been corrected by experience.

So I'm not sure we can be so sure.

“BOSIE” DOUGLAS ON HIS SEXUAL SELF

Cristina   Wednesday, 29 April 2020

This is an excellent article. Congrats.

I actually also had been looking for this letter everywhere on the internet and found it here by chance.

I do think it's not really accurate to say Bosie was not gay or to take necessarily at face value what he says about the nature and extent of the sexual element of his relationship with Wilde, as he seemed very unwilling to admit to it. Understandably so, but still.

* * *

ANON   Sunday, 23 August 2020

Frank Harris definitely had the true measure of the abominable Douglas.

Regarding his letter with clear eyes, it is obvious that Douglas is the worst type of liar: One who lies most to himself. I had begun to expand on this when I realised that the best thing to do would be to recommend a few biographies. Bosie by Douglas Murray. The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde by Neil McKenna. Oscar: A Life by Matthew Sturgis. Even if you feel unable to read through either of the Wilde books, do read what they have to offer on Douglas. The Harris and Hyde biographies are of course worth looking up in the same vein.

Frank Harris is very much deserving of the last word, with his succinct summary of Douglas's character:

'He attacks nearly every one he has ever known or met. His father and his father-in-law are alike the objects of his venomous petty spite.'