GLR January-February 2023

P ETER M UISE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES by Adam McOmber Lethe Press. 179 pages, $15. A Baskerville Hall, a grim manor in remote Dartmoor. Charles Baskerville, the manor’s lord, has been killed, supposedly by a monstrous spectral hound. Without Holmes’ assistance, Watson tries to find the real murderer. Is it James Baskerville, the vic tim’s cousin and heir? Dr. Mortimer, the neighborhood physi cian? Or perhaps Barrymore, the Baskervilles’ manservant? Or could it be Beryl Stapleton and her brother, who are studying the moor’s unusual butterflies? This is of course the set-up for Arthur Conan Doyle’s clas sic 1901 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles , but things very DAM MCOMBER’S new novel starts in a familiar way. Dr. John Watson is sent from London by Sherlock Holmes to investigate strange happenings at Granand’s detailed description of the participants and their codes of behavior is itself a fascinating piece of social history. “American Style” starts on an express train to Milan, whose lurching propels a gay German man into a large straight Amer ican businessman, “who is as beautiful and strong as Siegfried.” In Milan, Franz opens up the practical American’s æsthetic side by taking him to see The Last Supper and The Elixir of Love , and one thing leads to another, as we have seen. “Cadets,” a more tender story, takes place in a boys’ military academy and captures adolescent confusion about friendship, love, and sex. It’s the most psychologically nuanced of the stories. Homosex uality is expected, if not completely accepted, by the other cadets, who casually refer to other boys’ “tricks,” even as the ac tual emotions involved are more complex. The final story, “The Apparition,” is about a German man who, because “the police once got involved in his misfortune,” has moved to Paris, where he “has no more affairs and therefore no more sorrow”: “He’s achieved distance from life and become wise.” His detachment is challenged when a “young apache” (the translator notes the problematic word) tries to pick him up on the street. He refuses, but becomes obsessed and tries to find him again: “He had believed himself to stand above and apart from life and now he sees how easily all worldly wisdom can just go the devil if only a bit of lifeblood keeps coursing through your veins.” It’s the one story in which the invitation to sex meets resistance rather than surrender. And it’s the saddest story in the collection. These stories, in short, are a celebration of gay sex: not com radely affection, not romantic friendship, but actual gay sex. It’s good to have access to them as a reminder of what was possi ble a hundred years ago. ____________________________________________________ Michael Schwartz is an associate editor for this magazine. Dr. Watson on the Hunt

Live from Weimar

M ICHAEL S CHWARTZ

BERLIN GARDEN OF EROTIC DELIGHTS by Granand (Erwin Ritter von Busse) Translated by Michael Gillespie Warbler Press. 106 pages, $10.95 I N “NOCTURNE,” one of five short stories in this slim col lection, a young man named Freddy is lying in bed when a burglar breaks into the room. They talk, and one thing leads to—well, to sex, obviously, because we’ve seen this porn set-up countless times. In this particular version, the sex is not explic itly shown, but it definitely happens, and joyously so—which is remarkable, as the story was published over 100 years ago, in 1920. Berlin Garden of Erotic Delights (the original title was Ero tische Komödiengärtlein ) was written by Granand, the pseudo nym for Erwin Ritter von Busse (1885–1939), a painter, writer, and theater director who, among other things, worked with Max Reinhardt in Berlin. Despite Weimar’s initial openness, the book was banned by German courts in 1920 and 1921. It is now avail able from the Warbler Press in an English translation by Michael Gillespie with a biographical afterword by Manfred Herzer. It is, as Gillespie says in his introduction, “a collection of narratives whose frank depiction of gay lives and sensibilities celebrates the panorama of humanity and takes their erotic desires simply for granted.” Even if the stories were not very good, they would still pro vide significant historical interest. But they are good, which makes them all the more amazing. In “Nocturne,” for example, the narrator hovers above the action, wryly marking the minute steps by which sex blossoms. When the burglar’s hand first brushes Freddy’s, the burglar experiences a “feeling, shall we say, that does not enter his consciousness any further but nonetheless moves him to utter the words, ‘Jeez, a tiny hand ... like a girl’s.’” The burglar later grabs Freddy to keep him from escaping: “In Freddy, however, powerful images awaken of Carmen, of Circe, of Santuzza.” Not only is the tale très gay, but so is the telling. In the other four stories, each opening sentence locates the action in an actual specific place, grounding the story in a real ism that gives us a glimpse into gay life at the time. Most inter esting in this respect is “ANemesis,” which begins: “Tiergarten, the central park in Berlin, near the Brandenburg Gate.” It’s night, the garden is cruisy, and Trudy, dressed in a sailor suit, is sway ing his hips: “It is the flâneur’s well-practiced stride that shows (just as a merchant displays his wares in an easily surveyable and seductive manner) he’s available, promises discretion, and guarantees satisfaction.” Trudy picks up Erich, they begin an af fair, and Trudy disappears. Erich’s search for Trudy takes him to two gay ballrooms, one lower-class with soldiers “and (of course!) sailors, both real and pretend ones,” the other elegant, where “choice attire, pleated trousers, and cologne prevail.”

January–February 2023

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