GLR January-February Supplement 2024

Hidden Dragon

H.N.H IRSCH

BREAKING THE RULES The In ti mate Diary of Ross Terrill Edited by Philip Gambone Ra tt ling Good Yarns Press. 530 pages, $29.95 B ORN IN AUSTRALIA in 1938, Ross Terrill came to the United States to earn a doctorate at Harvard. He stayed on there as a junior faculty member in the 1970s (where our paths briefly crossed, although we did not know each other) and became a pioneering scholar on China just as it was be coming a major power and the U.S. was establishing diplo matic and economic relations. After his junior appointment at Harvard ended, he became a much-sought-after freelance au thor and commentator, publishing book after well-received book, as well as important scholarly articles. He became an American citizen but retained a pinch of British colonial class consciousness. Now in his mid-eighties, Terrill has published the diary he kept between 1963 and 1989, edited by Philip Gambone. Sur prisingly sexually explicit for its era, this is the first in a planned two-volume set. Some readers will find here a gay man who came to sexual maturity well before Stonewall and lived a furtive—some would say sad—life in the closet, compulsively chasing men and engaging in constant sex. Others will see a sexually liberated man who made no apologies but stayed mostly in the closet because he had little choice, given the rar efied and stuffy social milieu in which he traveled at the begin ning of his adult life and career. It would be a pity, though, if readers picked up the book only for the sex (which is plentiful and almost pornographic at times), for it is also full of well-written and thoughtful pas sages on the nature of relationships, different kinds of friend ship and love, and emotional and physical attraction, not to mention world-altering events and politics. Terrill traveled constantly, both for work and for pleasure, and he cast a keen and sometimes cold eye on everything he experienced and ob served. He moved between worlds with head-spinning ease, going from a chat with California governor Jerry Brown at a New York reception to a local bathhouse seemingly without batting an eye. There is some poignant soul-searching here, an unusual blend of the intellect and the erotic. Terrill was determined to live a full life on his own terms, and at the same time to sur vive and indeed thrive in an academic and literary establish ment that changed only slowly and grudgingly. This is a valuable and eminently readable document of a life lived with enthusiasm, honesty, and, it must be said, incredible stamina of every kind. ______________________________________________________ H. N. Hirsch, emeritus professor of politics at Oberlin, is the author of thememoir Office Hours and the Bob and Marcus mystery series. January–February 2024

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