GLR November-December 2022

was curious to know whether the NYT had ever issued a “mea culpa.” My search of their archives resulted in scant mention of either the book or Mr. Tripp between the publication of the review and Tripp’s obitu ary in 2003. Interestingly, the latter pro vided a more positive impression of The Homosexual Matrix but was deafeningly silent about their 1975 book review. As you may know, The Times has been publishing memorials to people who died in obscurity or underappreciated before the newspaper became “woke.” Perhaps Mr. Duberman or The G&LR could reach out to The Times to suggest that Mr. Tripp deserves a similar “overlooked no more” article. Rusty Wyrick, Ghivizzano, Italy That Underreported Dinner Party To the Editor: In a Letter to the Editor in the July-Au gust issue, Michael Bedwell tells of a 1949 literary gathering for novelist E. M. Forster, who was visiting America, hosted by New York socialites Monroe Wheeler and his lover Glenway Wescott, whose 1971 New York Times article is the source of this in formation. Photographer George Platt Lynes, with his mother Adelaide, came for cocktails to meet Forster and his “friend of long standing” Bob Buckingham and

dence with him through the ’70s. Only half jokingly I fancy myself “Joseph Campbell’s apostle to the gay com munity.” His explanation of religion saved me from my 1950s Catholic upbringing. As editor of White Crane Journal and writer about gay men’s spirituality, I’ve touted his perspective as a naturally gay way to under stand religion. Such an understanding can be a positive cure for the homophobia and confusion that traditional religion imposes on gay and sex-variant people. My gay spir ituality books are about how Campbell’s un derstanding of myth as a clue to the nature and patterns of consciousness explains the religious problems away. So I can’t help but wonder about the exchange between Camp bell and Kinsey. An Internet search on this dinner party will bring up Wescott’s article with its cou ple of sly hints at the conversation. It did not make it into any of Campbell’s pub lished journals, the director of the Camp bell Foundation told me, but those journals are now in the New York Public Library’s Joseph Campbell Collection and are open to the public. If any G&LR reader would peruse Joe’s journals for 1949, I think we’d all love to know what he wrote about that evening. Toby Johnson, Austin, TX

arrange to photograph them later in the week. At the dinner party, after the Lyneses left there remained the two hosts; Forster and Buckingham; and two more, perhaps incongruous, guests: sexologist Alfred C. Kinsey and comparative religion scholar Joseph Campbell. I was intrigued that Campbell had been invited. The reason, I assume, is that Forster was the celebrated author of A Passage to India and Campbell was an Indologist and Sanskrit scholar. This dinner sounds like a fairly gay event. I am always happy to gain evidence of Campbell’s open-mindedness in this regard—and at a time (1949) when it wasn’t the norm. Campbell himself was not gay; his first real girlfriend was Adelle Davis, later the health food maven and in ventor of tiger’s milk, and he was famously married to Broadway choreographer Jean Erdman. Gracious and open-minded—that’s how I experienced Joseph Campbell. In 1971, I was a young ex-monk, a hippie, a grad stu dent in comparative religions, and a bud ding, outspoken gay activist. And I worked at a Jungian-oriented seminar center north of San Francisco, which is how I met and befriended Joe. I continued on the team that put on his appearances in Northern Califor nia and carried on a personal correspon

“Groundbreaking . . . attentively engages the ruptures and omissions through which queerness, race, and disability co-emerge.” —M. REMI YERGEAU, author of Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness

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ALSO OF INTEREST Isherwood on Writing: The Complete Lectures in California Christopher Isherwood Edited by James J. Berg Isherwood’s lectures on writing and writers, now all available for the first time in this updated paperback edition

D I S A B I L I T Y

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R H E T O R I C A L

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University of Minnesota Press Available at better bookstores or to order call 800-621-2736 • www.upress.umn.edu

November–December 2022

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