Arsenal Pulp Press, Little Sister’s Classics; 176 pages; $16.95. Little Sister’s Classics is a new series that revives lost and out-of-print classics of lesbian and gay literature. It honors Little Sister’s Book and Art Emporium, the Vancouver store famous for its anti-censorship efforts. One of the first two books in the Little Sister’s series, Jane Rule’s The Young in One Another’s Arms, is an award-winning (1978) novel set in Vancouver (where Arsenal Press and Little Sister’s are) and the nearby Galiano Island (where Rule now lives). The other book, Richard Amory’s Song of the Loon, is simply one of the most important books in all of gay literature.

As a work of fiction, Amory’s 1966 classic made gay literary history by its explicit depictions of gay male sex, its positive portrayal of male love and its poetic, almost mystical vision of a gay brotherhood that transcends racial and cultural barriers. Amory, whose real name was Richard Love, wrote Song of the Loon in reaction to the then-current negative portrayals of gay male life and sex. As Amory wrote in his preface, he took "certain very European characters from the novels of Jorge de Montemayor and Gaspar Gil Polo, painted them a gay aesthetic red, and transplanted them to the American wilderness." The first edition’s cover blurb further described the book as being "a mystical blend of elements from Hudson's Green Mansions, J. F. Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales and the works of Jean Genet." In short, Amory took the male bonding tradition in American literature, which critic Leslie Fiedler argued was implicitly homosexual, and made is explicitly so.

Though first published in 1966, Song of the Loon was ahead of its time. In fact, it could be described as Natty Bumppo after Stonewall. Ephraim MacIver goes out West to flee from his estranged lover Montgomery and to discover himself. During the course of the book Ephraim tricks with various red and white men and is initiated into the Loon Society, an interracial fraternity devoted to male sexual freedom. After many adventures, mostly sexual, Ephraim finally settles down with Cyrus Wheelwright, a burly trapper. The plot makes no attempt at historical accuracy, being little more than an excuse to tie together the various sexual episodes that Amory describes so well. Critic James Levin, writing in The Gay Novel in America, cruelly dismissed Loon as "hardcore pornography" and "an excuse to present a variety of trappers and Indians in all sorts of sexual combinations."

Song of the Loon is more than a sex novel, of course. To many gay men seeking escape from homophobic reality, the novel was, in Levin's words, "homosexual wish-fulfillment." Though a work of prose, Song of the Loon is rather poetic, not only in the bad verse uttered by various characters but also in the rather lyrical prose passages. Like Walt Whitman before him, Amory believed in the power of homosexual love to break down racial and class boundaries and make all men brothers. At a time when most characters in gay novels suffered from neuroses, persecution and death, the red and white men in Amory's pastoral took a healthy, pleasurable view of male sex, free from inhibitions.

Song of the Loon was first published by Greenleaf Classics, an “adult” publisher that paid Amory much less than he deserved. Even so, when Loon became a big seller Greenleaf commissioned Amory to write a sequel. Amory wrote two: Song of Aaron in 1967 and Listen, the Loon Sings in 1968. Song of the Loon also inspired a soft core, 1970 film of the same name and - in a sincerest form of flattery - the 1968 parody Fruit of the Loon by “Ricardo Armory.” It also launched the “golden age” of gayrotic pulp novels (1966-1974) and the publication of a slew of sexy westerns like Chris Davidson's A Different Drum, Rod McGraw's The Singing Wind and Dallas Kovar's One To Share. Unfortunately for Amory, the rights to his books got tangled up in probate after his death, which kept Song of the Loon and its sequels from returning to print for years.

For all of these reasons, Arsenal Pulp and Little Sister’s should be praised for bringing back Song of the Loon. In addition to the novel itself, this edition includes a Foreword by Michael Bronski, whose book Pulp Friction is an essential study of gay pulp fiction, and Appendices by or about Amory, Song of the Loon, and their age. Song of the Loon belongs in every gay man’s library, and we thank Arsenal Pulp for making this possible.

Jesse Monteagudo is a freelance writer and gay book lover who lives in South Florida with his life partner and many books. You may reach him at jessemonteagudo@aol.com.