Items

• P.S. your cat is dead
  A darkly comic exploration of the burgeoning relationship between down-on-his-luck actor Jimmy Zoole and a gay cat burglar he finds looting his apartment. This is the third novel from author and playwright James Kirkwood (1924-1989). According to biographer Sean Egan, Kirkwood was inspired by a series of burglaries at his home on West 58th Street, New York. In their 1979-80 catalogue, Philadelphia bookstore Giovanni’s Room described ‘P.S. Your Cat is Dead’ as “our all-time bestselling gay men’s novel”. Kirkwood adapted it into a play in 1975 and in 2002, it was adapted again into a feature film, directed by Steve Guttenberg, which was rather less well-received. Kirkwood’s ‘There Must Be a Pony!’ was also seized in ‘Operation Tiger’.
• The homosexual matrix
  First published in America by McGraw-Hill in 1975, the preface to this British edition includes author C.A. Tripp’s (1919-2003) reflections on the book’s initial reception. More positively received than the author had hoped among the scientific community and in much of the media, including ‘Newsweek’, it nevertheless provoked anti-gay moralising in ‘Time’ magazine and ‘The New York Times’, while some papers cancelled their reviews altogether. Tripp, a psychotherapist, fails to mention that the book was also criticised by LGBTQ+ reviewers for its pseudo-scientific categorisation of gay men into ‘types’, its misogyny, and its refusal to engage with gay liberation as a social movement. The striking typographic cover design is by Marcy J. Katz. The edition on display is from the library of actor, author and bookseller Noel Lloyd.