Richard Love, Song of the Loon, and the Politics of Gay Literature
While SF State student Charles Christman, discussed in a previous section, experienced major conflicts with the police, SF State alum Richard Love (1927-1981), originally from Oregon and raised in Ohio, experienced major conflicts with those who policed queer arts and letters. In the early 1960s, the married veteran with three children enrolled in the M.A. Spanish program at SF State; he previously had earned a B.A. in sociology at Ohio State University and completed his degree at SF State in 1966. While teaching in Oakland and studying at SF State, he wrote Song of the Loon, a groundbreaking gay-positive and sex-positive novel that became a bestseller when published by Greenleaf in 1966. He subsequently authored two sequels, Song of Aaron (1967) and Listen, the Loon Sings (1968). According to a 1970 interview, Love was inspired to write Song of the Loon, for which he used the pseudonym Richard Amory, during his M.A. studies, when he read Gaspar Gil Polo’s sixteenth-century Spanish pastoral novel, Diana enamorada. Love’s son later reported that his father’s work on Song of the Loon was made possible by the fact that “he had been given an office on campus, and he took advantage of the privacy his office provided by writing what would become his best-known novel.”[1] In an essay that Love wrote in 1973, he mentioned in passing that he had three children, the oldest of whom looked “very Indian.” Love indicated that the child’s name was “Alejandro Ome Ocelotl,” likely a pseudonym. Love’s reference to his son’s appearance, if accurate, could reflect Love’s ancestry, his ex-wife’s ancestry, or the ancestry of a different biological parent.[2]
Song of the Loon is an erotic fantasy set primarily in nineteenth-century Oregon. While on a spiritual quest in the wilderness, the main character, a white man named Ephraim MacIver, has a series of erotic adventures with white and Native American men. All of the characters are masculine and they exist in a world devoid of women and full of sex. Over the course of the novel, MacIver learns to accept his erotic attractions to men and let go of his commitments to monogamy. Undoubtedly aware that critics might question the historical veracity and racial politics of his work, Love provided an introductory note stating that the book’s author had never, “unfortunately,” known a Native American “even remotely resembling” the characters. The note continued, “He has taken 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. Anyone who wishes to read other intention into these characterizations is willfully misunderstanding the nature of the pastoral genre…. The same might be said of those who love to point out anachronisms and factual improbabilities.”[3]
In 1970, Love separated from his wife and moved to San Jose, where he already was working as a teacher (primarily of English as a second language). He also came out as gay, joined the Society for Individual Rights and the San Jose Gay Liberation Front, and began writing for Vector, which over the next several years featured Love’s interviews, reviews, poetry, and wide-ranging essays about gay fiction and the challenges of working as a gay teacher.[4] Beginning in May 1970, Love went public with his strong criticisms of the editors, publishers, and directors who had distorted his work and the work of other gay writers. That month, at an SF State event, Love and another gay writer, Dirk Vanden, spoke “on the topic of exploitation by straight publishers of authors of stories and novels with homosexual themes.” In published articles and interviews beginning in June 1970, he was particularly scathing about his Song of the Loon Greenleaf book contract, which had yielded him a paltry $750, and the 1970 film based on the novel.[5] The film, advertised in the San Francisco Chronicle in May and June 1970, was completed without his knowledge, without financial compensation for him, and with aesthetic and narrative elements that undermined his sex-positive politics.[6] Frustrated and upset by what had occurred, Love subsequently joined together with other gay writers in an attempt to launch a gay publishing company, but the self-styled “Renaissance Group” was unable to secure financing.[7] In the meantime, after writing one of the most popular and successful gay novels of the 1960s, Love went on to publish two sequels and five other novels from 1968 to 1974. He died in 1981; the available obituaries do not list a cause.[8]
Notes
[1] “Richard Amory Interview,” Vector, June 1970, 28-33; Cesar Love, “Richard Amory (October 18, 1927-January 1, 1981),” Live Journal, https://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/1859873.html; Cesar Love, “Biography of Cesar Love,” in Richard Amory, Song of the Loon, with an introduction by Michael Bronski (1966; Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp, 2005), 215-17. For references in the LGBT press to Amory’s later novels, see Lyn Pederson, “Books: Amory’s Latest,” Advocate, Apr. 1970, 32; Jim Kepner, “Richard Amory’s ‘Frost’ Is A Search on Many Levels—Plus Sex,” Advocate, 18 Aug. 1971, 25, 26; Karl Maves, “Relevant Reading,” Vector, Sept. 1974, 12; Richard Amory, letter to the editor, Vector, Nov. 1974, 6.
[2] Richard Amory, “Song of the Gay Teacher,” Vector, July 1973, 22-25. See also Mikyl Kayhal, letter to the editor, Vector, Sept. 1973, 6.
[3] Amory, Song of the Loon, 28.
[4] For early examples, see Richard Amory, “Poems,” Vector, Sept. 1970, 34; Tom Kaufman, letter to the editor, Vector, Sept. 1970, 9, 45.
[5] “Homosexual Authors To Speak,” Phoenix, 11 May 1970, 6; “Correction,” Phoenix, 14 May 1970, 2; “Richard Amory Interview,” Vector, June 1970, 28-33; “‘Loon’ to Premiere,” Advocate, Mar. 1970, 13; “Loon to Arrive,” Advocate, Apr. 1970, 15; “L.A. Times Gives In; ‘Homosexual’ in Ads,” Advocate, 29 Apr. 1970, 5; “‘Loon Fails to Fly in Tame Film Version,” Advocate, 29 Apr. 1970, 19, 20; Dirk Vanden, “Now Is the Time, the Walrus Said, to Speak of Many Things,” Vector, July 1970, 10-11, 40; Richard Amory, “Song of the Loon Becomes a ‘Looney Tune,’” Vector, July 1970, 29, 26; “July Calendar,” Vector, July 1970, 44; Larry Townsend, “Plight of Gay Novelists: Who Gauges Market Correctly, Publishers or Writers?” Los Angeles Advocate, 19 Aug. 1970, 19; “Around the Movement,” New York Mattachine Times, Aug. 1970, 11; “Around the Movement,” Gay Scene, Sept. 1970, 19; Dirk Vanden, “Richard Amory Talks to GAY,” GAY, 26 Oct. 1970, 4-5.
[6] For the advertisements, see San Francisco Chronicle, 20 May 1970, 46; 27 May 1970, 51; 29 May 1970, 44; 3 June 1970, 53; 10 June 1970, 51; 12 June 1970, 50.
[7] For later items written by and about Amory in the LGBT press, see Elroy Messner, letter to the editor, Vector, Feb. 1971, 9; Richard A. Turner, letter to the editor, Vector, Feb. 1971, 9; Enrico Di Telm, letter to the editor, Vector, Mar. 1971, 9; Richard Amory, letter to the editor, Vector, Apr. 1971, 9; Carl Driver, “Started with ‘Loon’: Gay Fiction May Be Growing Up,” Advocate, 8 Dec. 1971, 33; Lawrence Spears, “War Chest, Local Ballot Measures Urged in Statewide Meet,” Vector, Feb. 1972, 18-19; Richard Amory, “Vanden’s Best Book,” Vector, Mar. 1972, 23; John Maiscott, “Parker Tyler Meets Casey Donovan,” Gay Activist, Apr. 1972, 15, 18; Richard Amory, “Richard Amory Discovers a 29cent Jackson Novel,” Vector, Apr. 1972, 31, 32; Richard Amory, “Richard Amory Enjoys a Wit of ‘Sunday,’” Vector, May 1972, 37; John P. LeRoy, “New Hope for Gay Writers,” GAY, 10 July 1972, 15; Richard Amory, “I Am Dying, Egypt,” Vector, Aug. 1972, 41; Richard Amory, “Light from a Second Story Window,” Vector, Sept. 1972, 11; Richard Amory, “Richard Amory Reads Tom Sawyer,” Vector, Aug. 1973, 42-44; Richard Amory, “The Conspiracy of Silence: Hopalong Cassidy & A Few Others,” Vector, Feb. 1974, 24-29; Richard Amory, “Mark Twain, Too?” Vector, Mar. 1974, 16-17; Richard Amory, “Relevant Reading,” Vector, Oct. 1974, 13; Richard Amory, “Bisexuality: Octoroonism,” Vector, Nov. 1974, 18-19.
[8] On Amory’s life and works, see Roger Austen, Playing the Game: The Homosexual Novel in America (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977), 217-219, 227; Michael Bronski, ed., Pulp Friction (New York: St. Martin’s, 2003), 212-224.