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The Strumpet Wind
Actor-writer Gordon Merrick, who appeared on Broadway in The Man Who Came to Dinner, was in the OSS during WW2 and later became the first author of gay "romances." In this debut work, he details some tricky espionage in the South of France during the early 40s.
- GenresFiction
248 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1947
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69 people want to read
About the author
Gordon Merrick
27 books88 followersSon of a stockbroker, Merrick studied French Literature at Princeton before becoming an actor on Broadway. Prior to WWII he landed a role in Kaufman & Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner and even became Hart's lover for a time. Due to a hearing problem he had a draft deferrment but served in the O.S.S. rising to the rank of Captain for his service in France. His first novel, The Strumpet Wind (1947), told of an American spy in France during WWII. "I have not imagined the world in which these people lived," he wrote.
Besides appearing on Broadway, he worked as a reporter on many newspapers. He also contributed book reviews and articles to The New Republic, Ikonos and other periodicals. In all, Merrick wrote 13 books, but it was his specialized novels that dealt with gay issues which became best-sellers. Merrick's works are rarely included in anthologies, and few discussions of American gay authors mention him. Some dismiss Merrick because of his obvious romanticism; others do so because he sprinkles explicit sex scenes in these later novels.
Merrick examines the likelihood of self-actualization, identity politics and the role that power plays in relationships. He rejected socially-imposed roles and labels, insisting that each gay person question the assumptions underlying their life. Gordon Merrick broke new ground that has only recently become fertile. Deeper probing into Merrick's works will undoubtedly yield richer understandings of the complex social dynamics that construct networks of control over human sexuality.
Besides appearing on Broadway, he worked as a reporter on many newspapers. He also contributed book reviews and articles to The New Republic, Ikonos and other periodicals. In all, Merrick wrote 13 books, but it was his specialized novels that dealt with gay issues which became best-sellers. Merrick's works are rarely included in anthologies, and few discussions of American gay authors mention him. Some dismiss Merrick because of his obvious romanticism; others do so because he sprinkles explicit sex scenes in these later novels.
Merrick examines the likelihood of self-actualization, identity politics and the role that power plays in relationships. He rejected socially-imposed roles and labels, insisting that each gay person question the assumptions underlying their life. Gordon Merrick broke new ground that has only recently become fertile. Deeper probing into Merrick's works will undoubtedly yield richer understandings of the complex social dynamics that construct networks of control over human sexuality.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 2, 2016
A nifty WW2 espionager set in the Cote d'Azure countryside : Winning the trust of a French collaborator (and wife), a young US intelligence agent moves in with them while the husband, under instructions, transmits false reports to the Nazis. The American expects that ultimately the Frenchman will be executed, but, meantime, "he must learn his lines, like an actor." This is required for survival. Herein a Hitchcock-Chabrolian morality tale about betrayal and loyalties.
Published in 1947, after the author had done allied cloak and dagger on the Riviera, this intimate piece was forgotten because (I assume) of a brutal finale that crunches "Spy Who Came In From the Cold" : As one character says, "We haven't the right to judge others by a standard we don't adhere to ourselves."
A first novel, the author gets lost in viewpoints and occasionally tries a Maugham-like narrator who remembers the handsome American that he first met the summer of '44 during the invasion of southern France. There's also a plot-required romance with a lovely French woman that has an iffy denouement. What gives the novel strength are the frightening decisions made by decent people during a war which can lead to shameful guilt.
Published in 1947, after the author had done allied cloak and dagger on the Riviera, this intimate piece was forgotten because (I assume) of a brutal finale that crunches "Spy Who Came In From the Cold" : As one character says, "We haven't the right to judge others by a standard we don't adhere to ourselves."
A first novel, the author gets lost in viewpoints and occasionally tries a Maugham-like narrator who remembers the handsome American that he first met the summer of '44 during the invasion of southern France. There's also a plot-required romance with a lovely French woman that has an iffy denouement. What gives the novel strength are the frightening decisions made by decent people during a war which can lead to shameful guilt.
March 18, 2018
This is one of the novels that makes me think my ‘allusively homoerotic to gay themed’ shelf is a little useless. I should probably have a number of gay-related shelves, eg a ‘gay themed’ shelf, an ‘allusively homoerotic’ one, one about ‘novels featuring secondary gay characters’ etc (but I don’t think I can be bothered). Anyway, The Strumpet Wind falls into the third category — novels featuring secondary gay characters.
It is a very readable novel about the moral complexities of the world of espionage and counter-intelligence during WW2. It keeps you engaged until the last page, with a keen insight into the main character’s psychology, and into aspects of that of secondary characters. Roger, the protagonist, is employed by the US government in counter-espionage activities in the South of France. He finds himself having to decide whether to save a German collaborator and his family, to whom he grows attached in the course of his duties.
The voice of the narrator (an acquaintance of Roger’s) sounds a little like the voice of wisdom throughout the book. This makes his concluding condemnation of Roger’s choices a bit puzzling - for the whole novel seems to be about a genuine moral dilemma, one that can hardly be dismissed at the end by the employment of a simplified black and white lens. One wonders if the publisher insisted on the narrator’s concluding remarks, in an effort to reassure the public that the book was not advocating disloyalty to the war effort (the novel was published in 1947). There is a slightly defensive line on the jacket flap indicating that the novel “is controversial and will have its critics as well as its defenders”.
The only gay character is secondary. He is sadistic and unsympathetic: considering that Merrick’s later books are in the gay romance genre, I speculate that the choice to make the gay character in this book a baddie was dictated by a desire not to further add to the novel’s controversial character. Then again, the gay officer, unlike Roger, is entirely loyal to the US government, which challenges contemporary narratives about homosexual enemies of the State (as I recall, the so-called lavender scare officially started exactly the year the book was published). Be that as it may, we don’t see nearly enough of this “tiresomely handsome” (or something to that effect: it was a great line) gay officer.
The author’s biography at the back of the jacket reads to me as a wonderfully coded way of coming out: ‘... Back in 1945, he had a choice of finding a job and getting married, or using his wartime savings to support himself while writing a book. Apparently the girl involved had some say in the matter, for he soon found himself on the way to Mexico to begin a new book. Mr Merrick is still unmarried...’
It is a very readable novel about the moral complexities of the world of espionage and counter-intelligence during WW2. It keeps you engaged until the last page, with a keen insight into the main character’s psychology, and into aspects of that of secondary characters. Roger, the protagonist, is employed by the US government in counter-espionage activities in the South of France. He finds himself having to decide whether to save a German collaborator and his family, to whom he grows attached in the course of his duties.
The voice of the narrator (an acquaintance of Roger’s) sounds a little like the voice of wisdom throughout the book. This makes his concluding condemnation of Roger’s choices a bit puzzling - for the whole novel seems to be about a genuine moral dilemma, one that can hardly be dismissed at the end by the employment of a simplified black and white lens. One wonders if the publisher insisted on the narrator’s concluding remarks, in an effort to reassure the public that the book was not advocating disloyalty to the war effort (the novel was published in 1947). There is a slightly defensive line on the jacket flap indicating that the novel “is controversial and will have its critics as well as its defenders”.
The only gay character is secondary. He is sadistic and unsympathetic: considering that Merrick’s later books are in the gay romance genre, I speculate that the choice to make the gay character in this book a baddie was dictated by a desire not to further add to the novel’s controversial character. Then again, the gay officer, unlike Roger, is entirely loyal to the US government, which challenges contemporary narratives about homosexual enemies of the State (as I recall, the so-called lavender scare officially started exactly the year the book was published). Be that as it may, we don’t see nearly enough of this “tiresomely handsome” (or something to that effect: it was a great line) gay officer.
The author’s biography at the back of the jacket reads to me as a wonderfully coded way of coming out: ‘... Back in 1945, he had a choice of finding a job and getting married, or using his wartime savings to support himself while writing a book. Apparently the girl involved had some say in the matter, for he soon found himself on the way to Mexico to begin a new book. Mr Merrick is still unmarried...’
December 26, 2022
An impressive fiction of factual evasion
This is a really worthwhile novel in order to understand queer fiction in the world before truth about the world beyond heteronormativity was speakable in public art. What queer content there is that is overt is dressed up as something to be condemned or hidden. Yet the novel is full of code for a world that lies outside normativity, though in images of exclusion, infertility and isolation. In that sense, it resembles Forster's evasive novels. Forster read this novel and advised Merrick not to attempt heterosexual love stories as part of his plotting. The greater gay novelist was right for Merrick at this time is convincing about those relationships in making his straight men more evasive about whether heterosexuality fulfills them than in the moments of sexual contentment with women which ring false. He has to kill the women off or or otherwise dispose of them, to leave the hero a loner. His hatred of 'pansies' is expressed in his righteous horror at the bluff figure of Meddling, cloaked in faux over-masculinity but happy only in a gay club scene presented to us all through the hero's sense of it being sordid. Yet this is a novel of deliberate and undeliberate lies, about traitors to ideals and even that role held as a double bluff for reasons that seem laudable. It is as if the world of second world war espionage, about which Merrick knew from experience, was also used in the novel as an allegory of queer lives explorable only under deceitful fictions and codes of varying intelligibility and.l ease of being broken. Roger Chandler is a man of intrigue to a narrator who holds that man at a distance in order to code an alternative to his clearly pathological homophobia, revealed in his distaste for 'pansies' in the army. This is a queer novel. It just has none of the celebratory qualities of 'The Lord Won't Mind' & the rest of the Charlie & Peter trilogy.
This is a really worthwhile novel in order to understand queer fiction in the world before truth about the world beyond heteronormativity was speakable in public art. What queer content there is that is overt is dressed up as something to be condemned or hidden. Yet the novel is full of code for a world that lies outside normativity, though in images of exclusion, infertility and isolation. In that sense, it resembles Forster's evasive novels. Forster read this novel and advised Merrick not to attempt heterosexual love stories as part of his plotting. The greater gay novelist was right for Merrick at this time is convincing about those relationships in making his straight men more evasive about whether heterosexuality fulfills them than in the moments of sexual contentment with women which ring false. He has to kill the women off or or otherwise dispose of them, to leave the hero a loner. His hatred of 'pansies' is expressed in his righteous horror at the bluff figure of Meddling, cloaked in faux over-masculinity but happy only in a gay club scene presented to us all through the hero's sense of it being sordid. Yet this is a novel of deliberate and undeliberate lies, about traitors to ideals and even that role held as a double bluff for reasons that seem laudable. It is as if the world of second world war espionage, about which Merrick knew from experience, was also used in the novel as an allegory of queer lives explorable only under deceitful fictions and codes of varying intelligibility and.l ease of being broken. Roger Chandler is a man of intrigue to a narrator who holds that man at a distance in order to code an alternative to his clearly pathological homophobia, revealed in his distaste for 'pansies' in the army. This is a queer novel. It just has none of the celebratory qualities of 'The Lord Won't Mind' & the rest of the Charlie & Peter trilogy.
December 24, 2011
An excellent novel of espionage and moral compromise set in France at the end of World War II. A little pat in dealing with a middle-of-the-story romance, but otherwise tight and sharp-witted, with believable characters.
April 19, 2008
A rare first book by an amusing author. He has a real gift for creating interesting charactors and plots.
April 10, 2015
written 1947 just two years after end of ww11. almost did not go on to read after some torture but glad i did read to the end. read at orlando/clermont florida
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews