The Man from C.A.M.P. by Victor J. Banis

[Ulysses]

The Man From C.A.M.P.
By Victor J. Banis
MLR Press reissue, 2008
Five stars

I am not giving this bundle of three novellas re-published in 2008 as “The Man From C.A.M.P.” five stars because it is great writing or good literature. I’m doing it because these are important, and highly amusing, documents of one of the earliest subversive gay writers in America.

When I grew up in the 1960s, James Bond was a big thing. His serious imitators on television were “The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Mission: Impossible, and The Avengers. His spoofing imitators on television were Get Smart and Batman. I watched all of them. Victor Banis invented the Man From C.A.M.P. at the same time, and published them as a wily subversion of the nasty anti-gay atmosphere in the years before Stonewall.

In these three hastily-written novellas, we have Jackie Holmes as the man from C.A.M.P., a top-secret global agency dedicated to helping the cause of what we now call GLBT folks everywhere. Jackie himself is vastly rich, an expert in gemstones, and a connoisseur of rare high-performance vintage automobiles. Jackie is slender, short, blond, pretty and extremely nelly. But underneath that calculated self-presentation, he is smart, tough, and resourceful; and can take down a thug with a gun in the blink of an eye.

Another thing Jackie does is to seduce the reluctant, and often homophobic straight operatives from other agencies who are assigned to work with him by Lou Upton, the middle-aged Interpol officer who knows just how good Jackie is. In spite of the pining of Jackie’s associate, Rich, a huge bruiser with a tender heart and a massive thing, Jackie is steadfast in his promiscuity and insatiability.

In all honesty, I would have no patience with these if written today by a young gay writer. They are creations of their time and place, and their subversive, revolutionary quality is owed entirely to the daring of the author who brought them to life over half a century ago.