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The Franz Document
Itiel, Joseph
Paperback
Published January 1, 1989
1 person is currently reading
About the author
Joseph Itiel
12 booksJoseph arrived in New York from Tel Aviv in 1950 at the age of nineteen. He first enrolled at NYU in the department of journalism and then studied creative writing at the New School for Social Research.
However, after obtaining his B.A. degree, more important matters than creative writing occupied his mind. On the one hand he wished with all his heart to become a straight man. On the other hand, he also wanted to try out homosexual liaisons, because there was little doubt in his mind that he was, and would always be, gay.
In 1956, he went to India to try to resolve both issues, including a stay in an ashram in Rishikesh. (The Beatles went there somewhat later.) The story of his sojourn in India is fully narrated in Escapades of a Gay Traveler: Sexual, Cultural, and Spiritual Encounters. Because he was trying to achieve two opposing goals, neither one of them materialized.
For a few years, with Toronto as his headquarters, he traveled to many countries, including Mexico where he learned to speak Spanish fluently. There he also got used to paying for sexual favors which forever after has changed his gay life for the better. For one year he returned to Israel, teaching high school in the Galilee Mountains. Eventually, he studied social science for his M.A. degree at Hunter College in New York.
During all this time he kept writing, including a travel book. However, since he never narrated his gay activities (such as they were), the book lacked genuineness. That book, and many short stories, was rejected by publishers with great regularity. Eventually, in 1964, disdaining Toronto's cold weather, Joseph moved to San Francisco during the height of the hippie period. Here for the first time in his life, Joseph started making gay friends, including members of the Society for Individual Rights, a pioneering male gay organization.
Joseph has always been attracted sexually to men who looked very different from himself. This drove him to return to Mexico many times as well as to spend considerable time in Japan and the Philippines. Working as a teacher for the Community College in San Francisco afforded him enough time for traveling. In spite of a brief interlude with a lover and constant forays to the many bathhouses that proliferated in San Francisco before AIDS, Joseph never gave up on paying for sex. For whatever the reason, he grew closer physically and even emotionally to his paid-for partners than to the one-night stands he met in gay venues.
At the age of fifty, Joseph still did not know what he wanted to be when he grew up. One evening, he was invited to a demonstration at the Hypnosis Clearing House in Berkeley and right then and there enrolled in a hypnotherapy course. Being a gifted raconteur, a skill that helps make the hypnotist more efficient, Joseph soon became a star student. As his graduation project he gave a hypnosis demonstration at a branch of the San Francisco Library and, a month later, at a Manila high-society club. Joseph started teaching self-hypnosis in various colleges as well as practicing hypnotherapy. He gave daylong self-hypnosis seminars for ten years at the College of Marin.
It was at the College of Marin that Joseph was approached by Prentice-Hall and asked to write a book about self-hypnosis. A short book, Financial Well-Being Through Self Hypnosis, was released by them in 1983. While the subject of homosexuality was not mentioned in it at all, Joseph wrote irreverently about the capriciousness of society at large when it comes to professional exams or obtaining employment. (He referred to them as "rights of passage.")
Joseph now started writing The Franz Document, his coming out novel. The plot starts in Vienna in 1937 and ends in the Philippines in 1950. Even though the book dealt with topics of general interest (World War II, the Holocaust, Indian spirituality, and the struggle of a gay person to lead a normal life), it was rejected by publishers and agents over and over again
However, after obtaining his B.A. degree, more important matters than creative writing occupied his mind. On the one hand he wished with all his heart to become a straight man. On the other hand, he also wanted to try out homosexual liaisons, because there was little doubt in his mind that he was, and would always be, gay.
In 1956, he went to India to try to resolve both issues, including a stay in an ashram in Rishikesh. (The Beatles went there somewhat later.) The story of his sojourn in India is fully narrated in Escapades of a Gay Traveler: Sexual, Cultural, and Spiritual Encounters. Because he was trying to achieve two opposing goals, neither one of them materialized.
For a few years, with Toronto as his headquarters, he traveled to many countries, including Mexico where he learned to speak Spanish fluently. There he also got used to paying for sexual favors which forever after has changed his gay life for the better. For one year he returned to Israel, teaching high school in the Galilee Mountains. Eventually, he studied social science for his M.A. degree at Hunter College in New York.
During all this time he kept writing, including a travel book. However, since he never narrated his gay activities (such as they were), the book lacked genuineness. That book, and many short stories, was rejected by publishers with great regularity. Eventually, in 1964, disdaining Toronto's cold weather, Joseph moved to San Francisco during the height of the hippie period. Here for the first time in his life, Joseph started making gay friends, including members of the Society for Individual Rights, a pioneering male gay organization.
Joseph has always been attracted sexually to men who looked very different from himself. This drove him to return to Mexico many times as well as to spend considerable time in Japan and the Philippines. Working as a teacher for the Community College in San Francisco afforded him enough time for traveling. In spite of a brief interlude with a lover and constant forays to the many bathhouses that proliferated in San Francisco before AIDS, Joseph never gave up on paying for sex. For whatever the reason, he grew closer physically and even emotionally to his paid-for partners than to the one-night stands he met in gay venues.
At the age of fifty, Joseph still did not know what he wanted to be when he grew up. One evening, he was invited to a demonstration at the Hypnosis Clearing House in Berkeley and right then and there enrolled in a hypnotherapy course. Being a gifted raconteur, a skill that helps make the hypnotist more efficient, Joseph soon became a star student. As his graduation project he gave a hypnosis demonstration at a branch of the San Francisco Library and, a month later, at a Manila high-society club. Joseph started teaching self-hypnosis in various colleges as well as practicing hypnotherapy. He gave daylong self-hypnosis seminars for ten years at the College of Marin.
It was at the College of Marin that Joseph was approached by Prentice-Hall and asked to write a book about self-hypnosis. A short book, Financial Well-Being Through Self Hypnosis, was released by them in 1983. While the subject of homosexuality was not mentioned in it at all, Joseph wrote irreverently about the capriciousness of society at large when it comes to professional exams or obtaining employment. (He referred to them as "rights of passage.")
Joseph now started writing The Franz Document, his coming out novel. The plot starts in Vienna in 1937 and ends in the Philippines in 1950. Even though the book dealt with topics of general interest (World War II, the Holocaust, Indian spirituality, and the struggle of a gay person to lead a normal life), it was rejected by publishers and agents over and over again
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