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Moritz: A Comic Novel
213 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1982
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April 22, 2025
"When Moritz, a young farmboy who is both well endowed and eager to learn, arrives in New York City looking for love he finds himself instead a sizzling, sleazy and outrageous new world. Bob Herron's novel is a dazzling satire of the way gay men live. When the last chapter of this novel was first published in Felice Picano's 'A True Likeness' the critics raved. Wallace Hamilton wrote in the New York Native, 'I was reduced to spasms of gasping laughter by 'Mortiz Goes to a Garden Party'...Glorious slapstick is interspersed with...mind-boggling verbiage...Loved it.' And John Preston wrote in 'Drummer' 'There's one story in the (Picano) collection that you have to read for the sake of the biggest belly laugh of the year 'Moritz Goes to a Garden Party' is the most hysterical recounting of the culture clash between leather men and piss-elegance that you'll ever fund.' Take Moritz home with you and give yourself some fun." From the back cover of the 1982 Callamus Press paperback edition.
I can not praise this wonderful comic satire of the gay world of New York and Fire Island circa 1979 enough. That it is out-of-print and the author so forgotten that I cannot find any information about him anywhere (though he was a playwright as well) is incomprehensible. He is, to me, a better writer and more perceptive and equally honest observer of the foibles, idiocies and unsavoury parts of the gay world as Larry Krammer in 'Faggots'. Once you read this novel it is worth reading https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/ar... on 'Faggots'. It is fascinating how much overlap there is between the two novels. The main difference in approach is that Krammer was over forty and was bitterly annoyed he had passed:
"...from a first class number to a second-class one."
because:
"Youth and Beauty get Youth and Beauty...It is the surest and cruelest law of all gay life...You can tell how attractive you are yourself by the degree of beauty you are able to attract."
and:
"Everybody eventually moves into the dark room...But only fools move too soon, and masochists to late." (all from page 61 of 'Moritz').
The difference between 'Moritz' and 'Faggots' is that Bob Herron wrote a joyous paean to the joys, wonders and stupidities of the gay world that had been built in the bare dozen years since Stonewall while Larry Kramer wrote a kvetching existential complaint because he could no longer compete in the games his generation of gay men had created.
Everyone insists that 'Moritz' isn't great literature but it is a great New York novel, it is a totally vanished New York but then the London of Dickens is equally vanished. The rituals Bob Herron delineates are equally as lost as the marriage rituals of Jane Austen but that doesn't make them any less worth reading about. What I loved was how joyful this novel is. For as long as anyone could remember gays had to explain, justify or defend themselves. For a brief moment post Stonewall all that vanished. Young men filled clubs, streets, bars, and the decaying Waterfront of a city that most people wanted to move out of and, to be honest, they fucked liked rabbits, without care or thought.
Besides, who cannot love a novel were, in the midst of a giant Pines orgy and similar, there is time for a character, when he hears Mortitz say "What the hell is 'Sauve qui peu'!" to get the response "You read Waugh too." Oh for the days when the naïf hero of erotic stories confronted the wicked ways of the big city with the dick of death and a love of English literature.
Even without HIV/AIDS this world would have changed but, for a time, these gay men were young and could do what their forebearers hadn't been able to do in any society which had been cursed by the morality of the middle eastern sky gods (go search out Gore Vidal to find out what I mean). It was a brief moment when 'Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive But to be young was very heaven'. Those men were able to just be themselves, or at least be who they thought they should or could be. That it was hugely flawed goes without saying, but when you look at the bullshit that gays had put up with for so long they deserved their Lupercalia, it wouldn't last long. All too soon, like Anthony, Bacchus would desert them:
'When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.'
('The God Abandons Anthony' by Constantine Cavafy, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)
I'll stand with Anthony, Moritz, Bob Herron and Cavafy any day rather than Kramer or all the other judgemental Octavians who have inherited the world.
Moritz and the 1984 attempt to destroy 'Gay's The Word' the UK's first gay bookshop:
This novel was one of many 'imported' gay books which were at the centre of an infamous attempt to push UK gays back into the closet by the conservative government of Margaret Thatcher in 1984. Amazingly this event, important not only for gays but civil liberties in the UK, does not have any kind of Wikipedia entry. Because of this lack I have assembled links to a number of sites which anyone interested in free speech should read. If we don't remember our history we will be condemned to repeat it.
The genesis of the prosecution of 'Gays The Word' was the anger of homophobes to books like 'The Milkman's On His Way' by David Rees which were written for young people and presented being gay as ordinary and nothing to get your-knickers-in-a-twist over. Unfortunately there was no way to ban the offending books because censorship of literature had been laughed out of court at the 'Lady Chatterley Trial' nearly twenty years earlier. But Customs and Excise did have the ability to seize and forbid the import of 'foreign' books, those not published in the UK. As most 'gay' books came from abroad, specifically the USA, this anomaly was the basis for the raid on Gays The Word and the seizure of large amounts of stock. The intention was that the legal costs, plus the disruption to the business, would sink this small independent bookshop long before it came to trial. That it didn't is testimony to the resilience of Gay's The Word, the gay community and all those who supported them.
The best, not perfect, but only, guide to the event is at:
https://www.gayinthe80s.com/2012/10/1...
There follows a series of links to the event connected with an exhibition at the University of London:
The background:
https://www.london.ac.uk/news-events/...
The 142 books seized:
https://exhibitions.london.ac.uk/s/se...
The history of the prosecution:
https://www.london.ac.uk/news-events/...
The fight to clarify the law after the prosecution was dropped:
https://www.london.ac.uk/news-events/...
I can not praise this wonderful comic satire of the gay world of New York and Fire Island circa 1979 enough. That it is out-of-print and the author so forgotten that I cannot find any information about him anywhere (though he was a playwright as well) is incomprehensible. He is, to me, a better writer and more perceptive and equally honest observer of the foibles, idiocies and unsavoury parts of the gay world as Larry Krammer in 'Faggots'. Once you read this novel it is worth reading https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/ar... on 'Faggots'. It is fascinating how much overlap there is between the two novels. The main difference in approach is that Krammer was over forty and was bitterly annoyed he had passed:
"...from a first class number to a second-class one."
because:
"Youth and Beauty get Youth and Beauty...It is the surest and cruelest law of all gay life...You can tell how attractive you are yourself by the degree of beauty you are able to attract."
and:
"Everybody eventually moves into the dark room...But only fools move too soon, and masochists to late." (all from page 61 of 'Moritz').
The difference between 'Moritz' and 'Faggots' is that Bob Herron wrote a joyous paean to the joys, wonders and stupidities of the gay world that had been built in the bare dozen years since Stonewall while Larry Kramer wrote a kvetching existential complaint because he could no longer compete in the games his generation of gay men had created.
Everyone insists that 'Moritz' isn't great literature but it is a great New York novel, it is a totally vanished New York but then the London of Dickens is equally vanished. The rituals Bob Herron delineates are equally as lost as the marriage rituals of Jane Austen but that doesn't make them any less worth reading about. What I loved was how joyful this novel is. For as long as anyone could remember gays had to explain, justify or defend themselves. For a brief moment post Stonewall all that vanished. Young men filled clubs, streets, bars, and the decaying Waterfront of a city that most people wanted to move out of and, to be honest, they fucked liked rabbits, without care or thought.
Besides, who cannot love a novel were, in the midst of a giant Pines orgy and similar, there is time for a character, when he hears Mortitz say "What the hell is 'Sauve qui peu'!" to get the response "You read Waugh too." Oh for the days when the naïf hero of erotic stories confronted the wicked ways of the big city with the dick of death and a love of English literature.
Even without HIV/AIDS this world would have changed but, for a time, these gay men were young and could do what their forebearers hadn't been able to do in any society which had been cursed by the morality of the middle eastern sky gods (go search out Gore Vidal to find out what I mean). It was a brief moment when 'Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive But to be young was very heaven'. Those men were able to just be themselves, or at least be who they thought they should or could be. That it was hugely flawed goes without saying, but when you look at the bullshit that gays had put up with for so long they deserved their Lupercalia, it wouldn't last long. All too soon, like Anthony, Bacchus would desert them:
'When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.'
('The God Abandons Anthony' by Constantine Cavafy, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)
I'll stand with Anthony, Moritz, Bob Herron and Cavafy any day rather than Kramer or all the other judgemental Octavians who have inherited the world.
Moritz and the 1984 attempt to destroy 'Gay's The Word' the UK's first gay bookshop:
This novel was one of many 'imported' gay books which were at the centre of an infamous attempt to push UK gays back into the closet by the conservative government of Margaret Thatcher in 1984. Amazingly this event, important not only for gays but civil liberties in the UK, does not have any kind of Wikipedia entry. Because of this lack I have assembled links to a number of sites which anyone interested in free speech should read. If we don't remember our history we will be condemned to repeat it.
The genesis of the prosecution of 'Gays The Word' was the anger of homophobes to books like 'The Milkman's On His Way' by David Rees which were written for young people and presented being gay as ordinary and nothing to get your-knickers-in-a-twist over. Unfortunately there was no way to ban the offending books because censorship of literature had been laughed out of court at the 'Lady Chatterley Trial' nearly twenty years earlier. But Customs and Excise did have the ability to seize and forbid the import of 'foreign' books, those not published in the UK. As most 'gay' books came from abroad, specifically the USA, this anomaly was the basis for the raid on Gays The Word and the seizure of large amounts of stock. The intention was that the legal costs, plus the disruption to the business, would sink this small independent bookshop long before it came to trial. That it didn't is testimony to the resilience of Gay's The Word, the gay community and all those who supported them.
The best, not perfect, but only, guide to the event is at:
https://www.gayinthe80s.com/2012/10/1...
There follows a series of links to the event connected with an exhibition at the University of London:
The background:
https://www.london.ac.uk/news-events/...
The 142 books seized:
https://exhibitions.london.ac.uk/s/se...
The history of the prosecution:
https://www.london.ac.uk/news-events/...
The fight to clarify the law after the prosecution was dropped:
https://www.london.ac.uk/news-events/...
August 13, 2024
It's not incredible literature, but it is very amusing for what it is. You have to keep the context in mind, but it was cleverly amusing. VERY gay, but in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way. Being that it is very dated, it was a bit nostalgic, too, for those of us who remember the 70s....
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews