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Friends: A True Story Of Male Love
A True Story of Male Alexander A True Story of Male Coward, McCann, and FIRST First Edition, First Printing. Not price-clipped. Published by Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1973. Octavo. Hardcover. Book is very good with light spotting to the page ends and bumps to the corners. Dust jacket is very good with some light edgewear. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.Seller 323297 LGBT We Buy Books! Collections - Libraries - Estates - Individual Titles. Message us if you have books to sell!
224 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1973
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
June 23, 2026
What a whirlwind of a book. I read it in one day after finding it in a used bookstore in Upstate New York. In passing I thought the title looked titillating. I read the dust jacket and had to pick it up. Wow.
The thing about this book is that it's a ghost book. It's a phantom, a publication lost to time. Literally, I am apparently the only one to give this book a review on Goodreads. It doesn't even have a cover photo on this site. Its description is copied and pasted from some sale page on Amazon or something. When I search for any information about this book--news about its release, its reception, reviews, anything--I come up short. I can find virtually no information about it and who wrote it since "Alexander Douglas" is a pseudonym. What I know is that its publishing house has since been absorbed by Penguin Random House, and I've sent them an email inquiring about it.
But it wasn't a bad book! It captivated me for a day. It made me sad and angry and envious. I was enamored by it. It brought up a lot for me personally.
The story revolves around the author, Alexander's, life. It begins with his meeting John Braun, the man whom he would, presumably, spend the rest of his life, on Fire Island at a local bar and begins a flashback from there. This would have been the 1940s or '50s, mind you. The book was published in 1973, and as such, was completely shrouded in pseudonymic smoke and mirrors, mystery, and--frankly--explicit candor in its tone. It was seemingly marketed as a blatant look at an authentically "homosexual" life that otherwise couldn't be discussed in its day with identifiable information. It wasn't a salacious tell-all, per se, but it was certainly candid in its honesty. It does not shy away from the stories of this man's incredible life.
Alexander details--very vividly--so much so that you could question whether there were some fictionalizations involved--his life as a young boy in the Midwest who grows up to then go to college, then enlists in the Navy for WWII, and then moves to New York and spends time there, on "the Island," traveling, and so on. All the while, he is fighting what he knew about himself from a young age--that he was homosexual. His plan was simply to end his life rather than face it as a gay man. The age of the book is such that he even refers to "gay" as an odd sort of descriptor that seems new to the scene. He goes into its original meaning without the benefit of hindsight, so that it almost reads as odd now: for example, he discusses being gay and light when so much for the community is difficult and bleak. But when John enters his life, everything changes. He is immediately drawn to him, must be close to him. What unfolds is their life together in a time when it was just not spoken of.
Here's the thing, though. As with so many books and stories I've read lately, this book simply confirms once more the truth that is irrefutable: Gay men have always existed, and they have always loved, been affected, been interested, in some of the same things, ideas, aesthetics, arts, fields--in fact, it's almost uncanny and striking how some of what this man lives, in the early to mid-Twentieth Century, sounds like it could have happened today. The sheer number of other gay men he met and slept with, not to even mention the many women he did, as well, was just staggering. It seemed so commonplace--or was so if you knew where to go and how to cruise, and so on. These rituals, these ways of being gay, being in the culture...they are older than I think and they always have a way of showing up and reminding me of this. "Gayness" as we know it today has transformed, surely, but it has always been so *itself* at the same time. It's remarkable.
And so while some of Douglas's takes have not aged well--while some of his attitudes seem outdated or just blinded by the privilege of post-war American ease of building a life for oneself--I still found the book captivating and moving in its own right. It reminds me that history is not far away. That I, too, and connected with this community, which held (and holds) so much joy and erotic passion and love and beauty. I am connected, personally through my family as well, to these stories, and I am interested in what this author must have thought come the Reagan years and the AIDS Epidemic. I wonder if he kept his hope, his love. I see all generations of us strung backwards--and it makes me wonder what is in store for us moving forward, too. The fact that I even say "us" in ownership is something that once would have threatened my very existence. Not so now.
I'm glad I found this interesting book.
The thing about this book is that it's a ghost book. It's a phantom, a publication lost to time. Literally, I am apparently the only one to give this book a review on Goodreads. It doesn't even have a cover photo on this site. Its description is copied and pasted from some sale page on Amazon or something. When I search for any information about this book--news about its release, its reception, reviews, anything--I come up short. I can find virtually no information about it and who wrote it since "Alexander Douglas" is a pseudonym. What I know is that its publishing house has since been absorbed by Penguin Random House, and I've sent them an email inquiring about it.
But it wasn't a bad book! It captivated me for a day. It made me sad and angry and envious. I was enamored by it. It brought up a lot for me personally.
The story revolves around the author, Alexander's, life. It begins with his meeting John Braun, the man whom he would, presumably, spend the rest of his life, on Fire Island at a local bar and begins a flashback from there. This would have been the 1940s or '50s, mind you. The book was published in 1973, and as such, was completely shrouded in pseudonymic smoke and mirrors, mystery, and--frankly--explicit candor in its tone. It was seemingly marketed as a blatant look at an authentically "homosexual" life that otherwise couldn't be discussed in its day with identifiable information. It wasn't a salacious tell-all, per se, but it was certainly candid in its honesty. It does not shy away from the stories of this man's incredible life.
Alexander details--very vividly--so much so that you could question whether there were some fictionalizations involved--his life as a young boy in the Midwest who grows up to then go to college, then enlists in the Navy for WWII, and then moves to New York and spends time there, on "the Island," traveling, and so on. All the while, he is fighting what he knew about himself from a young age--that he was homosexual. His plan was simply to end his life rather than face it as a gay man. The age of the book is such that he even refers to "gay" as an odd sort of descriptor that seems new to the scene. He goes into its original meaning without the benefit of hindsight, so that it almost reads as odd now: for example, he discusses being gay and light when so much for the community is difficult and bleak. But when John enters his life, everything changes. He is immediately drawn to him, must be close to him. What unfolds is their life together in a time when it was just not spoken of.
Here's the thing, though. As with so many books and stories I've read lately, this book simply confirms once more the truth that is irrefutable: Gay men have always existed, and they have always loved, been affected, been interested, in some of the same things, ideas, aesthetics, arts, fields--in fact, it's almost uncanny and striking how some of what this man lives, in the early to mid-Twentieth Century, sounds like it could have happened today. The sheer number of other gay men he met and slept with, not to even mention the many women he did, as well, was just staggering. It seemed so commonplace--or was so if you knew where to go and how to cruise, and so on. These rituals, these ways of being gay, being in the culture...they are older than I think and they always have a way of showing up and reminding me of this. "Gayness" as we know it today has transformed, surely, but it has always been so *itself* at the same time. It's remarkable.
And so while some of Douglas's takes have not aged well--while some of his attitudes seem outdated or just blinded by the privilege of post-war American ease of building a life for oneself--I still found the book captivating and moving in its own right. It reminds me that history is not far away. That I, too, and connected with this community, which held (and holds) so much joy and erotic passion and love and beauty. I am connected, personally through my family as well, to these stories, and I am interested in what this author must have thought come the Reagan years and the AIDS Epidemic. I wonder if he kept his hope, his love. I see all generations of us strung backwards--and it makes me wonder what is in store for us moving forward, too. The fact that I even say "us" in ownership is something that once would have threatened my very existence. Not so now.
I'm glad I found this interesting book.
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