[Because there isn't information about this work on GR my review is lengthy with a long preamble describing the novel's actions and something of its p[Because there isn't information about this work on GR my review is lengthy with a long preamble describing the novel's actions and something of its publication history. If you want my review scroll down and you will find it headed 'Review']
INTRODUCTION:
Desert Dreamers was originally published in London with the imprint of At the Sign of the Tiger Lily in 1914. Appearing at that time as Desert Dreamers: a Novel of Friendship under the pseudonym Patrick Weston, it tells the story of Julian Thelluson who, against his mother's wishes, decides to holiday in Algiers instead of with her in Cannes.
Making the acquaintance of a Frenchman at the hotel in Algiers, he shares with him that he plans to continue on to Biskra. The Frenchman is alarmed and tries to talk him out of it by stating that Biskra isn't the place for an Englishman like himself.
Julian's mind, however, is made up. Upon his arrival in Biskra he runs into a friend of his mother's, a barrister named Joseph Hoxton. When he is introduced to Hoxton's guide, Tayeb ben Mahmud, a young Algerian, he is instantly drawn to him.
Hamilton refers to Julian having read The Garden of Allah as the source of his desire to travel to Biskra. The Garden of Allah is a 1905 novel by Robert Smythe Hichens (author of the 1894 novel about Oscar Wilde, The Green Carnation. The novel was filmed three times, the last in 1936 starred Marlene Deitrich and Charles Boyer) about an English woman of 32 years who has yet to find love. Her parents are deceased so she travels to Algeria with her maid and finds love in the desert.
Another reference, and likely the one that the Frenchman in the novel is reacting to, is the connection of Biskra with Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas, and Andre Gide. Gide has written about Wilde and Douglas traveling to Biskra and as part of their vacationing, picking up young local men. When Gide visited them, they introduced him to the lifestyle and the many young men who were available to European tourists.
Desert Dreamers would have been very bold for its time, thus the need for a pseudonym. Prior to each chapter, there is a short poem or poem fragment relating to the action of the text. They are not at all subtle. They include everything from Shakespeare to The Koran. One of my favorites is this one by Lord Alfred Douglas.
Jacinth blue and violet Is the radiant light that flashes Through the tangled silken net When he lifts his languid lashes.
Gerald Hamilton is the source of Isherwood's Mr. Norris even in photographs he matches Isherwood's description and Hamilton in 1956 wrote 'Mr. Norris and I: An Autobiographical Sketch' and in 1969 'The Way it Was with Me: The definitive autobiography of Isherwood's 'Mr Norris''. Hamilton was always one to take advantage of anything or anyone to make money, rather like Mr. Norris.
In 1966, Guild Press re-released the complete text of Desert Dreamers under the author's actual name with a foreword by Christopher Isherwood where he discusses this. Unfortunately copes of this work go for sums of $500+, only a few hundred dollars less than the original 1914 edition. That is a great deal of money for less than 90 pages of paperback. I have tried to source this or any of Gerald Hamilton's books on the Internet Archive without success. Fortunately a part of 'Desert Dreamers' can be found in the anthology 'Pages Passed from Hand to Hand: The Hidden Tradition of Homosexual literature in English 1748 to 1914' edited by David Mitchell and David Leavitt (see my footnote *1 below)
REVIEW:
But is it worth reading? Well if you can access a copy, yes it is interesting, but very much as curiosity. I think for any reader under fifty or so will find the very glaring 'colonialist' tropes annoying (you could also describe them as orientalist but I have problems Said's whole theory and he doesn't actually cover 'gay' subjects). It doesn't even have the rather, to me, tiresome philosophy of Gide's 'Immoralist' (which I always think was so much white wash to get away with talking about having sex with lower class boys while pretending its not what you actually do). But it does have the narrative of up-tight repressed European finds liberation with a native. Everything revolves around the European, the native is purely deus ex machina which enables a European to change, develop, grow. But the native never changes, he is the cock that liberates and will always remain a servant of the needs of others of the white man.
Which is pretty harsh, but still true, but maybe overthinking this slight work but there is part of me that finds a lack of any critical approach to these 'gay' classics problematic. I am not morally worried about under age sex, not really a question in this work but certainly is in the case of Gide, because I only accept such concerns if you are going to be as verbally outraged and proactive in seeking change for the under-aged children shackled to work benches through out the world producing the 'colourful' native souvenirs you buy on holiday.
For me it is the colonial discourse that is all too easily ignored as well as that of class and race. That doesn't render these stories unreadable, but I think they should at least be read critically. Particularly as the question of what is or is not 'gay' seems to be so ill defined.
My four stars really doesn't take account of all my reservations but ultimately I did enjoy it so I am happy for it to four stars.
*1 If you read my review of the anthology you will find I take a very dim view of this anthology but that is separate question to the quality or usefulness of some of its content....more
Although it had been a long time since I read this novel (I read an awful lot of Stephen King Novels at one time, but I was on airplanes a lot when I Although it had been a long time since I read this novel (I read an awful lot of Stephen King Novels at one time, but I was on airplanes a lot when I lived in New York in the very early 1990s, and only just learnt that Stephen King hates it and thinks it rubbish because he wrote it during a time he was off his head on all sorts of stuff (sounds like me when I was flying around on airplanes). But I actually liked the novel, it was creepy and had some good characters (it also had some dud ones) but I liked the kid who magicked his little brother away and nobody cared (hope I am thinking of the right book?!) and the whole insidious destruction of various people we meet, particularly drawing on their flaws. I read Needful Things later and much preferred Tommyknockers which covers some of the same ground.
Of course it is long, that is why I'll never read it or any other Stephen King novel again. I am too old and don't have the time. When I was young and thought I had all the time in the world (and still had my hair and flat tummy) I did things you do when you have all the time in the world. Now I am old and going bald and won't even consider what happened to my flat tum, but I know I'll never read everything I want too.
Should you read Tommyknockers? It is 700 pages and I would suggest if you haven't read War & Peace, Moby Dick or Don Quixote, or at least tried you might consider those door-stoppers first. If you want really good weird-horror writing read a bunch of books by Christopher Fowler, Steve Rasnic Tem and Joel Lane instead. Two books by each of those authors would probably come to Tommyknockers word length. If you have to read King then read The Talisman by King and Peter Straub.
I read this novel before the fall of the Berlin Wall, exactly when I can't remember, but even at the time I thought that Mr. Read had failed to come tI read this novel before the fall of the Berlin Wall, exactly when I can't remember, but even at the time I thought that Mr. Read had failed to come to grips with his subject (read the various GR and other synopsis). I also didn't think him a first raste writer. Time has done nothing to alter that opinion, in fact having read another of his novels 'The Villa Golitsyn' a few years ago, I have lost any interest or respect for Read as a novelist. I haven't read his non fiction and won't.
I could reproduce my earlier review of 'The Villa Golitsyn' because everything I said about that novel applies to 'The Junkers'. Some novelists are of their time and Read is one of them. I would never recommend reading him. Compared to older writers like Francis King or Allan Massie (born 1923 and 1938 respectively so slightly older then Read who was born in 1941) he seems utterly cut-off and adrift from the times he has live in. That lack of connection was cultivated as a way to distinguish himself from and also a greater distinction then any contemporary writers. Unfortunately he wasn't good enough to be alternate to current fashions. Even his Roman Catholicism seems bogus, as if he imagined it automatically placed him with the likes of Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh. Of course it didn't. He isn't even as good as A.N. Wilson in his campy early anglo-catholic novel 'Who was Oswald Fish'.
What ever is going on in the catholic church you won't find it anything Read has written, nor will you find out anything about human nature. Don't waste time on this drivel....more
An extremely fine account of the Mendel Beiliss ritual murder case of 1911, indeed in one of those cases of coincidence/serendipity that the history oAn extremely fine account of the Mendel Beiliss ritual murder case of 1911, indeed in one of those cases of coincidence/serendipity that the history of publishing is full of, this history of the Beiliss case came out in the same year as Bernard Malamud's 'The Fixer' (made into a film of the same name in 1968). Both books are largely and lamentable unread these days, though 'Blood Accusation' is the more thoroughly forgotten. This a great pity because I would rank it with Norman Cohn's 'Warrant for Genocide' (curiously, or perhaps not, also published in 1966) in the resurrection and, I mean this in a completely respectful way, of the history of the virulent pre-Nazi early 20th century history of government inspired antisemitism.
If you don't know about the 1911 Mendel Beilis ritual murder trial in Kiev I have no intention of recapping it (if you won't read this book then at least go online and search it out and, while you are at it check the author's biography as well) but it was the latest trial in which the trial in which the long discredited medieval 'Blood Libel' accusation was revived; it began in Damascus in 1840 and from then on it spread like a plague. The brilliance of Samuel's book is that it is both brilliantly readable and scrupulous based on extensive research in all available sources (clearly those of the Soviet Union were not available). The trial of Beilis was an international sensation though, unfortunately, like the Berne libel trial in 1934 which demonstrated beyond doubt the fraudulence of the 'Protocols of Zion' it did not banish the 'Blood Libel' accusations or trials (there was a 1928 blood libel trial in Massena, upstate New York in the USA - see the 2020 “The Accusation,� by Edward Berenson, though there are fine earlier books on the trial as well).
I can't recommend this book to highly and anyone interested in post WWI antisemitism, including that of the Nazi's, should know about the Beilis trial just like they need to know the history of the 'Protocols of Zion'. Not because they 'caused' the Shoah but because the frightening and active promotion of antisemitism by governments and influential people who knew they were fostering a lie.
I am well aware that there has been more recent books on the Beilis trial such as 'Blood Libel in Late Imperial Russia: The Ritual Murder Trial of Mendel Beilis' by Robert Weinberg which benefit from opening of archives in Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. But while details have been clarified I do not believe that the accuracy, let alone the usefulness, of this book has been challenged (the same can be said about Norman Cohn's 'Warrant for Genocide').
A splendid and important book which I would love to see republished....more
I read this book a very long time ago, I was still at school (where I had also seen the film), and I still remember the book and my reactions to it. II read this book a very long time ago, I was still at school (where I had also seen the film), and I still remember the book and my reactions to it. I liked the book a great deal because it was harsher than the film and some things in the novel shocked my tender 16 year old self to an extent that I never forgot them. Things like men going blind for lack of nutrients, one source of which were fresh eggs. But many men traded their eggs, often to the 'female' star of the theatrical productions put on in the camp who was of course an attractive man in drag. He was courted and treated as a woman but when liberation came the men turned on him and stoned him to death. The scene of his death was deeply disturbing, no doubt because I was queer boy struggling to understand himself in 1974. I must be clear that there was no hint of approval of the treatment of this drag performer in the novel it was an example of the savagery and hypocrisy the underlay so much of the motivations of those in the camp.
This was not a simplistic or standard prison camp novel. I think in many ways the various characters and scenes were an attempt to explain the moral and political failings of nations in class via the actions on individuals. It was, I thought far more subtle, then the film, but it could be because so many more stories could be told. That didn't stop aspects of it being clunky. The dislike of the working class officer Grey for the upper class Marlowe foreshadowing the post war election defeat of Churchill, the creation of the Welfare State and Britain's withdrawal from empire. The American 'King' seemed an obvious stand in for the ways and methods that militarily and economically powerful, but untutored USA would play in the world, guided by the old world verities of Marlowe.
'King Rat' as fiction being used as an exposition of how power politics worked and developed is pretty clunky and I thought so as a teenager. It was good on the prison camp as a microcosm of the larger world and how individuals act when put to the test. The 'King' is actually more honest in his opportunism than the British officers who should be providing leadership but in fact stole from their own men by cheating of rations. No one comes out good, except maybe Marlowe and his very niaf goodness and old fashioned beliefs and standards didn't convince.
I have not reread this novel nor read anything else by Clavell, in fact I'd forgotten that 'King Rat' was by him. It was never a great novel, though it had great things in it. You'd be far better off reading 'Empire of the Sun' by Ballard if you want a real novel about a Japanese camp (but a civilian rather than military one). If you want to understand human beings being pushed to extremity I wouldn't recommend Clavell or Ballard but 'Fatelessness' by Imre Kertesz.
My final reflection on 'King Rat' is that it is a novel of its time and it may still entertain but there are better novels exploring how man behaves in exetremis....more
I read this book a few years ago but felt I had to come back to it now (January 2025) because current events elsewhere (do I really need to spell thatI read this book a few years ago but felt I had to come back to it now (January 2025) because current events elsewhere (do I really need to spell that out?) make it impossible not to. It is too easy to condemn, without context, without reasons, without history. Those who start rebellions in urban areas are, like those who suppress them, just cookie-cutter, identikit, badmen, doing dreadful things to innocent victims. The dead are dead and the reasons for their deaths are too complicated to bother understanding. Of course those caught in the cross fire continue to die. Do you compare the 40 children who died over 6 days of 1916 to the 186 who died over 30 years of the Northern Ireland Troubles or the 74 who died in the first week of January 2025 in Gaza. Or do you accept these deaths as negligible compared to the numberless children who died in the Shoah, Stalin's Ukrainian famine, or Pol Pots Cambodia?
The point is once stripped of context the dead are just victims. They have no agency. It is reductive and in denting the dead their own agency denies them dignity.
The dead children of 1916 deserved to be remembered but, like many other groups and individuals were forgotten. I can assure you that when I was at school in Ireland back in the 1970s dead children, unless identifiable as a 'British atrocity' were not in the story (but then neither were women except as suitably silent nurses or nuns ministering to the men). Certainly no one was told that for the brave middle class leaders of 1916 the women of the Dublin slums and their numerous barefoot children were barely human and unworthy of being considered Irish.
I mention barefoot because so many of Dublin's children were barefoot back then and remained so until after WWII. The poverty of Dublin remained Dickensian long after it vanished in the UK.
I congratulate the book for telling and resurrecting stories but it is not a good or well written book. I would love to give it many stars but can't and my three reflects respect for its subject rather than the way it is told.
Many of those dead children died working, or searching out food - they were not passive, did 'not go gentle into that good night' but died struggling to survive. Did they die so that all could be 'changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born'? I don't know but they deserve to be remembered but won't be because we remembered heroes, or monsters (who can name one victim of John Wayne Gacey? or the dead boys of Srebrenica?).
There is much to learn from the dead children of 1916 but it won't be learnt from this book.
I read this novel years ago and I find it hard to rate because I don't know who, except for a Waugh obsessive, would want to read it. I will never reaI read this novel years ago and I find it hard to rate because I don't know who, except for a Waugh obsessive, would want to read it. I will never read it again but, elements of it has remained with me for half-a-century, I am not sure it is a good novel, but I think it provides some very interesting insights into Waugh and his demons.
What I remember from my reading is that one of the themes that the 'voices' Pinfold 'hears' mentions, several times if I remember rightly, belittles Pinfold/Waugh's social pretensions (I am convinced that Waugh wrote about himself in the character Pinfold. Whether this is a good reading I leave to literary scolars). In the novel these voices tell Pinfold he is a 'counter-jumper', someone who has wormed his away in amongst his 'betters'. What makes this interesting is that Waugh was a social climber. Waugh had been adopted by a clique of upper class young men at Oxford from schools such as Eton which gave him entre into a world of social connections far from his own middle class roots and his undistinguished school.
It is hard for younger people in the UK and people of any age from outside the UK to understand how rarefied and stratified the English class system was during Waugh's life. The UK class system was much more porous then continental ones, but its acceptance/adoption of outsiders, was always conditional and like the Bourbon's these people 'forgot nothing'. We might see Waugh as securely within the English 'bon ton' but Waugh knew he was not and the insight that long after he had apparently 'passed' and had accomplished far more then any of those who could claim greater pedigree or attendance at a 'better' school mattered greatly to Waugh tells a great deal about inner demons.
It is also significant that Pinfold/Waugh hears voices denouncing him as a 'Pansy'. I think it is another reflection of Waugh's fears, not because he was gay - the term is meaningless for this period - or homosexual or queer - Waugh wasn't but in his youth, in those Oxford days when he 'passed' from his middle class roots into that nebulous English haute bourgeoisie, he had slept with other men, often from a socially superior background. Clearly there are elements of his past that Waugh was challenged by.
It is for its insights on Waugh that this novel intrigued me. But I also found it deadly dull. The Waugh canon would not suffer by its loss but the understanding of Waugh as a man and writer would. If you really want to understand Waugh then this novel is essential reading, but if not, give it a miss.
I am awarding it my compromise, and possibly compromised, three stars because I didn't like it but can't really say it is a bad book. For this reason I have shelved it under only 'literature-england'....more
I read this book, for the first time, way back in the late 1970s, not long after I first moved to London when I was staying with a marvellous lady in I read this book, for the first time, way back in the late 1970s, not long after I first moved to London when I was staying with a marvellous lady in an eccentric house that was mostly stairs between Eaton Square and Victoria Station. The house, at least the facade, is still there but like the London I first knew it is as vanished as that of Virginia Woolf or Charles Dickens. The lady in whose house I lived, like everyone who had had a child at Eton at sometime previous to the 1962 publication of 'The Fourth of June', had a copy of the book (the famous first edition with its dramatic cover by Richard Chopping, throughout the 1980s I never went into a second hand bookshop, of whixh their were many back then, without finding copies of the book in that cover. I even owned one, now lost, I wish I stll had it, they can be quite expensive). The novel was a success de scandal, the fact that author, like the novel's hero, was a grammar school boy allowed on sufferance into Eton's hallowed halls who then denounced its gilded youth as bullies, braggarts, and generally unlikeabvle creeps (there was also a touch of sexual scandal but anyone looking for anything like'Lord Dismiss Us' by Michael Campbell will be sorely disappointed).
Quite why the book attracted such attention is almost impossible for anyone today to understand but although the baleful influence of schools like Eton is stronger then ever (Boris Johnson one of the worst prime ministers, if not human beings, to flit across the UK stage in the last thirty years is an old Etonian) but no one now believes that Eton represents anything more then a school for rich people. But back in 1962 there was a lingering belief that schools like Eton trained the nation's finest minds and leaders. To say unkind things about 'your betters' - a phrase which was only just falling out of use - was shocking. This was a few years before the Porfumo affair would reveal that Britain's ruling caste was as mendacious and self-serving as those of countries.
I remember it as an OK read, but not particularly exciting, like all first novels that become talked about it is hard to understand now why it was talked about. I can't imagine reading it again, but that doesn't mean some people won't enjoy it....more
A beautiful book which I owned and lost nearly thirty years ago. It was a book of beautiful pictures of Versailles and its environs. There are probablA beautiful book which I owned and lost nearly thirty years ago. It was a book of beautiful pictures of Versailles and its environs. There are probably more up-to-date books now, I'd still buy it, depending on price. Mr. van der Kemp is a knowledgable writer on Versailles and its treasures.
I can't think of why anyone would dislike it, except for its weight!...more
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