James William Fugate (1922-1995), for years known only by his pen name, James Barr, was a significant and, in some ways, an unprecedented figure in homophile activism and letters in the 1950s.
Fugate came of age amid the “historical cleavage” between “inverts” and the era of the “homophile,” and, in the late 1940s, had already set himself the task of building a bridge across that gap. Though Fugate lived to the age of seventy-three, the peak of his activity as a “homophile writer” lasted for barely seven years, with a veritable whirlwind of writing and self-promotion concentrated in the years 1954 and 1957. His influential first novel, Quatrefoil, which appeared in 1950, became an international bestseller, though his publisher was almost immediately indicted on obscenity charges. Fugate followed Quatrefoil with a collection of short stories, Derricks, which had scarcely seen the light of day before it, too, was withdrawn from the market under the threat of legal action.
Shortly thereafter Fugate began contributing to such pioneers of the fledgling homophile press as ONE Magazine, Der Kreis, and Mattachine Review, imagining his work as a tool that could be wielded to “better the sorry scheme of things homosexual.” In the years that followed, Fugate told friends he had a number of novels and plays in progress, but he published almost nothing. His second and last novel, The Occasional Man, appeared in 1966, and he left behind the manuscript of The Mamma Doll, the second of two plays, which has never been published.
Fugate served in the Navy during WWII and the Korean conflict but, in 1952, was identified as the writer James Barr, the author of two “homosexual books,” and investigated by the Office of Naval Intelligence. Though the Navy threatened him with a dishonorable discharge, a twist of fate saved him from that end, and he was ultimately released “under honorable conditions.” When Fugate began living as a public gay man in the 1950s, homosexuality was criminalized in every state in the Union—it was a time, as Harry Hay told the New York Times in 2000, in which “[w]e lived in terror almost every day of our lives.” And yet the extent to which Fugate was a radical remains striking—he was a sailor who beat the U. S. Navy at its queer-baiting game; a man who, in the midst of “Lavender Purges” and vehement McCarthyism, insisted same-sex-loving people deserved equal dignity and parity of opportunity; a “declared” (as the saying went) homosexual in a tiny, ultra-Christian oil town in the center of Kansas; a working-class laborer; a libertine and roué who touted the pleasures of sex even into his seventies; an atheist in the Bible-begirdled Midwest; an anti-Fascist who was also an anti-Communist. If he was not a revolutionary, he was, at least, an individualist, a maverick, and an indomitable paradox.
$26.95 | ISBN-13: 979-8987967188 | 7.44” x 9.69” | 604 pages
Only $21.50 (domestic postage included) when you buy directly from FourCats Press—a 20% discount.
PayPal, Zelle, and SquareUp all provide ways for you to include a memo or note with your order. Please use that to provide your shipping address, the name of the title you’re ordering, and the number of copies. We’ll confirm as quickly as possible.
- PayPal (orders@fourcatspress.com)
- Zelle (sales@fourcatspress.com), and
- SquareUp (email your name, phone number, and address to editor@fourcatspress.com; we’ll send an invoice that you can pay safely online with a credit card or bank transfer)
- Purchase orders: We will ship books on the basis of purchase orders to bookstores and other retailers. Terms are net 30 days. Sorry, we can’t accept returns.
- Personal checks: Please email us at editor@fourcatspress.com for our address & other details.
Our books are also available (at a higher price) from your local bookstore, from IndieBound, or from major online booksellers. Resellers/ bookstores: Please contact FCP regarding trade discounts.
______________________
FourCats Press 