Song of the Loon, by Richard Amory. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2005 Song of the Loon (1966) was an innovativegay novelfor its time, and Arsenal Pulp has reprinted it in its Little Sisters Gay Classics series. So, what does it have to offer for the contemporary gay reader, forty years later? I imagine that some of our older readers are quite familiar with the work in question, although I'm somewhere beyond thirty and I didn't know about it until I read Susan Stryker's history of LGBT pulp paperbacks, Queer Pulp (2000). Be that as it may, it broke new ground when it affirmatively featured gay male characters in an idyllic pastoral setting where colonialism and heterosexuality didn't exist - in this case, the Canadian Northwest. Ephraim McIver is on the run from his violent closet case boyfriend, Montgomery, when he is given a talisman from the First Nation "Society of the Loon" and told that this all-male society is about male same-sex love. Amory notes in the foreword and post-novel interviews that he didn't intend the Society of the Loon to actually reflect indigenous North American societies at any time of the past. While some indigenous societies had affirmative social spaces and roles for male shamans who loved other men, and female warriors who loved other women, these 'lesbian' and 'gay' identities were treated as members of the 'opposite' sex within tribal life. Historical veracity aside, though, it would be interesting to learn what impression any older takatapui readers might have had if they encountered this utopian society. Granted, it probably owes more to Rousseau and romanticism than First Nation liberation politics, but was it read as such? Anyway, Ephraim has passionate gay sex with several Native American men, and caucasian ursine Cyrus, who has gone 'native' when he decides to flee North American settler civilisation for the uninhibited joys of the unspecified tribe that the Society of the Loon belongs to. That's not the only thing missing, as there are no women in this novel either. Perhaps the Societyof the Loonhave an arrangement with a female-only counterpart society elsewhere? Worry not about Ephraim's pursuers, who fall in love with each other, unrepress themselves and fade out of the novel. All is good polyamorous clean fun, and much nudity and bathing and assorted gay male sex occurs. All right, so it has little plot, but there's a keen eye for description of the idyllic Canadian wilds. And the guilt-free nature of the sex is remarkable too, considering the Compton Cafetaria queens had only just rioted in 1966, and Stonewall was still three years in the future when it was written. As for the author, Richard (Amory) Love chafed at the constraints that Greenleaf, his pulp publisher placed on him. He did write a work of literary quality, but suffered from profiteering straight editors, and yearned for the days when an LGBT publisher would liberate him. Unfortunately, Love died in 1981, so he's not around to see the world that his fiction helped to inspire. Recommended: Richard Amory: Song of the Loon: Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press: 2005. $35.00 NZ. Available from Unity Books, Wellington. Michael Bronski: Pulp Friction: New York: St Martins Press: 2003 Susan Stryker: Queer Pulp: San Francisco: Chronicle Books: 2000. Craig Young - 18th June 2006