Douglas Lilburn - His Life and Music by Philip Norman Canterbury University Press Our enemies shake their fists and bellow 'Enough is enough'. But a mere twenty years of legal existence is not enough, not nearly enough. One reason the ignorant get upset about hearing 'too much' about us is because once upon a not-so-very-long-ago time, they never heard anything about us at all. Or if they did it was in negative terms of scandal and criminality. And at street level, we were little more than a dirty joke. So it is we welcome a new biography, the first major work about the composer Douglas Lilburn, with some relief. Why? Because the author, Phillip Norman, does not shy away from Lilburn's homosexuality (though it has to be noted that Lilburn's alcoholism gets similar coverage). He quotes fellow composer Jack Body's belief that Lilburn's gayness was 'a kind of creative source for the music'. Lilburn's fruitiness, though, was of the old school, 'that kind of pain of aloneness', not the gayness that we're all supposed to be enjoying in these more enlightened 'Will and Grace' times. Fellow fruit, the author Frank Sargeson, described him as 'not a fellow of ready humour', though I couldn't help noticing quite a twinkle in Lilburn's eyes in many of the fascinating photos. And some of the photos are priceless - two beefcake shots, one of the painter Douglas MacDiarmid, an early boyfriend (p113) and Ewen Lilburn, a RAF pilot (p79) stand out, shall we say. There's a lovely period 'drag' shot of some mates (p133), but the sunbathing shot of the composer himself, with boyfriend hovering over him, accompanied by a wicked caption about 'getting in the rear to make it more interesting', is the ultimate in camp humour. And, yes, it's one of the photos where Douglas Lilburn's eyes are twinkling ever so gaily! Norman is at pains to point out why Lilburn was so reticent about his sexual life, noting the atmosphere of repression he grew up in. And I'm quite sure that if a book like this had been written before homosexual law reform nothing would have been said about the composer's queerness. Oh, maybe one of those old chestnuts - 'confirmed bachelor', 'a man's man' or (my favourite) 'he just never found the right girl'. But before making up his mind on which side of the church he would sit, he had an affair with the painter Rita Angus - leading to a miscarriage. Also, Norman includes a woman friend's belief that the post-death concentration on Lilburn's sexuality is one of many 'mistaken suppositions'. And finally, as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Homosexual Law Reform, let's relish this quote from Lilburn's 'confidential submission' to the law reform Select Committee: “Thunderers about perversion might realise that many homosexuals and lesbians are quite as chaste as the best of their heterosexual counterparts. Whatever they may do in titillation of sexual pleasure is also done in countless marriage beds. And to legislate against such entirely human physical expression would be as rational as to legislate against rabbits and blackberries in hedges. But I must leave it to others to spell out more details of these matters, while trusting the humane consideration of your Committee not to make us the last bastion of Puritanism." John Curry - 22nd June 2006