12-09-2025, 07:36 PM
What was it like being "different" in 1959? For some it was hiding one's self from the puritanical world, but for some in the sophisticated artistic scenes of the major cities, it was more complicated. Lonnie Coleman was breaking a lot of taboos in 1959 by writing with any sympathy at all about homosexuality, but in SAM he goes even farther and gives his characters a full dimension of virtues and flaws, showing how difficult it was, even for the enlightened, to live a rational life in the midst of nation-wide ignorance.
In his new novel, the author of "Adam’s Way" and "Clara" brings his notable talent to bear on the New York scene, and in particular its literary and theatre milieu. This is a highly sophisticated community, with morals and neuroses to match, and almost all the characters are connected in some way with publishing, advertising or the theatre.
Chief among them is Samuel Kendrick, a successful young publisher whose life is complicated by two emotional attachments, one for an unhappily married woman and one for a mediocre actor with whom he lives.
The author’s honest treatment of his subject, and his refusal to shut his eyes to the behavior of his characters, results in one of the frankest, most direct and revealing pictures ever written of the homosexual and those whose lives he touches.
That the book is something much more than just a novel on a “difficult” theme, however, is a tribute to Lonnie Coleman’s extraordinary skill as a writer.