Loveo, jameso: the life & writing of homophile literary pioneer, james barr fugate: a biography & selected correspondence

"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. When ONE Magazine printed a photo of a bow-tied Fugate and his dog above his October 1954 article, "An Open Letter to You," he was likely the first gay writer of the period to allow his photograph to appear alongside his name in a national publication. Fugate came of age in the precise midst of 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 he was working with tools he largely needed to invent as he went. 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 1955. His influential first novel, Quatrefoil, which appeared in 1950, was translated into several languages and became an international bestseller, though his publisher, Greenberg, was almost immediately threatened with obscenity charges.