Gaudy Image [Paperback] Talsman, William

An early, pre-Stonewall classic of gay literature, describing life among the community in New Orleans. Thomas Schwartz (aka Titania, Queen of the Fairies), wanders about in search of the Gaudy Image--that most masculine man, a dream lover who knows what he wants.

According to the book's publisher Maurice Girodias, "William Talsman" was the pseudonym of James M. Smith, whose name appears as the copyright owner of a slim volume of verse titled Notes From The Underworld [William-Frederick Press, 1961], the only other book ever published under the name "William Talsman".

The Gaudy Image has been completely forgotten, and unjustly so. A chronicle of the promiscuous gay lifestyle, set in the French Quarter of New Orleans, in both style and tone it's strongly reminiscent of Ford and Tyler's The Young And Evil, published by Girodias's father Jack Kahane twenty-five years earlier. Roger Austen, in his book Playing The Game, cites this book as a milestone in the development of the gay lit genre, and laments how few modern readers have heard of it : "Today only a few fly-specked, pirated editions are to be seen in the hardcore sections of secondhand bookstores, and hardly anyone has read this breezy star-spangled poem in praise of hunting, finding, and loving a grinning muscular male with black hair."

The book very nearly wasn't published by Olympia. A catalog of '58 listed "The Porridge Tasters," by M. Meeske, featuring drugs in NY, as the work to expect. That book didn't get written; this one did.

from the Introduction by Michael Bronski

Unavailable for years, William Talsman's remarkable pre-Stonewall gay novel returns. Filled with insight into gay life of an earlier period, The Gaudy Image stands poised to take its place alongside Better Angel,Quatrefoiland The City and the Pillar as not only an invaluable piece of the community's literary history, but a fascinating, highly-entertaining reading experience.