The Gallery (The Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) [Paperback]

John Horne Burns (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana | Publication Date: May 1985

"The first book of real magnitude to come out of the last war." —John Dos Passos

John Horne Burns brought The Gallery back from World War II, and on publication in 1947 it became a critically-acclaimed bestseller. However, Burns's early death at the age of 36 led to the subsequent neglect of this searching book, which captures the shock the war dealt to the preconceptions and ideals of the victorious Americans.

Set in occupied Naples in 1944, The Gallery takes its name from the Galleria Umberto, a bombed-out arcade where everybody in town comes together in pursuit of food, drink, sex, money, and oblivion. A daring and enduring novel—one of the first to look directly at gay life in the military—The Gallery poignantly conveys the mixed feelings of the men and women who fought the war that made America a superpower.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A book by an ex—soldier that deals with the Americans in Itlay and that displays unmistakable talent…Mr. Burns shows the novelist’s specific gift in a brilliant way." — Edmund Wilson

"Burns has a brilliant facility for reproducing the sights, sounds, color, feel, and smell of the places he has seen. He uses this to startling effect to recapture what many Americans beyond the frontiers of their antiseptic homeland for the first time found in exotic and warped war centers as Casablanca, Fedhala, Algiers, and of course the twisted and diseased Napoli itself." — William Hogan, San Francisco Chronicle

"An important novel of our time." — William McFee, New York Sun

"No one will ever forget this book: a story torn from impassioned experience of modern wars in a shattered city of the ancient world. The Gallery is unique, unsparing, immediate; inextinguishable." — Shirley Hazzard --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

JOHN HORNE BURNS (1916-1953) was born in Andover, Massachusetts, the son of a wealthy Irish Catholic lawyer. He graduated from Harvard and then taught English at a boys’ boarding school before being drafted in 1942. Employed as a censor of prisoners’ mail, Burns spent most of World War II in northern Africa and Italy; his experiences in Naples -- including those within the gay community of American servicemen and local Italians -- became the raw material for his first novel, The Gallery, published in 1947 to considerable critical acclaim. Disaffected with American culture, Burns soon moved to Italy. He published two further novels, Lucifer with a Book (a satire drawing on his experience as a boarding-school teacher, published in 1949) and A Cry of Children (1952), while supporting himself as a travel writer, but both books received scathing reviews. While working on a fourth novel, Burns died of a cerebral hemorrhage, probably caused by alcoholism. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 372 pages
• Publisher: Arbor House Pub Co (May 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0877957096
• ISBN-13: 978-0877957096
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,588,077 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine, Forgotten War Novel With Mediterranean Setting, June 30, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Gallery (Paperback)

Burn's "The Gallery" was highly acclaimed when it appeared in 1946; reviewers thought they had found a superb new talent and "war novelist" to praise. "The Gallery" is set amidst ravaged, end-of-the-war Naples, and involves an average American Joe from North America coming into contact for the first time with the softer, older southern culture of the Mediterranean, and the influence it has on him. The action centers around the Gallery Umberto I in downtown Naples, a great,, glass-topped Victorian arcade where in the various run-down bars and darkened trattorias everything is for sale, from cigarettes to liquor and women. Though the setting is squalid, the transformation worked upon the main character by his location and his relationship with a local woman forced to sell her body because of the collapsed economy is both absorbing and moving. This book is much more than a "war novel," it is a great piece of lyrical literature well-worth searching out. If you like Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" or Gore Vidal's World War II novel, "Williwaw," or Kurt Vonnegutt's "Farehneheit 451," try "The Gallery," it is more lyrical (something in the style of Tennessee Williams) than any of those (good as they are).

Unfortunately Burns' next book, "Lucifer with a Book," was one of the most talked about novels of 1947 - because it dealt with the naughty goings-on at an all boys' prep school - not something America could handle in 1947. Burns was savagely attacked by the same critics who had praised him as a war novelist. Burns left for Europe and quickly drank himself to death, never taking his place along the Mailers, Vidals, Bellows and Capotes of his generation as he deserved. The detached, independant reader will find "The Gallery" a wonderful, surprise read.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A book of Italy and the American GIs of WWII, July 6, 2003

By 

gac1003 "gac1003" (Long Beach, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Gallery (The Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) (Paperback)

The Galleria Umberto is an arcade of shops and cafés at the center of Naples, Italy. In 1944, after the Allies had taken control of the country, everyone managed to make his or her way to this galleria: the Neapolitans to watch and to take advantage of the Americans; the Americans to get drunk, to find a trick or to think.

In "The Gallery," the narrator takes us on a tour of the galleria, showing us the sights, sounds and people who frequent the area. Each of the 9 stories gives the reader a glimpse in to the social and sexual practices of the American GI in 1944: from a censorship office run by an egomaniac to an Italian girl finding love in an America officer's club to a gay bar. These portraits are linked by the narrator's own experiences from Casablanca to Naples and his realization of what love and the war mean to him.

This novel might be considered semi-autobiographical as John Horne Burns served during World War II and undoubtedly drew inspiration from his surroudings. For example, the portrait titled "The Leaf" takes place in a censorship office; Burns also served in a censorship office while in Italy. It is a wonderful book to read. My only gripe is that many of the characters speak Italian or French, and what they say is not translated. Perhaps this works to show what it may have been like for the American soldiers, most of whom went to Italy and the rest of Europe not knowing the languages. I would like to have known what was being said, though. (This last part may only reflect the copy I was reading. There may be translations in other copies.)

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars gone but not forgotten, October 22, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Gallery (The Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) (Paperback)

The definitive appraisal of Horne Burns must be that written by the magnificent and irreplaceable Brigid Brophy, herself taken from this life (in her case by MS) long before her time - the Recording Angel sometimes makes some strange decisions about mortality. Brophy's essay on Horne Burns is available in the volume "Reads", most recently re-published as a (UK) parperback in 1989. Brophy's volume also will remind you of the greatness of Jean Genet and Ronald Firbank, in whose company Horne Burns emphatically belongs. "The Gallery" is brilliant. As Brophy puts it, " The ultimate irony at the end of all the perspectives of Horne Burns's imaginative world is a kind of bisexuality not between homo- and hetero-sexuality but between sexuality at large and death". It cannot be emphasized too strongly - Horne Burns is essential reading...