Young Man From The Provinces: A Gay Life Before Stonewall [Paperback]

Alan Helms (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 22, 2003

Young, intelligent, and handsome, Alan Helms left a brutal midwestern childhood for New York City in 1955. Denied a Rhodes scholarship because of his sexual orientation, he soon became an object of desire in a gay underground scene frequented by, among many others, Noel Coward, Leonard Bernstein, and Marlene Dietrich. In this unusually vivid and sensitive account, Helms describes the business of being a sex object and its psychological and physical toll.

"Riveting."- New York Times Book Review

"Extraordinary and elegantly written. A record of a gay world that has virtually disappeared over the past twenty-five years of liberation and fifteen years of AIDS." -Boston Globe

"A beautifully written memoir. Helms sped through the celebrity-packed fast lanes, but he has learned how to stand back and get some perspective." -Los Angeles Times

"Sublimely funny, engaging, pathetic, highly literary, and painful to read. Helms seems like a gay Everyman whose quest for self-knowledge, respect, and contentment in this contemptuous world mirrors that of many other marginalized people." -Bloomsbury Review

Alan Helms is professor of literature at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his 20s and early 30s, Helms was at once the most privileged and self-destructive of men, at the giddy peak of his career as "the most celebrated young man in all of gay New York." The Manhattan of the 1950s and '60s embraced the Columbia student as a "U.T."?a "universal type," or "someone everybody wants," photographed by Avedon, directed by Edward Albee and pursued by any number of men. Repudiating the drab miseries of his Indiana boyhood, Helms pursued those who pursued him: his more celebrated lovers included Anthony Perkins, Larry Kert and Luchino Visconti. Leonard Bernstein wooed him ardently, and chum Noel Coward helped Helms reconcile with a lover. But the relationships were doomed to fall apart, as Helms (held aloft by adoration, alcohol and drugs; brought thuddingly to earth by excess?bulimia; alcoholism; joyless, frenetic promiscuity) began to self-destruct. Self-acceptance came with the more temperate joys of work as a college professor and with counseling from the Harvard psychologist Robert Coles. As he grew older, Helms was better able to distance himself from the past. Because Helms is neither an elegant nor a modest writer, the reader is less willing to repudiate his glittering excesses; Helms's vigorous name-dropping has more charm than the somber self-reproaches that accompany his sobriety. This self-described "D student in the school of life" depicts a New York that, after the Stonewall riots, would never be as closeted?or as cozily familiar?again.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Even if you don't recognize Helms as the epitome of New York's and Europe's golden "boymen" during the late 1950s and 1960s, you will appreciate his poignant, picaresque memoir, which vividly captures with humor and insight the chronicle of his journey: from the unhappiness of his abusive, alcoholic family life in Indianapolis and an overwhelming need for acceptance, seemingly fulfilled by becoming a cynosure in the world of the beautiful people, to his aborted careers as a model, actor, and writer. Among the many names dropped are friendships with Noel Coward, Leonard Bernstein, and Luchino Visconti and affairs with Larry Kert, Tony Perkins, and scores of other famous and/or handsome young men. But after years of addiction to the gym, cigarettes, adulation, booze, sex, dope, and later drugs and bulimia, Helms finally faces his fears and creates a new life as professor of literature at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. For gay studies collections.
James E. Van Buskirk, San Francisco P.L.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press (April 22, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816642680
• ISBN-13: 978-0816642687
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,195,050 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Past out of the Present, March 15, 2004

By 

Vic F (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Young Man From The Provinces: A Gay Life Before Stonewall (Paperback)

I don't want to give away the ending, but most readers can tell that this memoir is about re-assessing the past - using some insight gained later in life to review and accept what was bewildering in the rush of living it. This raises it above autobiography and makes it a work of art searching for meaning. Those who thought the book an exercise in name-dropping have totally missed the point. For those readers searching for some sense out of life, this can be a valuable and moving experience. Although certainly not limited to this audience, it will have special relevance for gay men in one form of recovery or the other. You will feel as if you are reading your own story - and that is a gift. The fact that it is also beautifully written and captures a history now lost only adds value.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is not giddy memories, but spiritual autobiography, February 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Young Man from the Provinces: A Gay Life Before Stonewall (Paperback)

This is the only autobiography of any former glamour-boy worth reading. The first third could stand alone as a powerful story of an abused and lonely childhood. The second third is the record of the glamorous period, but even there, the author is discreet about details--disappointingly discreet, perhaps, to some readers. There's actually nor more name-dropping than necessary to establish the author's credentials. The author wrote this book not to record social highlights or sexual highjinks, but to share his evolving thoughts and feelings. The last third is the story of his crash, his efforts to come to terms with who he was/could be, and to build a new adult life. We have manny giddy reminiscences of crazy days, but this book is actually what used to be called a spiritual autobiography. It's real. Bravo!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lyrical and moving, September 9, 2007

By 

L. A. Jeffery "tonyandlulu" (England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Young Man From The Provinces: A Gay Life Before Stonewall (Paperback)

As someone who has read a good deal of gay literature I alighted upon this book with a great deal of anticipation and was not disappointed.
I have a keen interest in many of the people mentioned by Alan Helms yet found myself becoming very interested in him. As far as dishing the dirt (who isn't interested in a bit of juicy gossip) well there's not much of it, it's very restrained. Yet I found myself grateful for the lack of it, in an age where things are stripped bare and nothing is left unsaid, it was suddenly refreshing not to be regaled with someone's intimate bedroom habits.
I found it a lyrical book, for example "the whole world focussed in the cone of light from a reading lamp as the words moved forward on the page, the fabric of knowledge rising in the expectant silence" melodious prose indeed.

Touching on the subject of name dropping - well it's hard to know what else he could do, this is a memoir of someone unknown to much of the public, but his fame for the rest of us lay in the people he associated with, not much point writing the whole book about the boy next door.

It will surprise some when I say I found it humble, certainly those for whom there are too many references to his beauty. This is deliberate, setting the scene nicely ready to turn the tables on himself and us and make us experience the despair of losing youth, beauty, body and hair (things that he has relied on so heavily) - never sparing, he acknowledges his faults, the fact that he lied, that he has stolen, that he has a dark side (haven't we all).

It is a skilfully crafted, accomplished book - the death of his mother is very moving - international boy prostitute turned professor, you couldn't make it up - I so hoped that in the end he might find true love but remembered that this is real life - not the movies.

Perhaps the only criticism was the lack of photographs; they are always helpful in drawing the reader that little bit closer.

At this point I would like to add that I am a straight, middle aged woman and realise that the subject matter of this book is not for everyone which is to be regretted as it is brave and at times, beautiful. Having finished it my one regret is that I will never meet Mr Helms.