Totempole

The Koren War, that immense and forgotten midcentury moment, found its unlikely and entirely original chronicler in Sanford Friedman, whose first novel Totempole was brave and frank about a young soldier’s homosexual awakening, at a time when timidity and weak suggestion were the rule. Having barely achieved publication in 1961, Friedman’s great-hearted masterpiece was forgotten, recovered in the mid-eighties, then forgotten again. May it now be with us to stay. Benjamin Taylor, author of Naples Declared “Totempole is the most audacious affirmation of the homosexual experience by an American writer I have seen, and its success is the more remarkable because nearly all the materials of this novel are not only familiar but fashionable…[Friedman] explores a recognizable terrain and leaves it deeply illumined.” Hilton Kramer, The New Leader “It proves to be the most candid, and least pornographic, of studies of the genesis of a homosexual; paradoxically, by close concentration on the agonies of a young man searching for sexual fulfillment…This was a dangerous book to write…Its impact as a document of great honesty will, without doubt, be considerable.” Anthony Burgess, The Listener “I think Totempole an extraordinarily courageous and highly moral work. The author tells us exactly what it was like to be himself at a certain time and place and, uniquely, I believed him. Truth is rare; he seems to have it.” Gore Vidal “An extraordinary book, vivid and utterly convincing…The truth of Mr. Friedman’s book is not the truth of autobiography, but the truth-making that the best fiction is.” James Dickey “I do not know of any piece of fiction that deals more perceptively with preadolescent sex…Wholly honest…Friedman treats the homosexual theme, as he does the theme of infant sexuality, with great candor and no lubricity…There are episodes developed with unusual imaginative power.” Granville Hicks, Saturday Review

Sanford Friedman (1928-2010) was born in New York City. After graduating from the Horace Mann School and the Carnegie Institute of Technology, he was stationed as a military police officer in Korea, earning a Bronze Star. He began his career as a playwright and theater producer, and was later a writing instructor at Juilliard and SAGE (Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders). “Ocean,” a chapter from Totempole, was serialized in Partisan Review in 1964 and won second prize in the 1965 O. Henry Awards. Totempole (1965) was followed by the novels A Haunted Woman (1968), Still Life (1975), and Rip Van Winkle (1980). At the time of his death, Friedman left behind an unpublished manuscript for the novel Conversations with Beethoven, now available as an NYRB Classic.

Peter Cameron is the author of three collections of short stories and six novels, including The City of Your Final Destination, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, and Coral Glynn.

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