_Varied Harvest_ is an sustained investigation of one of the pivotal figures in American novel writing: Henry Blake Fuller. Scambray analysize what may be the most important influence on Fuller's aesthetic, namely his homosexuality: "Fuller made a seminal contribution to the development of the American novel in the 1890s. But his conflict with society is as contemporary as the struggle for acceptance waged by such writers as Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, and Allen Ginsberg" (10). Scambray uncovers sources not yet utilized in other biographies and looks more closely at Fuller's "gay" novel, _Bertram Cope's Year_, than have other writers on Fuller. _A Varied Harvest: The Life of Henry Blake Fuller_ broadens the scope of Bowron's _Henry B. Fuller of Chicago_ (also an excellent resource), reinterpreting traditional views about Mr. Fuller and his works. A must read for anyone interested in Fuller's life and work as well as for anyone interested in gay historiography. Well done Mr. Scambray.

If you are a fan of Wharton and Forster, then you will apprciate this wonderful novel. The misadventures represented in "Bertram Cope's Year" are truly inspired, especially as this volume was written in 1919. This is a comedy of manners. The author has taken great pains to expose his character's never-to-be-discussed nature. Clues are plentiful. However, the ladies keep falling in love and in line. Even his benefactress is smitten. A refined bit of drollery. An early gay classic.

Fuller's neglected, glistening novel poses the question, "Who of any of us is worth the bother other people make of us?" This novel's characters--all of them--are hungry for companionship, for mirrors to reflect back images of themselves, for romanatic alternatives to prosaic lives. They might have wandered out of a T.S. Eliot poem, but instead they are the flesh and blood of 20th century Evanston/Churchton, Illinois, moving spectral-like through their lives, essentially impenetrable to each other. It is a gay novel--and one of the best I've encountered--but it offers an extremely perceptive account of the straight world, too, as that world intersects--or blindly collides with--with the gay. To Fuller's credit, both worlds are fully developed here.

Fuller's wit is amazingly sharp; his writing is concise and unornamented, yet there are also beautiful moments--lyrical descriptions of the changing seasons, the Indiana dunes, and the Churchton landscape. In his afterword to the novel, Andrew Solomon rightly calls the book "a gentle tragedy," but I emerged from it recognizing that life for all of these characters does go on, repetitively and unfulfillingly at times, wildly romantic and full of possibilities at others. Although Bertram Cope's circle of friends ages throughout the pages of this book, the characters are even fresher and sharper at the end of the novel than they were at the beginning. A wise, intelligent book, full of insights and memorable characters.

I can't imagine why anyone would find this charming novel's depiction of of gay men to be "chilly." If there's a "chill" to be felt in this subtle comedy of manners it would stem from its depiction of women who persist in imagining that men with no sexual or romantic interest in them still "want" them in some way. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, as Arianna Huffington has so spectacularly demonstrated. In any event Fuller's book testifies to the fact that we all still have an enormous lot to learn about gay life before Stonewall. It wasn't always lived in "the closet" -- as "Betram Cope's Year" shows with style, taste and enormous wit.