Men Into Beasts By George Sylvester Viereck
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The only way I could get hold of Men Into Beasts was in the format of a two-for-one-deal with another book on a similar subject by an author I had never heard of, bound up by some online hobby press in one of the most amatuerishly and unattractively designed paperbacks I have ever had the grief to pay money for. Since I only bought it for Men Into Beasts, I skim-read the second book. As a whole the volume was sloppily bound and printed, with a godawful cover. My thoughts on the two books find below, separately:
Men Into Beasts (three-and-a-half stars)
It was interesting to read about the experience of this man, not too dissimilar to myself in his ideological leanings, and probably not far off in personality, either, though significantly older. If I ever went to prison I think I could probably manage fine so long as the food wasn't too bad and I was able to read and write to my satisfaction. It wouldn't really be that different from my present life, given I hardly leave my room, let alone the house. I suspect it would even be a great boon to my productiveness, freed from the distractions that otherwise plague me.
What got me thinking most was probably his relationship with his family, in particular his two sons, one of whom rejected his ideals and fought to destroy them, dying in that fight, and the other violently and vociferously rejected both those ideals and him. In our culture one so often reads of young commie kids who relate how they contracted the disease from pinko parents. In this case it is taken for granted that the children would adopt the opinions of their parents. Even if their children do not carry on their parent's poisonous legacy, one never reads or hears of such children violently denouncing or divorcing themselves from them. If anything, it is the children who yearn for reconciliation with the stubborn, intractable, ideologically-blinded old Reds.
But with radical right-wing parents the narrative is the opposite. Whether their families are extremists of the Christian Fundamentalist or White Nationalist variety, it is taken for granted that their spawn will vociferously reject them when grown. Is it only because Western society as a whole is extremely left-wing and so it is easy for a child to forgo the embrace of a mother or father for that of an entire culture (though it be a leprous embrace, to be sure)? Because there is a pre-prepared narrative of a child turning their back on their 'hateful' upbringing, and they're rewarded for falling into it? Because with the all-pervading propaganda of the media and educational institutions, they can simply exchange one, heavily stigmatised, set of beliefs, for another, socially-approved if not outright legally-enforced? Is it just that these are the stories the system media choose to present? Or is there something more fundamental, more temperamental going on here. I don't think it's only my own bias that makes it seem that even radical right-wingers are more human, more flexible and down-to-earth, with a sense of perspective about things, and who don't take themselves, or their cause, too seriously. Whereas leftists seem almost to a Womyn to be hard-eyed ideological zealots to whom it has never even occurred that they might be wrong, who are incapable of graceful gestures or putting politics aside, who make no concessions or compromises. Who seem to be missing, in fact, the fullest dimensions of man, those beyond the realm of belief or cause, even the most right and righteous, those that make him a complete human.
And maybe this is related to what I've discussed previously, jumping off the back of other books, how indifferent and neglectful parents produce needy and desperate children, whereas so often parents who do everything right produce selfish and spoiled and ungrateful children. Not all the time, of course, but so much of the time. It just seems so perverse that parents who love their children are punished with children who don't love them back, or don't love them as much. Whereas parents who neglect or abuse their children are rewarded with children who forever after crave their affection and approval. It's not always this way I know. But it seems to be so often. From everything presented here, Viereck seems to have been a good father and generally an easygoing, aware, and self-aware, and all-around non-egotistical man. But his son disowned him for being a Nazi, despite him seeming to have done more than tentatively approach true National Socialism, and thoroughly repenting even that. If, on the other hand he'd been a rabid Communist, even to the exclusion of almost all family life, he'd never have repented, and his son would either have proudly carried on his flaming red torch, or have been disowned by his father for letting it putter out. Why is this counterintuitive dynamic so consistent?
I don't know. I do know that his poems were rubbish.
Home Away From Home (one-and-a-half stars)
Content-wise wasn't much of interest (i.e. homosex) except a few sociopolitical observations. Definitely reads like a rough manuscript. For all his protestations of having no pretended of writing great literature, Woodford had a rather insufferable semi-literary style, that in fact reminded me unfavourably of Burroughs. What on earth was the TWP? 'Cunt fucker'? 'Fucking cunt'? 'Mother fucker'? The mind boggles.
Gradually I began to notice a peculiar thing. These men had done everything from bust into a piggy bank on the Federal Reserve to murder, rape, arson, bank robbery with hardware apprehended--they had run through the whole of Title 18 of the U.S. Criminal Code and illustrated it for the government.
Yet, invariably they would bit their fingernails in exasperation and total disapproval of the villain, and when the cops, especially the sainted U.S. Marshals, with supernatural powers of marksmanship and divinations appeared to rescue the gal, actually and literally cheer. When the villain was liquidated, or led off in chains, they approved thoroughly. If the gendarmerie had lost for once they would have taken the TV set apart.
Compare them to today's bougie bolshies, who are openly pro theft and crime. Literally have less of a sense of morality than convicted felons. Chiang wasn't wrong when he called them bandits.
Overall, what struck me more than anything was what comparatively civilised places prisons were (and still are; see Finland and Norway, et. al.) when they were full of white people. Paperback A fascinating memoir of the American prison system in the 1940s, amid peak WWII fervor. Extremely problematic given its author, but wonderfully composed and gripping from beginning to end. The “story” spans the 4.5 years that Viereck was imprisoned and touches on a bit of everything, from the court system to wormy food to prison politics to character studies of murderers and thieves. The most shocking details—at least for its 1952 audience—involve semi-explicit accounts of “situational homosexuality.” Or, in other words, when straight men bang each other because there’s no women around.
Before getting locked up, George Sylvester Viereck (1884-1962) was a popular author and famous enough to make headlines. His works included an Oscar Wilde-inspired vampire novel The House of the Vampire (1907) and poetry collections such as The Three Sphinxes (1924). He was a journalist as well and interviewed big names of the era, like Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, George Bernard Shaw, and Adolf Hitler (more on that later).
Sex psychologists Alfred Kinsey and Sigmund Freud were both interested in learning from Viereck’s experiences and connected with him personally. Today most people know, or think they know, about jail sex. Even back then it wasn’t breaking news, but no one had dared write about it so candidly or from this perspective. Actually, it’s still an understudied topic, which is probably why the memoir holds up so well.
Not only did Viereck shed light on a fascinating topic, his book inadvertently inspired an entire new genre: gay pulp fiction.
Though Viereck’s descriptions are never graphic, specifics of the sex acts he observes are quite clear. For the sexually-repressed 1950s gay reader, these images, veiled as they may be, were titillating. It seems likely the publisher was aware of this and embraced it—thus the discreetly sensual nude male on the cover—while also needing to bypass censors and obscenity laws.
The solution was to cloak the memoir in psychology and introduce it as something like a textbook. Also, include blurbs like “The shame and evil that lurk behind bars…” so that it was believed to expose the cruelties of the prison system. No one could claim it promoted homosexuality if all the advertisements spoke ill of such “sexual deviants.”
Many publishers of gay texts copied this tactic well into the 1970s. They would introduce erotic novels with quotes from sex psychologists to create the illusion of academic interest. Indeed many of the “Homosexuality Exposed!” tell-alls of the 1960s and 70s masqueraded as religious tracts while their content read more like pornography.
It’s hard to say if Viereck intended his memoir to be sexy. Some consider his House of the Vampire to be the first “gay vampire” novel because of erotic tension between the two male leads. That interpretation requires a lot of reading between the lines in my opinion, but it’s not outlandish. Possibly Viereck was a closeted homosexual. He writes with what I would call a “gay gaze.” Lingering descriptions of nude men, a constant curiosity about same-sex sex.
Though he never participates in the shower orgies or friendly midnight hands, he’s never opposed to such activities either. He points out that, as an older man in his late 50s, he was not of sexual interest to his fellow prisoners. Perhaps with a tinge of regret? Or perhaps he simply omitted scenes where he did, in fact, participate?
For a book which sells itself as revealing the horrors of the American prison system, he often makes prison life sound like fun. Other inmates are never threatening to him, but rather lively personalities capable of engaging conversation. Descriptions of the food are gross, but could be worse. The stripping away of civil liberties is noteworthy, but again—it doesn’t comes across as particularly cruel.
It’s good that, outside of the publisher’s promotional material, Viereck does not complain much about prison life. It would have sounded particularly grotesque given that his sentence came from being a Nazi propagandist.
Viereck was an American, but his German heritage led him to align politically with Hitler for a time. He claims in this book that he was duped by Hitler’s charisma in the same way that Churchill was in 1938, when Churchill “expressed hope that, if England were ever defeated in war, she would find a Hitler to restore her to her place among nations.”
Still, Viereck’s stance on Nazism seemed to be that he agreed with just about everything except the stuff which was “anti-American or anti-Jewish.” As an editor for Nazi propaganda publications, he claims to have thrown out excerpts of this ideology when he came across them. Personally I don’t buy that. Without anti-American and anti-Jewish sentiments, what’s left of Nazism? That’s as ridiculous as saying the KKK has some good arguments as long as you ignore the racist bits.
You can see why reading Viereck is problematic. There’s no question he was an extremely gifted writer, but it’s hard to look past his atrocious politics which were a major part of his life. His wife of over 25 years divorced him over his beliefs, no doubt due to her being mis-associated with them. One of his two sons died for America by a German grenade, the other also served in WWII and went on to write passionate anti-Nazi texts that explicitly countered his father.
In today’s political climate, I have seen first-hand how seemingly normal people can be brainwashed by a demagogue. Perhaps this is why I also found the book so compelling. The context was WWII, yet I couldn’t help but see parallels between Viereck and January 6th insurrectionists. Would a prison memoir by the “QAnon Shaman” read something like this? With a regretful narrator who hasn’t quite disassociated with his leader, but also recognizes he was a pawn in an evil plan? Would it be worth reading if so?
In any case, politics are only a minor aspect of the book. If one were to actually hunt down a copy of Men Into Beasts (not easy to do) it would likely be to examine a text with interest to gay literary history. Queer pulp fiction was key to self-acceptance for gay men and women in the 1960s and ‘70s. For all its problematic qualities, Viereck’s memoir had a significant role in that development and it’s fascinating to see how its structure was adapted for future uses.
Consider this review less of a book recommendation and more of a historical spotlight on an unusual literary artifact. Paperback
Here is a book that reveals this Shame of Our Prisons. It is a firsthand account of the evils that flourish behind bars, written by a man who lived through it as a prisoner himself, a man internationally famous as poet and novelist. Viereck was imprisoned from 1942 to 1947 for failing to register as a Nazi agent. The author's description of homosexuality in prison, combined with the lurid front cover make this arguably one of the earliest books of gay pulp. Men Into Beasts
