by Merle Miller
31. Victor Navasky said that when he and Gerry Walker proposed the piece to The New York Times Magazine, the editors were intrigued. “They knew Merle was a great writer, and they said let him try it, but make clear to him in advance it’s a long shot, because it’d be very different for us. Well, he wrote something that was irresistible; they couldn’t not publish it.”
32. The Dick Cavett Show, hosted by Cavett, was best known for his witty, intellectual style and in-depth discussion of current events. Miller appeared on the show on November 26, 1970, to discuss homosexuality. The David Frost Show was noted for Frost’s serious interviews with political figures.
33. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger (b. 1926), known as “Punch,” was an American publisher who succeeded his father and maternal grandfather as chairman of The New York Times.
34. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a play by Edward Albee, premiered at the Billy Rose Theatre on Broadway in October of 1962. It was later made into a film featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
35. Miller is referring to the author David W. Elliott (1939–1992), with whom he had a relationship until Miller’s death in 1986. Before David, there was a gay relationship of ten years, and before that, his heterosexual marriage to Elinor Green.
36. Ben Jonson (1572–1637) was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet, and actor, best known for his satirical plays.
37. Miller didn’t feel it was a courageous thing to do, and he didn’t write it for accolades. He said he was tired of pretending, and tired of hearing slurs and jokes and put-downs of homosexuals. Also, he decided, “If you can relieve the guilt of ten people in your lifetime, you’ve made a contribution.”
38. In the same note to Harper’s, Miller wrote, “You wouldn’t dare print a piece by an anti-Semite or by someone who was anti-black, yet you print something in favor of genocide for queers.”
39. E. M. Forster’s view toward humanity may be best summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel, Howards End: “Only connect.”
40. Miller had received a letter from one of his friends that was critical of his piece (see Appendix A for Miller’s reply).
41. After reading the article, Miller’s mother said, “Merle, we’re wiping you out of our will.” To which he replied, “But you always told me to tell the truth.” She answered, “I know, but I don’t like that kind of truth.”
42. Before the piece was published, Miller wrote to his ex-wife (see Appendix B).
43. In a letter dated January 7, New York Times editor Howard Muson wrote, “[B]ecause we are running into space problems, I took out one more part—the section describing your search for the word homosexual in books and then going into the details of repressed homosexuals in New York and Iowa. All these points are touched on elsewhere in the piece, though there is some nice detail that is hard to sacrifice here.”
44. In an interview, Miller said, “Forget all those flitty, flighty interior decorators you’ve seen in the movies and on almost every television show for the last twenty years…. [W]e are simply not recognizable types, physically or in any other way. It is difficult for those who have been brought up to believe in the limp-wristed, lisping caricature to accept, but shedding clichés in our thinking has never been easy.”
45. Miller said, “Imagine if someone had predicted before the article appeared, that among the flurry of well-wishers to shine forth afterwards, one was to be an astronaut.”
46. Merle would have been delighted with the laws that have been passed since his death making homosexuality a basic human and civil right.
47. Miller said, “I sometimes wonder what would happen if we all announced it all at once, every one of us, the obscure and the famous and all those in between. It would create quite a revolution; all by itself it would. All those famous actors and singers and dancers and playwrights and novelists and songwriters and lawyers and CPAs and engineers. And truck drivers and ditch diggers and grocers and butchers, you name the job and profession. We’re in all of them, not just in the business of selling divine Chippendale chairs to ladies who adore antiques. And suppose all those tough, homosexual football and baseball players, instead of doing all those hair and shaving commercials, thus lining their pockets with gold, came out on television for homosexual rights. And say they were joined by even a tenth of the movie and television stars who are homosexual? A mind-twisting thought, isn’t it?”
48. Miller is referring to The Joint, by James Blake, published in 1970.
49. In 1986, when Miller died, the obituary run by The New York Times claimed that he had no survivors, ignoring his longtime companion, author David W. Elliott.