Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade Review

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(More customer reviews)Spring, Justin. "Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade", Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2010.

Samuel Steward, Icon

Amos Lassen

Samuel Steward lived from 1909 until 1993. He as a professor of English, a novelist who wrote gay porn and literary fiction, a friend and confidant of Thornton Wilder, Alfred Kinsey and Gertrude Stein, a man with a taste for what was known as "rough trade", and was into the sado/masochistic scene. He was known as Peter Sparrow and as the official tattoo artist of Oakland, California. He had quite a life and Justin Spring recounts it for us. Spring rebuilds the man and he does so from Steward's journals and sex diaries or his "Stud File" which had notes about sexual liaisons with the who was who and included Valentino and Rock Hudson. Spring's biography is both entertaining and sympathetic and shows the marginalization of homosexuals during periods of Steward's life. On the other hand he celebrates the daring and creativity of the man who although closeted to a degree, dared to be who he was. He tested society to see how far he could go.
Steward was born into a puritanical Methodist family in Ohio and was named Samuel M. Steward but as he began to write he had at least six pseudonyms. He became the tattoo artist for the Hell's Angels and they called him Doc Sparrow, his pornography was often written under the name of Phil Andros, in the underground press he was Ward Stames and to his artistic friends (Isherwood, Stein, Toklas, Wilder, Cadmus, etc) he was just Sammy.
After reading the Kinsey Report on Human Sexuality, he saw himself as a sex researcher and this gave his life a new focus and meaning. He met Kinsey in 1949 and became what he called an "unofficial collaborator" and this made him take more copious notes for his Stud File which when found was composed of 746 cards and on each was noted his sexual partner's name, how he ranked in the line-up, dates and locations of each encounter, penis size (detailed) and each specific sexual activity.
Steward and Kinsey became fast friends and Steward looked at him as a father figure and even though they never had sexual contact, there was love between them. As a teen Steward was sexually active but we must remember that at that time in our history there was no toleration or acceptance of homosexuality. In fact, there was aggressive persecution.
Spring tells us thatSteward began to understand himself only when he found a copy of Havelock Ellis's "Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume II: Sexual Inversion," which he stole had been pinched froman Ohio library.
As a college student at Ohio State University in Columbus, Steward had sexual encounters with straight men. Steward says this is because people liked to experiment. He went on to teach at the college level but he left because he wanted to see the world but as he did, he discovered alcohol which is one of the reasons that he never really became a novelist of note. At times depression overtook him and because of his loneliness he became somewhat self-destructive. He became fascinated by violent men and he was often in the hospital because of this.
What Justin Spring gives us in a documented look at the life of one of Kinsey's crucial gay witnesses who was a cultivated and shy professor of English literature. In the middle of his life Steward changed course and became an eminent tattooist and writer of S&M porn. Steward was a sex-obsessed recovering alcoholic who later became addicted to barbiturates and to masochistic thrills which could have led him to lead a life of failure but he became iconic in the annals of gay history as a man who lived his life the way he wanted to. This is one of those books that you cannot stop reading and Spring has given us a wonderful work of research and writing. Many have never heard of Steward but I have a feeling that could change with the publication of Spring's biography. We get an in-depth look at gay life before Stonewall and before liberation. Few of us have any idea that gay life was ever like this. Steward's life shows us what is was like to be an outsider in a world where he was not allowed to exist and yet managed to do so. Steward's life is the story of the struggle for personal freedom of identity. Justin Spring has done an incredibly amazing job of researching the man and giving him to us.

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