Something Foolish, Something Gay

1955, 1968 Berkley [sic] Highland edition
Glen and Jane Sire
Something Foolish, Something Gay
Original price 50 cents, purchase price unknown
Worn paperback
C+

It's impossible to talk about this book without talking about how dated it is.  Let's start with the title.  Now, in the mid-1950s, the "homosexual" meaning of "gay" had been around for at least a couple decades, although it had barely hit the mainstream at the time this edition was released.  (Stonewall was the following year.)  By the time I first read this YA novel in junior high, I knew of the "new" and "old" meanings of "gay."  But it wasn't for another decade or two that "gay" came to mean, well, "foolish."  The title comes from 16-year-old Laurie's suggestion of a frivolous gift, which causes her prospective boyfriend Sammy to buy her a puppy.

There are some homosexuals mentioned in the novel, although the Sires would presumably have been shocked when dreamy Rock Hudson and abstract (marvelous) Tab Hunter came out.  (After all, Rock was still closeted when I was Laurie's age, and Tab didn't come out till 2006, although there had been rumors about both for a long time.)  The book is full of then-topical references, and Laurie compares two suave, handsome college men to those actors.

I don't remember what edition the junior high library had, but I think I knew it was set in the 1950s, if for no other reason than that Laurie keeps saying "dippy" for "awesome," while I would've guessed it had something to do with silliness or ice cream.  This edition screams 1968.  Here's the front cover:

It's the 1950s, honest!

The back cover tells us that Sammy is "a crew-cut type."  The novel also tells us that Sammy's blond, but apparently the illustrator of the front cover didn't get the word.  He also has decided to give Laurie the Twiggy look, while the "cherry-colored bomb" of the book looks psychedelic enough to be John Lennon's car.

Anyway, the story is actually a series of anecdotes, all of them with Laurie thinking she knows best and being proven wrong.  She's the narrator and has a breezy, slangy style.  For the most part I like the book, even if now I'm more likely to relate to her wise if vague mother.  I can't disagree much with New York Herald Tribune, who said, "Laurie and Sammy are the pleasantest pair of teens to pop from between the covers of a book in some time," although they don't have much competition in my book collection so far.

And then we get to the last chapter, where Sammy tricks and bullies Laurie into entering a drama competition, which she wins.  And he literally drags her onto stage when she gets stage fright.  The last paragraph has him "grab her elbow in a viselike grip" and "tug her" back onstage to receive her scholarship.  "Suddenly, then, I knew what I wanted, all the rest of my life-- that grip, on my elbow.  I don't care, I thought, wincing happily, if it breaks every bone in my body!"  Oh, those happy-go-lucky teens!

Anyway, I'd otherwise give the book a B-.  Read it at your own risk and for the 1950sness, good and bad.