Other publications, including The Los Angeles Times, The Advocate, The Washington Blade and The Philadelphia Gay News, portrayed The Gay Metropolis in highly favorable ways.

Responding to my query occasioned by a less-than-favorable review in The New York Times (Tuesday, December 30) Metropolis author Charles Kaiser said of his many reviews that "only two of them were intellectually dishonest and both of these appeared in The New York Times."

Kaiser also spoke about what I'd previously suspected, namely that the Times well-known book reviewer, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, had been named as a drunken gossip in The Gay Metropolis and that this revelation may have caused consternation at the Times.

Kaiser said, "When a book (The Gay Metropolis) makes one of the Times' current daily critics one of its principal villains (Mr. Lehmann-Haupt) it's too much to expect the paper to deal with it fairly (in a review)."

Other New York newspapers giving high praise to The Gay Metropolis, include the New York Post, the Village Voice (Dec. 3) and the New York Daily News (Oct. 14 and Nov. 7) which variously call it "fascinating," "comprehensive," "impressive," "enlightening," " highly skilled," "compelling," "cohesive."

The Village Voice review by Gary Indiana contradicts George Chauncey's assertion that Kaiser's book gives focus only to rich white gay males by saying, "Like George Chauncey's Gay New York it (The Gay Metropolis) deals with commonality rather than divisiveness, without ignoring the differences of class, race and generation that fissure the gay community." The Voice calls Kaiser's work, "shockingly sane and reasonable."

Before proceeding, in case I too get charged with of a "conflict of interest", let me say historian Kaiser's new book treats me briefly, but respectfully. Having carefully followed its favorable reviews, therefore, I was taken aback by the two unfavorable Times reviews, especially the one by historian George Chauncey.

Chauncey, I knew, was working on a second volume, unfinished as yet, one covering the same years: 1940 to the present. There seemed, therefore, a conflict of interest, inasmuch as Kaiser— himself a former New York Times reporter—had critiqued the Times' checkered past, its sometimes unsavory coverage of gay issues and, especially, in the case of Mr. Lehmann-Haupt, its lackluster treatment of a talented gay employee.

Kaiser tells in The Gay Metropolis how a gay New York Times Book Review editor, Walter Clemons, had been passed over for the prestigious position of daily book reviewer and was told by John Leonard, then another Times book editor, that the paper had launched an investigation into his sexual orientation.

Over drinks, Clemons had privately told book reviewer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt that he was, in fact, gay. Lehmann-Haupt, unable to contain himself, later confirmed to Kaiser that "after four, or five, or six hours" of drinking Scotch with the Times' foremost homophobe, A.M. Rosenthal, then managing editor, that he'd told Rosenthal Clemons had admitted to being gay.

After reading George Chauncey's review of The Gay Metropolis, I contacted Kaiser and asked if he thought, as I did, that a conflict of interest had occurred. Charles Kaiser replied:

"When (George Chauncey's) Gay New York came out the Sunday New York Times asked me to review it. I said I would, but since I was a competitor, I would only review it if I could give it a rave.

"When I read it I found it dull and in many ways weird--especially his idea that it must have been easy to be gay in the 20s, because he found a few people who didn't seem to be actively self-hating. So I gave the book back to the Times, and suggested that if they found someone less knowledgeable than I about the subject, Chauncey would probably get a more enthusiastic review. And so he got a rave.

"I thought it was outrageous that the Times asked Chauncey to do it (my book) and that he accepted the assignment. He, of course, is my ONLY direct competitor--and I was racing to get into print first. The review is replete with distortions---I don't talk about bars??? After I'd counted the first twelve bars I stopped. Or cruising spots? Rockefeller Center. Third Avenue. Central Park West, the Rambles, Christopher Street, etc. etc.

Attempting to get George Chauncey's take on the "conflict of interest" question, I left January 2 message on his machine for the historian-reviewer, a professor of American history at the University of Chicago. By January 4, before GayToday's evening deadline, there had been no response.