Fans of Samuel Steward will pounce upon Phil Sparrow Tells All, which brings forth from near-total obscurity 30 of the 50 essays Steward wrote between 1944-49 for, get this, the Illinois Dental Journal. Readers new to Steward might be best advised to start with the raunchy yet sophisticated erotic stories he wrote under the nom de porn Phil Andros, upon which his fame largely rests, and which will no doubt propel said newcomers to everything else Steward wrote. The author's breadth includes stylish writing in many categories. There are several novels, a murder mystery, a volume of his correspondence with Gertrude Stein, and memoirs both gritty (Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos ) and more civil (Chapter from an Autobiography).
At first glance, Phil Sparrow Tells All may seem a bit of lacunae for Steward buffs. Yet it turns out to be substantially, charmingly, and definitely eclectically more. Don't gasp at the clothbound edition's $75 price. The book comes, after all, from a university press, the University of Chicago. A more graciously priced trade paperback lists at $20.
It's entirely odd that Steward should become an essayist for the Illinois Dental Journal, a trade journal focused entirely on the concerns of dentistry. But he had a crush on his dentist, and fulfilling the good doctor's suggestion that he write for the journal provided chances for greater closeness. Lucky for us.
The first essay centers on a dental concern, and though witty, is impersonal. Steward soon drops the mask, deserts jaw smithery, and asserts his own identity and interests. The queer perspective becomes surprisingly forthright, especially considering the era of censorship and homophobia during which the essays were written. A little less so, perhaps, in Steward's discussion of the drinking problem that introduced him to AA, or in his lighthearted telling of his experiences as a super at the ballet and the opera. He offers witty, slightly veiled takes on pet cemeteries, Sigmund Freud, and cryptography. And he becomes more overt, covering bodybuilding, male fashion, and his nocturnal searchings for drunken sailors (indeed, Steward had a bone for the uniformed fellows, and an insatiable desire to cruise the darkest alleys of rough and tumble Chicago).
How pronounced does the gay content get? In a satire on M.F.K. Fisher's food writing, "On How To Cook a Wolf," Steward describes a medieval recipe for preparing a wolf to eat, and concludes with, "For my part, I cannot rest until I find a wolf to try it. Unfortunately, there is in these parts a scarcity of the four-legged kind, so I have a notion to call up 'Esquire Escorts' and ask them to send me out a tall, husky, grey-eyed blond of the two-legged variety. Then, clutching my trusty cudgel, I'll lay him flat as he enters the door, and set to work."
Each essay is entertainingly introduced by editor Jeremy Mulderig, an Emeritus Professor of English at the DePaul University. As Steward plays peek-a-boo with the reader, Mulderig annotates the gay subtext. Between the editor and the author, erudition is all over the place. All told, these essays reconfirm Steward's important place in 20th-century gay literature.