...the isolation and uniqueness of other human beings--each one was traveling a private voyage across time, approaching or departing from the terminals of birth, marriage, sex, death, from the cities of happiness and sorrow; and each, whether he knew it or not carried in his coat a crumpled letter telling him to come home.

Somewhere Between the Two, Frank Yerby.

7 comments

  1. Nightingale // February 24, 2008 at 7:56 PM  

    Okay I'm going to comment that I read Frank Yerby for his poetic words and didn't even cotton on to the gay thing for a very long time. I was a freshman in high school in a tiny town. But the man could spin webs from words and I'd sit in the front door with a breeze cooling the summer night and while I ate dill pickles, I ingested the beauty of his languge.

  2. Beth Trissel // February 25, 2008 at 8:21 AM  

    Wow, Linda, amazing quote. Love the pic. Deep, my friend, and hauntingly beautiful.
    Goes well with dill pickles. :)

  3. Toni V.S. // February 25, 2008 at 9:47 PM  

    What is this "gay" thing in regard to Frank Yerby? In all the biographies of him, I can find no reference to his being gay. In fact, www.nndb.com states that his sexual inclination was "straight." Does this refer to his characters in some way? Of the 30 books he wrote, I've read 5, and found nothing hinting at homosexuality in either the author or his characters. One review states that his males are emotionally immature with his heroines even more so--"heroic male, emotionally immature and an even more immature beautiful heroine, the lovers often separated by social circumstances, caught up in the turmoil of various historic events," is the way it is put. Could there be some confusion here in that Frank Yerby was an African-American? Ironically, a good number of his books were written about the Old South.

  4. Nightingale // February 26, 2008 at 4:28 PM  
    This comment has been removed by the author.
  5. Nightingale // February 26, 2008 at 10:37 PM  

    Thanks Toni. My memory from 40 years back failed me. I kept a notebook (like girls did in high school, which I still have) of quotes that touched my heart. I don't actually know but maybe Mary Renault wrote Somewhere Between the Two. She wrote the Charioteer. Yerby wrote The Goat Song and the hero Ariston has many lovers of both sexes. I didn't intend to be politically incorrect.

  6. Mary Marvella // February 28, 2008 at 12:46 AM  

    Definitely more interesting than politically incorrect. I was naive at the time and loved the stories.

  7. Beth Trissel // February 28, 2008 at 10:39 AM  

    Some of us are still naive, Mary. :)