Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade
Product Description
Drawn from the secret, never-before-seen diaries, journals, and sexual records of the novelist, poet, and university professor Samuel M. Steward, Secret Historian is a sensational reconstruction of one of the more extraordinary hidden lives of the twentieth century. An intimate friend of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Thornton Wilder, Steward maintained a secret sex life from childhood on, and documented these experiences in brilliantly vivid (and often very … More >>
I knew I was going to enjoy this biography from its first page. Spring writes, “I first came across Steward’s name in the gay pulp fiction archive and database at the John Hay Special Collections Library at Brown University…” The gay pulp fiction archive?! Immediately readers know they’re in for a ride.
Samuel Steward (aka Donald Bishop, Thomas Cave, John McAndrews, Phil Sparrow, Ward Stames, Phil Andros) was a poet, novelist, Catholic English professor, tattoo artist, gay pornographer, friend of Gertrude Stein and Alice Tolkas, and a key contributor to Alfred Kinsey’s sex research. Justin Spring has rescued this astonishing character from oblivion, giving him the break he never got in what Steward described as “my happily wasted life.”
This biography is definitely not for the gentle reader. Steward’s prodigious sexual escapades from the 30s through the 80s made my few remaining hairs stand on end. Sailors, thugs, underage hustlers, Rudolph Valentino, Thorton Wilder, students, policemen, ex-cons, priests and one Hells Angel, scripted orgies, brutal S/M sessions: all were documented in his meticulous “Stud File.” Almost despite himself, quiet little Steward was a defiant, transgressive artist to his core, surviving repression, literary rejection, AIDS, alcoholism and depression with a staggering sense of aplomb. One favorite example (that will only mean something to gay readers of a certain age): in his late 50s, Steward’s favorite paid partner was “one very talented and extraordinarily good-looking hustler who later took the porn name of Johnny Hardin… Between late 1966 and 1970 Steward had sex with him 155 times.” Now there is a fun fact to know and tell.
Rating: 4 / 5
This is a wonderful and important biographical work. Because of the historically risqué subject matter – fluid and often violent gay male sexuality, tattoo subculture, pornography – many such lives have been willfully forgotten or forcibly closeted by historians. However, with perseverance and a bit of luck, Justin Spring discovered and had unprecedented access to Samuel Stewart’s personal archives. As a result we have this amazingly documented and fascinating life story. I only wish it had gone on for another 500 pages. Well done.
Rating: 5 / 5
Who knew? Thanks to Justin Spring we have a whole new real-life character from the 20th century. This is an excellent book.
Rating: 5 / 5
Spring,an exceptional biographer, has taken a look at a relatively unknown life, and through its exploration has revealed not only a life ardently lived, but one which illuminates the lives of so many others. I look forward to Spring’s next work.
Rating: 5 / 5
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 that Steward 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 from an 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.
Rating: 5 / 5