Gerald Glaskin (G. M. Glaskin) (16 December 1923 – 11 March 2000) was an Australian author.
Biography
Early life Gerald Marcus Glaskin was born on 16 December 1923 in North Perth in Western Australia.
He attended Perth Modern School and served in the Second World War in the Royal Australian Navy and Royal Australian Air Force.
Career His published works were extensive. He wrote poetry, short stories, and novels. Some works also included issues of science fiction and new-age spiritual guidance related to the interpretation of dreams. He was also involved in the Western Australian Fellowship of Australian Writers.
Some sources claim that he won the Commonwealth Prize for Literature in 1955, but subsequent research has disproved this, finding that he was awarded a grant in 1957 which he could not retain due to living outside Australia at the time. His works were received more favourably in Europe than in Australia. He lived mostly in Asia and later the Netherlands, until returning to Perth in 1967. His extensive time overseas may have been because of the oppressive Australian moral climate of the period against homosexuality. In 1961, he had been charged with indecent exposure on a Perth beach.
A resident of Cottesloe, he was enthusiastic about its beach environment.Gerald Glaskin — talks about his love of Cottesloe (March 1984); suffers bad health needing hospitalisation (Sept. 1984). The West Australian, 24 March 1984, p. 146; 26 Sept. 1984, p. 13 As a writer in Western Australia conditions were not always supportive of the profession.
His involvement with the Christos experiment saw his writing a number of books related to the subject.
His novel A Waltz Through the Hills was made into a 1988 film of the same title. His most commercially successful work was a novel about a homosexual love affair, No End To The Way (1965), published under the pseudonym Neville Jackson.
Interviewed in later life about the novel, Glaskin said: "It was banned in Australia and the paperback publishers, Corgi, researched the Australian censorship laws, and discovered that the book could not be shipped to Australia. So they chartered planes and flew them in". It was partly autobiographical, and inspired by his relationships with Dutch men. It was published before he started his relationship with noted genealogist Leo van de Pas, whom he met in 1968 in a gay bar in Amsterdam, and lived with from then onwards till the end of his life.
He was also a silent financial partner in The Coffee Pot, a popular Perth meeting place for homosexuals, bohemians and students which was established in the 1950s by Dutch Indonesian migrants, and was then the city's only late night cafe.
In 1967, he met the British writer Iris Murdoch, who was visiting Australia. In a letter to her friend Brigid Brophy, she wrote: "...the opera house is the most beautiful single object I've seen since getting here (with the possible exception of a West Australian novelist called Jerry Glaskin, whom I had reluctantly to leave behind in Perth)".
Death He died on 11 March 2000 after a long illness.
Works YearTitlePublisherISBNNotes1955A World of Our OwnJames BarrieFiction1957A Minor PortraitJames BarrieFictionThe MistressPanther BooksFiction1959The Beach of Passionate LoveBarrie & RockliffFiction1960A Lion in the SunBarrie & RockliffFictionA Change of MindDoubledayFictionThe Land That Sleeps: Travel and Adventure in the Virgin West of AustraliaDoubledayTravel literature1961A Waltz Through the HillsBarrie & RockliffChildren's fiction Illustrated by Paul Rigby1962A Small Selection of Short StoriesBarrie & RockliffShort story collection1963Flight to LandfallBarrie & RockliffFiction1965No End to the WayCorgiFiction Published under Neville Jackson pseudonymThe Man Who Didn't CountDelacorte PressFiction1967The Road to NowhereBarrie & RockliffShort story collectionA Bird in my HandsHerbert JenkinsAutobiography1972The InheritorsMercury PressShort story first published in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction1974Windows of the Mind : the Christos ExperienceWildwood HouseNonfiction1975Two Women: Two NovellasUre SmithCollection of novellas: Turn on the Heat and the Eaves of Night1976Worlds Within: Probing the Christos ExperienceWildwood HouseNonfiction1984One Way to Wonderland: Letters to a Pen-friend in Europe, 1938-1945Fremantle PressCollected correspondence1995A Many-Splendoured Woman: A Memoir of Han SuyinGraham BrashBiography
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