October 2026 – Page 118

John Horne Burns (b. 07 October 1916) was an American writer whose remarkable 1st novel, the best-selling “The Gallery” (1947), became a post-WWII classic and one of the first to depict homosexuality in the military.

Born in Andover, Massachusetts, Burns seemed destined for the respectable life of a bright, well-educated New Englander. Fortunately for literature — and unfortunately for Burns — respectability never quite took hold. He was educated at Harvard and taught at the Loomis School before entering the U.S. Army during World War II. He served in military intelligence in North Africa and Italy, experiences that supplied material for The Gallery.

Set largely in occupied Naples, the book portrayed American soldiers not as square-jawed liberators but as a collection of lonely, frightened, lustful, hypocritical and occasionally decent human beings. Consisting of nine “portraits”, it was the one titled “Momma” that drew the most attention — it took place in a Naples gay bar peopled by servicemen in uniform.

The Gallery was unusually candid about homosexuality. Burns himself was openly gay at a time when being so was professionally hazardous, socially dangerous, and generally considered everybody’s business except one’s own. Contrary to the establishment’s desire for homosexuals to be portrayed as loathsome creatures only worthy of disdain and death, his novel treated gay men with a sympathy and matter-of-factness rare in postwar American fiction.

Critics noticed. Some were impressed — others presumably preferred their soldiers properly ironed. Regardless, ecstatically reviewed, Burns absorbed the adulation like a damp sponge. By all accounts a nasty piece of work, extremely jealous, and bitchy to a fault, he declared himself equal to Tolstoy, and when Truman Capote’s first novel Other Voices, Other Rooms and the dust jacket photo that accompanied it caused a bit of a sensation, he countered with the comment that Truman looked like a “Mongolian idiot”. He also publicly and loudly declared his rival Gore Vidal’s “gay” novel City and the Pillar to be a dismal failure. Vidal, an early champion of Burns, was stung to the quick, and Gore being Gore, responded in kind. The two writers competed over everything, including which of them was more competitive. Privately, Gore admitted that Burns might be the superior writer. His only true consolation at the time was the grimly accurate prediction that he would outlast him.

Already a heavy drinker and a mean drunk, apparently, Burns felt success gave him license to wax loquacious about other writer’s (as seen by him, all too obvious) failures. In addition to his unfavorable opinions of Vidal and Capote, he took special umbrage with James Michener. Burns felt certain he was a lock for the 1948 Pulitzer Prize and proceeded to act like he was already its recipient, grandly extolling the merits of his 2nd work in progress. Instead, the award went to Michener for his debut, Tales of the South Pacific. This surprise victory launched Michener into commercial superstardom and left a humiliated Burns sucking wind. Harboring an exceptionally deep well of opprobrium for Michener, an embittered Burns spitefully refused to shake his hand when they gathered at a Life magazine photo shoot featuring young wartime writers, and he proceeded to write scathing reviews of Michener’s subsequent work. The New York literati took notice. Liquor fueled and oozing venom, his own support soon dried up as fast as his talent.

Having scored considerable success with Gallery, Burns proceeded to demonstrate that literary careers do not necessarily improve with practice. His second novel, Lucifer with a Book (1949), a savage portrait of a boys’ school (apparently influenced by his time at Loomis) was poorly received. A Cry of Children followed in 1952 and did little to restore his reputation. The reviews were brutal. Increasingly bitter toward the American literary establishment — and not especially enchanted with America itself — Burns took off for Italy, where he found the “trade” more amenable to his drunken pawing.

He boozed from dawn to dusk, lived recklessly, and acquired a reputation for being brilliant, difficult and spectacularly self-destructive. The promising young novelist who had once seemed poised for a major career instead became one of American literature’s more dramatic disappearing acts.

When he died at age 36 in Florence on August 11, 1953, speculation among those who knew him ranged from “he was pushed from a window” to “he took a bullet in the head from an unpaid call boy”. The official cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage and sunstroke brought on by abuse of alcohol. His reputation largely vanished with him until The Gallery was rediscovered decades later. Hemingway, who had briefly crossed paths with Burns in Europe, summarized his life as a writer — “There was a fellow who wrote a fine book, and then a stinking book, and then just blew himself up.”

Today John Horne Burns occupies an intriguing corner of gay American literary history — talented, caustic, wounded, frequently his own worst enemy, and the author of one extraordinary novel that stubbornly refused to disappear, even when its author did. 🏳️‍🌈

— @jmlx_john2 Oct 7, 2026

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