His powers were certainly on the rise. Every time I looked
at Julian, he seemed to have outgrown his last pair of jeans
and to be freshly installed in new ones. I became swept up in
his make-believe of espionage, but at the start my interest was
less the hidden microfilm than the secret between his legs.
I wanted to explore his private parts, so that I could at last
understand what normal ones looked like. I’d seen one set of
genitals, on a boy being given a shower, and very hairy and
darkly dangling they were too...
An edition of Pilcrow
(2008)
Pilcrow
{novel}
by Adam Mars-Jones
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August 30, 2026 | History
John Cromer experiences his 1950s childhood as a sort of ramshackle isolation tank, screening out sensation and adventure. Of course, as he points out, time passed slowly for everyone in the fifties, it wasn₂t just him, but it₂s hard to deny him the status of a special case. From that point on, John₂s epic task becomes clear. He must climb out of the tank and make his way somehow on land. Pilcrow is an exploration of a rich but marginal life, an engrossing story with a vibrant supporting cast of ghouls, matrons and sexual adventurers. John is already a confirmed homosexual, and at Vulcan Grammar School he finds the opportunities ₆ brilliantly described in humiliating and inventive detail ₆ to give expression to his needs. He is at his happiest attempting to seduce Julian Robinson, the school's master spy.
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Book Details
First Sentence
"The spring I learned to drive, the cherry tree in front of our house in Bourne End flowered as never before."
Table of Contents
The taste of dirt
Butter melon cauliflower
Interlude: Great Western
Permission to die
No such word as can't
Edition Notes
The Cushing Library/Women & Gender Studies copy was acquired as part of The Don Kelly Research Collection of Gay Literature and Culture
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‘I’m not sure that I can claim to have taken my place in the human alphabet, even as its honorary twenty-seventh letter. I’m more like a specialised piece of punctuation, a cedilla, umlaut or pilcrow, hard to track down on the keyboard of a computer or typewriter. Pilcrow is the prettiest of the bunch, assessed purely as a word. And at least it stands on its own. It doesn’t perch or dangle. Pilcrow it is.’
That’s the reader’s introduction to John Cromer, one of the most unusual heroes in all literature. If the minority is always right, John must be practically infallible. He experiences his 1950s childhood as a sort of ramshackle isolation tank, screening out sensation and adventure. Of course, as he points out, time passed slowly for everyone in the fifties, it wasn’t just him, but it’s hard to deny him the status of a special case.
From that point on, John’s epic task becomes clear. He must climb out of the tank and make his way somehow on land. Pilcrow is an exploration of a rich but marginal life, an engrossing story with a vibrant supporting cast of ghouls, matrons and sexual adventurers.
Excerpts
Page 540,
added by John Champneys.
It fascinated me, and it took me right down Memory Lane
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