Alan L. Hart - Fiction Writing

Fiction Writing

Alongside his medical practice and research, Hart pursued a second career as a novelist. He had in early life published in local, school, and college magazines, and later published four novels, chiefly on medical themes. His four novels incorporate semi-autobiographical themes: The Undaunted (1936) contains a doctor, Richard Cameron, who describes himself as a 'cripple' after his foot is amputated following persistent bone infection. Cameron worries that this physical defect will drive women away, but ends up marrying his sweetheart. A second character, a radiologist named Sandy Farquhar, is a gay man who has been harassed and tormented, driven from job to job, over his sexuality. Farquhar, who is short, thin, and bespectacled, resembles Hart physically, and considers himself "the possessor of a defective body" from which he wishes to escape - a typical transsexual sentiment. Another novel, In the Lives of Men, contains a gay male character with a missing arm.