Draft:Fritz Peters

Arthur Anderson “Fritz” Peters was an American author, who wrote on themes of spirituality, mental illness, homosexuality, self and society. A nonconformist, Peters' most successful novel was Finistère, published in 1951, which sold over 350,000 copies and was an influential and unapologetic work of early gay literature.

Early life and education
Peters was born in Madison, Wisconsin. Due to instability in his family life, Peters spent his childhood between Europe and the United States. Fritz's parents' divorce and his mother’s nervous breakdown in the mid-1920s left young Fritz adrift. His aunt, Margaret Anderson, and her lover, Jane Heap stepped in to care for him and his brother. Margaret and Jane were bohemian royalty. They took Fritz to France, where he met Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, E.E. Cummings, and other avant garde greats.

Most influentially, Margaret sent Fritz to study at the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, founded by the controversial Russian mystic, G. I. Gurdjieff. When he first arrived at the Institute, Gurdjieff asked Fritz what he wished to learn there. He replied, “I want to know everything. Everything about man." Gurdjieff became a father figure, eventually naming Fritz his "successor" and "true son".

Fritz spent years coming to terms with his childhood trauma, war trauma, and homosexuality, all while battling severe mental illness – and transmuted his experiences into works of literature.

Novels

 * The World Next Door (1949)
 * Finistère (1951)
 * The Descent (1952)

Memoirs

 * Boyhood with Gurdjieff (1964)
 * Gurdjieff Remembered (1971)
 * Balanced Man (1978)