Jack (since you've written them) or anyone else,
I've got a few questions about the sexploitation books
published by Midwood and others.
As I recently mentioned, I'm currently reading the Hard Case
Crime reprint of Lawrence Block's Lucky at Cards, which seems
to have been originally published as The Sex Shuffle by
Sheldon Lord for Beacon. As I understand it, Beacon was a
publisher of "euphemism books," as Donald Westlake describes
this genre (since you had to get as close as possible to
describing the act without using too graphic language, back
in those days when books were still prosecuted for
obscenity).
So my first question is, was there a heirarchy among these
publishers? Although this is the first of this type book I've
read, I have picked up a few over the years (usually
speculating on the real author, sometimes just for the sleazy
cover art). Just from the covers, paper and cover art, there
seems to be a variety of quality -- does this also apply to
the writing? For instance, a Beacon book I have looks far
more, for lack of a better word, respectable than the
"Original Nightstand Book" or "Original Midnight Reader."
Interestingly, only Bacon lists authors in its back pages
list of other books from the company "to enjoy"; the others
list only titles.
(I remember as a kid, in the early '60s, going to Newstand in
Wheaton, MD, after church for my father to pick up the Sunday
New York Times. We parked in back and walked in the back
door, so we had to walk past a rack of these books -- I
remember the vivid colors of the covers of the latter two
imprints above (I'm guessing they're really the same imprint,
as they share author, spine color and cover style). I'd pick
up a Fawcett reprint of Peanuts strips and, later, comic
books. Too bad I was too young to pick up Gold Medal
mysteries.)
Where did Midwood fall in the heirarchy? Were there separate
genres? Was the only requirement sex scenes? And how many of
those were required? Oh yeah, did they cost more? 60 and 75
cents seems pretty steep for a book published in the early
sixties, more than Gold Medal charged then, I think. If so,
did it pay its authors better? When did these lines vanish?
I'm guessing as sex scenes became more common in mainstream
books, it wiped out the market for this kind of book.
Lucky at Cards is surprising to me along these lines. The
writing quality is right up there with Block's usual high
standards at the time, after Grifter's Game (AKA Mona),
Coward's Kiss and his Markham book, just before Girl with the
Long Green Heart. So far, it's well plotted with an
interesting end run around a will plot. And although the sex
scene did seem pretty graphic for books of that era (though
kind of mild for now), there has been only one in the half of
the book I've read. I would have thought there would be one
every 10-20 pages. So is this due to Block being a
professional no matter where he was writing, or was there
more to these books than just sleaze (not that there's
anything wrong with good sleaze)? Does the same apply to
Westlake? I have a couple Alan Marshalls, the above mentioned
lower budget titles.
Mark
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 07 Mar 2007 EST