A while ago, Duane mentioned that he wuld have thought some
of this book too explicit for the '50s. Well, turns out it
was.
A few of the images in this book struck me as surprising for
their time, too. One was the use of the euphemism "frig."
Sure, Norman Mailer had famously (infamously?) used "fug"
just a few years earlier, but that was
"serious literature," whereas Prather was published by Gold
Medal, a popular imprint, near the height of the debate over
the evils of mass culture. I found it surprising that the
publishers would tempt reformers with a word so clearly meant
to be "fuck." Though I'd never read it, I've long had a copy
of the Gold Medal printing of The Peddler, so I pulled it out
and checked.
Hard Case version:
The hell with it, it was that dumb talk with Angelo, and the
screwy way Alterie had acted. Well, frig Alterie--and Angelo.
Frig them all.
Gold Medal:
The hell with it, it was that dumb talk with Angelo, and the
screwy way Alterie had acted. Well, to hell with Alterie--and
Angelo. To hell with them all.
A later "frig" was also changed to "to hell with."
So I flipped back to an earlier phrase that had struck me as
filthy (not that that's a bad thing, this is a great
image):
In his mind grew an obscene image of a great fleshy whore
lying on a bed, her legs parted and a constant stream of
dollars spurting from her: dollar bills, ten-dollar bills,
hundred- and thousand-dollar bills, filling the room,
smothering her, flowing out of the doors and windows, a
cascade, a flood, of money rushing day and night from the
woman's thighs.
It's the "her legs parted and" that makes it so filthy for
me, makes it very clear exactly where the money is spurting
from (the word spurt has always gotten to me, too, as in
Richard Hell's song, "Love Comes in Spurts"). Those four
words were not in the 1952 edition.
I checked a few other passages, but those hadn't been
changed.
Raises a question, though: Charles, are you going back to the
original manuscripts of the classics you're reprinting, not
the previously published versions? Cool if you are. Are you
finding much was changed in the original printings?
Mark
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