Poet & Literary Hoaxster John Glassco On Pornography, Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Etc.

by Stephen J. Gertz

 

Scraping the crumbling roadbed of this strife
With rotting fenceposts and old mortgages
(No way of living, but a mode of life),
How sift from death and waste three grains of duty,
O thoughts that start from scratch and end in a dream
Of graveyards minding their own business?

But the heart accepts it all, this honest air
Lapped in green valleys where accidents will happen!

                     — John Glassco, "The Rural Mail"

What distinguishes good porn from bad? Is there an aesthetic of pornography? Are porn novels an essentially romantic genre of literature? What are the true rewards of authorship? Is Margaret Atwood a sexual fetishist? And did Leonard Cohen really want to give up singing and join the Israeli army?

Last year, A Gentleman of Pleasure, literary historian Brian Busby's biography of the enigmatic Canadian poet, memoirist, acclaimed translator of French-Canadian poetry, novelist, pornographer, and literary hoaxster, John Glassco, the self-proclaimed "great practitioner of deceit," was published. Now, Mr. Busby presents The Heart Accepts It All, a selection of Glassco's letters.

Glassco's correspondents included novelist Kay Boyle; poet and novelist, Robert McAlmon; Olympia Press publisher Maurice Girodias; novelist, poet, and critic Malcolm Cowley; novelist Margaret Atwood; Henry James' biographer, Leon Edel; and many other literary notables, including novelist, literary and cultural critic, and professor, Geoffrey Wagner, who, under the pseudonym, P.N. Dedeaux, wrote a handful of erotic novels in the 1960s and early '70s that remain amongst the best written of the era.

DEDEAUX, P.N. [Geoffrey Wagner]. The Tutor.
Wilmington, Delaware: Taurus Publications, 1970.
Distributed by All America Distributors Corp.
True first edition, reprinted by Venus Library (Grove Press), 1971.

DEDEAUX, P.N. [Geoffrey Wagner]. Tender Buns.
North Hollywood: Essex House #0126, 1969.
First edition.

Glassco, whose Memoirs of Montparnasse (1970) is considered to be the best view of expatriate Paris in the 1920s, had a gift for stylistic imitation. He seamlessly completed Aubrey Beardsley's unfinished erotic novel, Under the Hill (aka Venus and Tannhauser) for Olympia Press in Paris (1959). He wrote the erotic poem, Squire Hardman, which he mischievously ascribed to George Colman the Younger, a once popular British dramatist and writer of the late eighteenth- early nineteenth centuries).

First edition. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1970.

He was the author of what is arguably the best-selling, most popular erotic novel in English of all time, The English Governess by Miles Underwood (Paris: Ophelia Press [Olympia Press], 1960) aka Harriet Marwood, Governess, The Authentic Confessions of Harriet Marwood, An English Governess; The Governess; Under the Birch, and who knows how many other reprint titles, a novel so often pirated that it may hold a record in that department, too. Glassco also wrote Fetish Girl by Sylvia Bayer, which he, with a gallant wink, dedicated, "To John Glassco."

He wrote the Introduction to The Temple of Pederasty by Ihara Saikaku, translated by Hideki Okada (Brandon House/Hanover House, 1970). He wrote more than the Introduction.  The book, purportedly based on one by the very real 17th century Japanese poet and novelist, Ihara Saikaku (1642-93), the volume is an grand exercise in literary deception. The translator, 'the late Dr. Hideki Okada,' is actually Glassco himself. Glassco's translation (in his word, "interpolation") is, for the most part, derived from Ken Sato's unintentionally hysterical and inept translation of Saikaku's Quaint Stories of the Samurais, a collection of homoerotic tales published by Robert McAlmon, Paris, 1928.

In Glassco's letters to Wagner he shares his thoughts on literary pornography.

"Ours are only more sophisticated, in better taste, more literate and civilized. In my 'Art of Pornography' I have hazarded a tentative definition of the genre, in so far as it can be considered a branch of literary art, as 'that kind of aphrodisiac writing which, no matter to what sexual disposition of vagary it is addressed, can command the interest of a judicious reader of dissimilar psychosexual disposition.' This rules out all kinds of trash but leans heavily on imponderables. I was simply trying to formulate some definition, to isolate what we know is good pornography (Cleland, Nerciat, Voisenon, Beardsley, Swinburne) from the mass of rubbish like Rosa Fielding, The Lustful Turk, etc. and such dead horses as poor Steven Marcus flogs so pointlessly [in The Other Victorians]. I was subjecting pornography to an aesthetic test: perhaps thereby imposing on it a dead critical hand. - the essential mystery of sadomasochism itself remains dark, and I for one shall never unravel it. All I know is that like all forms of psychosexuality it is auto-erotic, subjective, and the partner sought (and sometimes found, and isn't this a blessing) in real life is only a projection of one's own self. One does find one's alter-ego, as I know; and so does she, and then everything in the garden is lovely, even for years.  The real Luv arrives, and dulls the sharp end of sex, and both go wandering off on their endless quest for variety, separately alas, still seeking some new double version of the self..."

"Dear old Bizarre! It was an oasis back in the dreary fifties. Yes, I remember the wonderful photo of of Mlle Polaris, the Queen of the Wasp-waists, in her extraordinary corset, which John Willie unearthed and reprinted….He was a Pioneer. Though his pony-girl fantasy, in monthly episodes, did get rather tedious: the writing was so amateur…

"Thanks for your suggestion that I send the Governess to the Penthouse Book Society. Alas, I sold all British rights outright, in dear Harriet to one Aaron M. Shapiro of New York for $1,000 down and 50% of everything he can get over this. And notre cher Maurice G. owns the rights to the obscene version. He still owes me $500 (due last July) but what hope. So I am now only an onlooker of the progress of this absurd book. It gives me unexampled delight to see it on drugstore counters and being bought by liplicking trembly-handed gents on Montreal. These are the true rewards of authorship" (Sept 3, 1968).

North Hollywood: Hanover House (Brandon House), 1970.

On April 12, 1970, copies of Glassco's Temple of Pederasty sent to him by the publisher in California were intercepted at the Canadian border, examined in Ottawa, and determined to be "immoral or indecent." On April 24th, Glassco wrote Wagner:

"I just might make an issue of this. I am consulting our great F.R. Scott (Lady Chatterley's Lawyer) about this next week. After all, these 18 free copies are mine by right, aren't they? I'm mad as hell about this virtual confiscation of my proputty."

On June 16, 1971, Glassco wrote Wagner:

"Thank you so much for Gynecocracy [1893] and The Boudoir [1880s magazine]: they are both banned in this moral province [Quebec]. These Victorian things have always had a great appeal to me, largely as period pieces. In spite of or perhaps because of their awkwardness, bad grammar and super-abundance of cliché (descriptively, the girls simply don't exist!), they are still readable and often stimulating. What I find their greatest fault is their lack of verisimilitude, the demands they make on the reader for an utter suspension of common sense, and a certain monotony. But what is most interesting is that their very situations, action and preoccupations are still being reproduced in places like the correspondence column of Justice Weekly: in porno, there is almost nothing new under the sun! - Well, these old books were of course for the most part carelessly and hastily written: Gynecocracy begins rather well but falls down badly about half-way through, with absurdity piled on absurdity as the  author either became tired or lost all sense of proportion. I think you and I have done much better in the genre; the next generation will be reading us, rather than them, I'm sure…Even at that, however, I think we tend to bypass reality rather too much: it's such a temptation to let one's fancy lightly fly! And to pile things on. At least it is so in my case:I've forgotten Horace's ne nimium advice much too often.

"But this raises the whole question of an aesthetic of pornography, the matter of raising it to the plane of art, as Cleland and Nerciat somehow did. Perhaps we should try and forget the Victorians: they are, subtly, too much with us, too sweetly oppresive by reason of their décor, richness and nostalgia. But what milieu, what locus, can take their place? Our art is essentially romantic, and seeks a never-never climate; yet it must, I think, take more account of reality than it has in the past. This means, to begin with, it must have a strong story-line, a good skeleton as it were; it should also be psychologically viable; and should even have a certain moral truth such as it had in the 18th century. Perhaps this involves giving our work a wry, tragic, or unhappy ending. Quite a programme, indeed!"

For all his genius as an editor-publisher, Maurice Girodias was a poor businessman with a casual attitude about contracts and author payments. Everyone who wrote for Maurice Girodias had complaints and Glassco was no exception.

On September 26, 1966 Glassco sent Girodias a postal spear with firm point.

"It has…come to my notice that you have published a book called Under the Birch, using the text of The English Governess, and are apparently selling it in various countries. This is a breach on copyright, since under our agreement of 30 March 1960, you had only the right to reprint The English Governess on payment to me of NF 3000 for each reprint. The new title means a new publication, not a reprint…

"In view of the difficulties I have experienced in the past in ensuring performance of our agreement of 30 March 1960 I am sure you will understand my insistence on payment of the $1000 in Canadian funds within three months of the date of this letter…"

On May 11, 1967, Glassco wrote Girodias again, his spear inspired by Nabokov's Lolita.

"Dear Maurice (if I may):

"I have just been reading your 'Sad Ungraceful Tale of Lolita' in the reprinted Olympia Reader, and was struck by the undoubted fact that Lolita would not, as you point out, heve been published at all; but for you: at which point I realized that this also holds true for Under the Hill, and that my last letter to you was written in an unduly heated state of mind…

"…There is a chance I may be sent to Paris on a government cultural mission in a week or so…I hope then to have the pleasure of calling on you, and talking on all subjects except that of money.

"Yours with kindest regards, John G."

Later in that year, Glassco wrote again to Girodias in response to a request (and Girodias' plan to reprint The English Governess in the U.S. under his Olympia Press- NY imprint). The request remains intriguing:

"Some new Sade translations might be within my powers this winter. My versions would be quite unlike [Austryn] Wainhouse's as to constitute original translation…Sade has a good clear rhetorical style, a little turgid, but full of a life and vivacity which do redeem the dryness and tedium of his philosophical ideas…All the English versions of Sade I've ever seen are quite unworthy of this inspired madman who surpasses St. Francis of Assisi in the scope of his ideas. Sade is the moral Columbus of our epoch."

Margaret Atwood interested in fetishism? Leonard Cohen in the Israeli army?

"June 16, 1971

"Dear Peggy

Thank you so much for The Undergrowth of Literature [by Gillian Freeman, 1967, a survey of sexual fantasy in literature]. I was specially struck by the chapter on rubber fetishism, which I can see is rampant over there [in England]. As a latex fan since the age of 4 (my true Venus has always worn a frogman's suit), I enjoyed it enormously. Also, I had just finished a short novel [Fetish Girl] whose characters wallow delicate in this fetish, and it was encouraging to read about its popularity in the U.K…

"…Leonard Cohen tells me he is finished with Literature and chansonnerie and suggests we both join the Israeli army…"

NY: Venus Library, 1972. First edition.

In 1971 Glasco submitted the first chapter of Fetish Girl to Fraser Sutherland, publisher of Northern Journey, a Canadian literary journal, for publication.

"You may find FG disappointing. But don't forget that this is formula commercial pop-porno, beginning mildly because the action must always be a constant crescendo and all subsequent chapters depend closely on each other, and they can't be isolated. - By the way, FG is the first rubber-fetish novel ever written. [N.B. It was not. That honor lies with Rubber Goddess by Lana Preston (Paul Hugo Little, 1967).

"If you take this chapter - and please feel free to reject it in spite of your kind sight-uneen acceptance! - it must appear under the name of its true author Miss Sylvia Bayer, as the entire book will; nor should any reference be made to its publication this fall by Grove Press [under its Venus Library imprint], since this may invalidate her contract.

"I will send you a recent glossy of myself, and one of Miss Bayer, too…"

"To The Editors Of Northern Journey, July 15, 1971.

Dear Sirs: -

My good friend John Glassco has just told me you have accepted the first chapter of my latest novel Fetish Girl and I am delighted.

I understand you would like to use a photograph and to print some kind of introductory-biographical note.

I enclose the photograph. As for the note here also is a suggested first person text giving all relevant information and you can 3rd-person alter, cut, telescope or rearrange as you see fit. Only I must see the final text of whatever note you mean to use, I'm sorry to put you to this extra trouble, but I have to do it.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs. Sylvia Fenwick-Owen, 1224 Bishop St.,
Montreal 107
P.Q.

P.S. May I beg you to keep my home address quite confidential. Thank you."

Whose photograph did Glassco submit as that of "Sylvia Bayer?" His first wife, Elma. Fraser Sutherland had no idea. Glassco's friends did and were startled.

It remains a mystery just who John Glassco really was. For all the light Mr. Busby has diligently shone on the man, and no matter how revealing his letters, John Glassco remains, however open, charming and generous of spirit - his heart, indeed, accepted it all - something of a puzzle, he seemed to prefer it that way, and he's all the more fascinating because of it. He enjoyed pseudonymity and creating a tall-tale context for his erotica. His pleasure was writer as actor portraying his characters. He was one of Canada's gifts to literature, a gentleman litterateur in a smoking jacket with a talent for literary sex.

__________

Full disclosure: Mr. Busby is a friend, and in the book generously acknowledges the meager assistance I provided by answering a few questions.

__________

__________

Romance and Erotic Novels Drive Ebook Sales

Call it The Story of Oy.

One of the many fascinating insights that Nicholson Baker provides in his recent piece on the Kindle, A New Page, for The New Yorker is what kind of ebooks are most downloaded from Amazon.

“The success of the ebook is being fueled by the romance and erotic romance market,” asserts Peter Smith in the TechoFile blog for ITworld as quoted in Baker’s piece.

Felicia Day, “Vi” on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is cuckoo for the Kindle for that very reason. She writes in her blog that “as an insane reader of genre paperbacks, I’m absolutely in love with it. It would be great if Amazon sold it in a physical store somewhere so people could check them out themselves. I think they would sell a lot more of them. They especially make great gifts, as they’re an indulgence most ppl won’t allow themselves per say, but if you’re looking for a REALLY nice gift for a family member or friend who loves books or travels a lot, you couldn’t go wrong.

“Now for the ‘come clean’ part: I’ve read like, 6 books this week and ordered about 10 more. And no ordinary books: Pure unadulterated TRASHY-ROMANCE books! Check out my GoodReads shelf vaginal-urban-fantasy, it’s bloating to an alarming degree. It’s stuff I never would have checked out at the Barnes and Noble, because the gleaming and oily man chests would have made me blush too much [unless I was drunk, but that’s a previous blog entry :-)]. I’m delighted to be reading ridiculous werewolf/demon/vampire-Alpha-male fiction with no guilt.”

Now the Kindle’s primary benefit to society is made clear: Providing the ability to read guilty-pleasure lit. without fear of being busted. Sort of like the old days in high school, hiding the comic book in front of Introduction to Biology so that the teach’ wouldn’t catch on.
_____________

The Celebrated Stable of Erotica Writers Part II: The Perp Walk

From the early 1930s through the late 1940s, wealthy Oklahoma oil millionaire Roy Milisander Johnson commissioned 2xweek clandestine erotic manuscripts from writers in major cities across the country though bookseller-agents.

The names of the majority of these writers will forever remain a mystery but there are a handful whose identities have been confirmed:

HENRY MILLER (1891-1980) fled Paris for New York in 1940 at the start of WWII. He arrived in New York penniless. Legman, who knew Miller but didn't like him, was in the process of working with Miller and NY publisher-bookseller Jack Brussel on the first American edition of Tropic of Cancer (the "Medusa" edition). Legman approached Miller about writing for Johnson and set up an appointment to meet at Frances Steloff's Gotham Book Mart. Miller didn't show; he sent Anais Nin to work out the details with Legman, who wound up recruiting her to write for Johnson as well.

Miller's contributions have been identified by Legman as the roots for Miller's Sexus, Nexus, and Plexus (The Rosy Crucifixion) and as his Opus Pistorum (1941).







ANAIS NIN (1903-1977) fled France to New York with Henry Miller as WWII began. She, too, was broke and needed cash, fast.

"I gather poets around me and we all write beautiful erotica. As we have to suppress poetry, lyrical flight, and are condemned to focus only on sensuality, we have violent explosions of poetry. Writing erotica becomes a road to sainthood rather than to debauchery...We have to cut out the poetry, and are haunted by the marvelous tales we cannot tell. WE have sat around, imagined this old man, talked of how much we hate him, because he will not allow us to make a fusion of sexuality with feeling, sensuality and emotion, and lyrical flights which intensify eroticism." (1).

Later, completely fed up and unable to continue, she wrote a letter to Johnson, who she didn't know by name and had no way to send the letter to him:

"Dear Collector;

We hate you. Sex loses all its its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. You have taught us more than anyone I know how wrong it is not to mix it with emotion, hunger, desire, lust, whims, caprices, personal ties, deeper relationships, which change its colour, flavour, rhythms, intensities...You are shrinking your world of sensations. You are withering it, starving it, draining its blood..." (2)

She goes on in the same vein. Had Johnson actually received this letter his eponymous appendage would have fallen off from shame.

In the late 1960s, Ray Locke, an editor at Holloway House, a pulp porn publisher in Los Angeles, walked into Bennett & Marshall, the rare book shop at 8214 Melrose Avenue, to scout for material to reprint (3). He was shown a few erotic manuscripts that had been written sub-rosa over twenty-five years prior. He looked them over; the writing seemed familiar to him. The manuscripts appeared to have been written by his friend and Hollywood Hills neighbor, Anais Nin. Locke contacted her, they got together, she examined the manuscripts and confirmed that they were hers. Ray eagerly offered to publish them at Holloway House. Understanding that there was a new, open market for this old, clandestine work of hers, she politely declined Ray's offer, reworked the material (she'd been admonished by Johnson to stick to direct, explicit narrative, "less poetry;" she put the poetry back in) and in 1977, the year of her death, Delta of Venus, the first of her two volumes of erotica, was published by mainstream publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovich..

CARESSE CROSBY (1892-1970), poet and widow of poet Harry Crosby, had been, with her husband, one of the lights of Paris during the 1920s. Deeply immersed in Paris's literary and art scene and social circuit, the two established Black Sun Press, one of the fine small publishers of its time, noted for the artistry of its productions. She remained in Paris after his suicide in 1929 but returned to New York during the 1930s, remarried and divorced. Her memoir, The Passionate Years (1953), remains one of the best views of American ex-pats in Paris during the 1920s.

On November 3, 1914, the U.S. Patent Office issued a patent to Caresse Crosby under her maiden name, Mary P. Jacob, for the 'Backless Brassiere', the first modern bra design. Whalebone futures presumably nosedived.

ROBERT CAMPBELL BRAGG aka N.R. De Mexico (1918-1954) lived in Greenwich Village, a bohemian in the literary and art scene. He was known to his friends as "Bob De Mexico" and wrote under that pseudonym or as N.R. De Mexico. According to his son, Kim, "the pen name N.R. de Mexico means 'N' for nee (born), 'R' for Robert of Mexico. I think the Mexico was a gag because at one point he had taught himself to speak Spanish well enough for him to translate for some additional income. During the war he worked for military intelligence. In the years just after WWII he was an editor for an architectural magazine, and only began writing novels [openly published ones!] after that period" (4).

BOOKS: Madman on a Drum (1944), a noir suspense thriller; Color TV, Now or Later?: A Comparative Survey and Analysis of the Several Color Systems and Their Impact on the Industry (1950); Marijuana Girl (1951); Designs (1951), a book about crime, gambling, prostitution; Private Chauffeur (1952), an aviation thriller.

BERNARD WOLFE (1915-1985), dramatist, television writer, and novelist graduated from Yale and after service in WWII worked briefly as secretary and bodyguard to Leon Trotsky during the revolutionary's exile in Mexico (he was off-duty at the time Trotsky got plugged) before settling in New York to become a writer. He co-wrote Really the Blues (1946), the memoir of Mezz Mezzrow, a book that would have an enormous impact upon the Beats. His 1972 autobiography, Memoirs of a Not Altogether Shy Pornographer, is a fine read and provides amusing details to his work for the unseen, unknown Johnson.



ROBERT DUNCAN (1919-1988). Space precludes full note of Duncan, whose influence on modern American poetry cannot be under estimated. Just click on the hyperlink to learn about him, if you are not already familiar with the poet and his work. His early, mimeographed journals, Epitaph and Experimental Review were influential when originally published and remain so today.












GEORGE BARKER (1913-1991). The acclaimed British poet left London at the onset of war in 1939 and settled in New York. An impecunious party animal, he desperately needed money and joined the group of secret pornsters at Nin's invitation. "He drank away the money he earned in this way" (5). He returned to the U.K. in 1943. Barker's novel, The Dead Seagull (1950), described his affair with novelist Elizabeth Smart, whose novel By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945) was also about the affair. His Collected Poems were edited by Robert Fraser and published in 1987 by Faber and Faber.


VIRGINIA ADMIRAL (1915-2000) was a painter who studied with Hans Hoffman and writer who worked with poet Robert Duncan to launch Epitaph, which developed into The Experimental Review. She later wrote for True Crime magazine. In 1942 she married painter Robert De Niro and a year later their son, the actor Robert De Niro, was born. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of MOMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

ROBERT DE NIRO, SR. (1922-1993) was an abstract expressionist painter who studied with Hans Hoffman at the artist's Provincetown, MA studio where he met his future wife, Virginia Admiral. The couple were at the center of the Greenwich Village art and literary scene, with Henry Miller, Anais Nin, young Tennessee Williams, and poet Robert Duncan (with whom De Niro, Sr. would have an affair) as friends and boon companions. His son, the actor Robert De Niro, is protective of his father's legacy.

JAMES COONEY founded and edited the late 1930s dissident art journal, The Phoenix, with his wife, Blanche in 1938 at an artist's commune in Woodstock, New York. Henry Miller, Anais Nin and Robert Duncan were contributors.

HARVEY BREIT (1909-1968), poet, playwright, essayist, critic and interviewer, was a reviewer for the New York Times Book Review from 1940-1965. He presumably wrote for Johnson prior to landing the job with the Times, no doubt invited by Nin to supplement his meager if not non-existent income from poetry. He co-wrote with Budd Schulberg the play The Disenchanted (1950) and in 1956 issued The Writer Observed.

JACK HANLEY (1905-1963), a novelist and television writer of no special talent, specialized in racy material:

Let's Make Mary : Being a Gentleman's Guide to Scientific Seduction in Eight Easy Lessons (1937); Exposing the Marijuana Drug Evil in Swing Bands (Radio Stars magazine, July 1938); Star Lust (1949); The Guy From Coney Island (1954); Bed For Beginners (1958); Strip Street (1954, under the pseudonym Gene Harvey); Tomcat in Tights (1959); Very Private Secretary (1960).

I think it safe to say that Hanley was not part of the Nin group.

ROBERT SEWALL. Not much is known about Sewall beyond that he was a childhood friend of G. Legman's in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Legman recruited him to write erotica for Johnson when he found it impossible to continue to churn out his own contributions to Johnson's cause, which were continuations of An Oxford Thesis on Love by "L. Erectus Mentulus," written for Johnson by Lupton Wilkinson. Sewall, "very talented at pastiche" (Legman) did a few of the Oxford sequels, then branched out into parodies of Henry Miller, then began a related series of Dashiell Hammett-like erotic murder-mysteries. These would later be collected and clandestinely issued as The Devil's Advocate (1942) by "Wood C. Lamont," his jab at fellow secret porn writer, the American poet and literateur, Clement Wood, known primarily for his still-in-print The Rhyming Dictionary (1936).

In one of the ironies that erotic literature is rife with, after he retired from writing, Sewall, according to Legman's widow, Judith (6), moved to Brattleboro, Vermont and became the town's postmaster, a job that would have earlier required that he arrest himself for sending obscene material through the mails.

GENE FOWLER (1890--1960). The highly regarded journalist, dramatist, and screenwriter was at one time the highest paid scribe in Hollywood. He began as a popular journalist in New York, and moved to Los Angeles in the very early 1930s. He was notorious for being in and out of the money on a regular basis and likely wrote erotica strictly for fast cash. But Fowler, one of the great wits of the day, couldn't write "straight" sex. His two contributions to American erotica are the uproariously funny clandestine masterpieces, The Demi-Wang by Peter Long (1931) and Nirvana, Or The Adventures of Miss Aveh Koosie by Dr. Desernet (1934), the former a farce in which a young man born with obvious shortcomings undergoes transplant surgery but the surgeon shows up drunk and when our hero awakens he has a horse rather than human virile member that causes him hardship; be careful what you wish for.

I have personally examined these two books in their first printed and bound editions, put together, apparently, after Fowler had delivered the manuscripts. They are printed in attractive letterpress on laid paper. Fowler was part of the writers' crowd that hung out at Stanley Rose's bookshop to bullshit - and appreciate the scenery that Rose would routinely have on display after-hours in the back room. I suspect that Rose originally acted on Johnson's behalf with the commissions but that Fowler took his carbon copies over to Jake Zeitlin, who had them printed and bound (by one of L.A.'s better printer-publishers, yet unknown. But a strong possibility is that the printer and binder was Saul Marks, who had moved to L.A. in 1930 and whom Zeitlin had taken to and given his first work in L.A. as a struggling printer before founding, with his wife, Lillian, Plantin Press), then distributed them, with faux location on the title pages, New York.

LUPTON WILKINSON (1902-1993). Wilkinson began writing articles, poems and stories for magazines, then sensationalistic fare for the pulps. In the early 1930s he became head of publicity for The Hays Office, Hollywood's self-censorship bureau and, in 1938, wrote for Johnson the classic erotic novel, An Oxford Thesis on Love. Irony doesn't get any more ironic. After leaving the Hays Office, Wilkinson became a writer for movie fan magazines and press agent.

ANTHONY GUDAITIS aka Anton Gud, aka Tony Gud wrote anonymously or under pseudonym many works for Samuel Roth, America's most prosecuted publisher of erotica. Lady Chatterley's Husbands (1931) is firmly attributed to him. Under his own name he wrote Young Man About to Committ Suicide (NY: William Faro [Sam Roth], 1934). As "Anton Gud" he compiled and edited the volume Don't Vote 'Til You Read This! (1952).

CLIFTON CUTHBERTSON. We have a name. That's it. The Social Security Death Index doesn't even have that. Who was this guy?

PAUL HUGO LITTLE.(1915-1987). The man of a 1000 pseudonyms was born Paul Hugo Litwinsky in Chicago to wealthy merchants. Little ultimately became one of America's most prolific writers with over 700 novels and books to his credit. They are almost all porn of the poorest literary quality. A chess expert, he has a few chess instructionals to his name, and wrote a book in 1965 titled The Procurers, a title about one of Chicago's most notorious call-girls who had her phones unilaterally turned off by the sheriff of Cook County. Some believe this book is fiction. It is not. My uncle, Elmer Gertz, in his day one of the U.S.'s most celebrated civil liberties and First Amendment attorneys (he won Tropic of Cancer's first case in the U.S.), was this woman's advocate in her suit against the sheriff and, natch, got her off hook and back on the phone. I once possessed a copy of this book that Little had inscribed to my uncle. I sold it ten years ago. It is now online and selling for $150. Geez...

One day someone will write at length about this character, known primarily for his porn work under the pseudonym, "A. Grandamour," who, according to my uncle (who knew him well), was a spoiled rich Jewish kid, well-educated, who turned his back on his family and background, was thrown out of the Chicago branch of The Standard Club, the social organization for successful Jews, for conduct unbecoming, married an Episcopalian, converted to Christianity, and then churned out so much crude erotica that he surely could not have had time to perform his connubial responsibilities.

CLEMENT WOOD (1988-1950). The poet, critic and litterateur wrote Flesh (1930) Lady Chatterley's Friends (1932), amongst many such novels he cranked out for Sam Roth. He was wealthy and didn't need the money; he just loved writing about sex. He must have leapt at the opportunity to write for Johnson. His The Rhyming Dictionary (1936) has never been out of print.

Of the Los Angeles contingent Legman wrote, "I was told that many Hollywood writers had written for this combine" (7). Stanley Rose's book shop was the local hang-out for screenwriters and novelists, famous and otherwise (a lot of otherwise); Rose was notorious for the back room activities of his shop, and there was no shortage of Hollywood scriveners in need of scratch and not particular about how they earned it.

So boring was writing for Johnson that the Greenwich Village division of Johnson's libido wrote much of their output round-robin style. "I am," Anais Nin wrote, "the madam of this literary, snobbish house of prostitution-writing, from which vulgarity was excluded...I supply the paper and carbon, I deliver the manuscripts anonymously, I protect everyone's anonymity" (8).

Almost everyone.

In 1953, Roy M. Johnson was elected to the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. A one-man New Deal WPA, he is still awaiting recognition by PEN for his employment services to starving writers during the Depression.

_________

1. Nin, Anais. Diaries, Volume III, p. 157.
2. ibid., pp. 177-178).
3. Interview with the author, September, 2000.
4. Tucker, Fender. Who Is N.R. De Mexico? Paperback Parade #69, Jan. 2008, pp 95-96.
5. Legman, G. Introduction to the Private Case, p. 57.
6. Email to the author.
7. Legman, G. Introduction to The Private Case, p. 53.
8. Nin, op cit, p. 151.

Aside from Legman's Introduction to Patrick J. Kearney's The Private Case, and Jay A. Gertzman's key Bookleggers and Smuthounds (1999), the Introduction by C.J. Scheiner to White Stains (Delectus, 1995) has been helpful, though Scheiner's speculation that Nin and/or members of her group wrote the erotic stories within this tome (first appearing c. 1940) is not well-developed, based entirely upon the coincidence that the stories in White Stains are also well written, and fails to provide any sort of textual comparison to known erotica by Nin or her writing in general to support his notion.
____________

Originally appeared in Fine Books & Collections on this date.

The Celebrated Stable of Erotica Writers Part I

During the early 1930s through the late 1940s, the good folks of the small yet bustling burg of Ardmore, Oklahoma had no idea that their leading citizen was America's foremost patron of profane literature.

"There are in Oklahoma a number of valiant men engaged in productive enterprise whose success has largely resulted from the application of rare common sense in conjunction with speed of action. There are none in whom this combination is more conspicuously developed than Roy Melisander Johnson, of Ardmore, who, in a comparatively brief period of time and while still in early middle life, has reached a point of prosperity that is a fine tribute to his attainments...it is said by his fellow citizens that no man in the State stands higher in the regard of its people than he...a dominating influence".(I)

While he was certainly so in his business and civic activities, he was, as well, certainly the dominating influence in the creation of clandestine erotica in the United States. Having commissioned nearly 2000 private erotic manuscripts(II) to be written for him, he was and remains the single most significant patron of erotic literature - and probably of all literature - in world history.

Johnson (1881-1960) began as a linotype operator, established a newspaper in Ardmore in 1907, the Ardmore Statesman, an openly Republican paper in a staunchly Democratic Party region, and thus proclaimed himself as a man willing to go against popular opinion.

But the newspaper business was not enough for Johnson, who went on to found Healdton Petroleum Co, the first company to exploit the Healdton oil field, the largest oil reserve in Oklahoma, which Johnson had co-discovered in 1913. He became fabulously wealthy. Elected to state office, a member of every civic organization imaginable, he was also deacon of the First Presbyterian Church of Ardmore.

When not in church or drilling natural resources, he was a connoisseur and avid collector of the literature of natural resources, erotica, who, according to Gershon Legman "had all the printed erotica in English, but who found - like the readers of murder-mysteries - that each story excited his imagination and his jaded virility only once." (III) His drill bit, apparently was no longer up to the task and so "he thereafter continually needed fresh manuscripts written for him, two a week."(IV)

To that end, Johnson had agent-booksellers in major cities all over the country engaged in commissioning private smut from struggling writers who wrote blue for the green, $200 per manuscript to the agents, who were to keep $100 and give the rest to the writer but who rarely kept their side of the bargain; the writers were lucky to see $50 for their tumescent labors.

He kept his collection of printed and manuscript erotica in olive-drab steel filing cabinets in his business office because his wife refused to allow them in their house, a home now registered as a historical landmark.(V)  Given what was in his file cabinets, his office should have been registered as a historical landmark.

The agent-booksellers were located in New York, Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Los Angeles.(VI)  In New York, the agent was a bookseller known as "Rudolph Bernays" (Legman) or "Barneybill Roster" (Bernard Wolfe); by those clues, it was likely Barnet Ruder. In Chicago, it was likely Ben Abramson of Argus Books; in Los Angeles, it was surely Stanley Rose of the Satyr Book Shop who later opened a shop nearby under his own name that had a notorious "back room" where "art studies" would be held after closing and where the "art" books were sold (VII); legendary L.A. rare book dealer Jake Zeitlin may have also been involved (VIII), and later, after Rose died, bookseller Mel Royer (IX).

Many if not most of the agent-booksellers, though they were not supposed to, kept copies of the manuscripts and sold them to other clients. For this the writers received zip.

Upon his death, Johnson's collection of printed and manuscript erotica would be disbursed into the marketplace, at first clandestinely by booksellers to trusted clients then, post-1965 Supreme Court decisions, openly. The largest purchasers of the manuscripts at that point were pulp porn publishers who scouted rare book shops for material to reprint.

Though I hesitate to say so - oh brother, do I hesitate - I have had much of this material pass through my hands. Pulp porn publishers reprinted the stuff under the original titles or changed titles simply to distinguish their editions from competing editions; at the time there were often four to five editions of the same book in the marketplace.

Through attention to detail it's fairly easy to identify the reprints as Johnson manuscripts. One of the writers was known for his Henry Miller and Dashiell Hammett erotic pastiches. Stumble across a paperback of similar style and if the time period checks, it's likely one of this fellow's contributions.

While the authors of some of the material have been firmly identified, authorship of the overwhelming majority of the material remains unknown. Many of the original manuscripts were crudely written, yet in many of the paperback reprints one is struck by craft, cleverness and/or lyricism begging to be set loose. Those are the ones written by the better writers, and we can hear in these short novels a group of Greenwich Village artists, poets, and bohemians having a good time while desperately trying to satisfy an old man's flagging libido to earn the rent.

Though the list of writers who slathered secret sauce onto Johnson's bedtime snacks contains names of marginal interest, it remains quite impressive for those writers of significance, small and large, and provides a brief who's who of the literary arts scene in New York and Los Angeles during the era.

Part II: The Perp Walk.

___________

 
I. Thoburn, Joseph B. and Muriel Wright. OK, A History of the State and Its People (NY,  1929), vol. 4, p.603-04.
II..Two per week, over nearly a twenty year period.
III.Legman, G. Introduction to The Private Case (1981), p. 53.
IVIbid, p. 54.
V.United States Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places
VI. Ferrario, Peter (one of the numerous pseudonyms of Paul Hugo Little). The Classical Underground Erotica. Volume 2, University Circle Press, 1971,  p. 88. This is a trashy book issued by a porn publisher, and Little, a rotten writer by any standard, tells all about himself and his contributions to Johnson's hobby but in the third person, as the author's "friend." Legman, op cit, provides a similar list of cities involved.
VII. Author interview with Teevee Moss, who worked for Rose at his Hollywood Bvld shop.
VIII. Gertzman, Jay A. Booklegger and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica 1920-1940, Philadelphia, 1999, p. 61.
IX. Royer's shop was located at 8216 Melrose Ave. The space was later occupied by William Dailey Rare Books, where I hung my hat for many years. Royer's widow, Dorothy, now deceased,, refused to speak to me of her husband's extra-curricular activities fearful of his name being besmirched. Royer is also the only bookseller known to have actually visited Johnson in his home in Ardmore.
__________

Originally appeared in Fine Books & Collections on this date.

The Dirty Secret of a Legendary Rare Book

Something happened to Maurice Girodias when he moved Olympia Press to New York during the late 1960s.

A bold and brave publisher in Paris but with a self-destructive streak, he would routinely scamper amongst cow-pies and deliberately splat a few; he was cavalier with business and casual regarding ethics. When he arrived in New York, he upped the ante by playing hopscotch in a mine field.

In September of 1969, Simon and Schuster published The Seven Minutes by Irving Wallace. This was Wallace's novel concerning obscenity and censorship, its plot centering upon a bookseller accused of selling copies of a fictitious obscene book titled, The Seven Minutes by J.J. Jadway. As part of his research, Wallace had interviewed Girodias, at the time the world's most notorious publisher with Barney Rosset of Grove Press a close second.

Girodias was tipped to the upcoming release of Wallace's book and its content. He was not happy about the way Wallace had handled the Girodias-based character of Christian Leroux, a sleazy Paris publisher who had been the "original" publisher of Wallace's fictitious The Seven Minutes by J.J. Jadway. So unhappy was he that Girodias had a book quickly written purporting to be The "Original" Seven Minutes by J.J. Jadway that the Wallace book was based upon.

Additionally, in a grand, single-finger salute to Wallace, Girodias wrote an inflammatory Preface, which told the "real" story behind The Seven Minutes, of how he got a hold of the original manuscript, and how rotten he thought Wallace's novel was. He added a blurb to the front cover of the book, too, just to make sure Wallace got the message:

"The Last and the Greatest Underground Erotic Masterpiece...On which Irving Wallace Based His Bestselling Novel."

Suffice it to say, Wallace and Simon and Schuster got the message and they were not amused. They took legal action against Girodias, and the court ruled that Girodias had deliberately produced a book guaranteed to confuse the public and do harm to the publisher and the reputation of the author.

Girodias was ordered to destroy all 150,000 copies of the book's print run. In practical terms this was done by tearing off the front covers to provide proof and pulping the now defaced books.

Thus this book, with its great backstory, has become one of the most rare and desirable books in all of erotic literature.

And so I recently decided to conduct a census to determine just how many copies of this exceedingly scarce book were still extant.

Amy Wallace and her brother David Wallachinsky report that there is one copy, perhaps two, boxed up and in storage along with other books and items from their father's estate. Irving Wallace's personal copy(s): Monster association!

A private collector has one intact copy. I'd heard about this copy but did not know the owner. In a bizarre coincidence, he recently found me in regard to another matter. We established a correspondence and soon, in relation to O7M, he wrote: "I got it mail order. When I was collecting Olympia Press/Ophelia Press I had set up a notification of all new listings, for those publishers, on Abebooks.com. When the listing for The Original Seven Minutes by JJ Jadway came up I bought it. It was years ago but I didn't have to pay much for it $15 or $20. Sorry but I can't remember the bookseller involved."

An amazing bargain; the bookseller clearly didn't know what he had and how rare it was.

The actual author of Girodias' The Original Seven Minutes by J.J. Jadway, Michael Bernet, reports that he has three intact copies, and one with the cover removed.

So, a total of  six copies accounted for. There may two or three other intact copies in the hands of former employees of Giroldias. So, we have a strong estimate of nine intact copies extant.

But, at the end of his note to me, Michael Bernet declared that "I had them before they were condemned, unlike Girodias's partner who stole them from storage."

Ah, the mysterious and mythical missing box. This apocryphal tale has been floating around for decades with no solid evidence of the magic box of fifty's actual existence.

Until now.

Continuing the census, I asked a fellow I've been acquainted with for twenty five years, an erotica collector of some repute and casual scholar who once interviewed Girodias, was a  part-time now an occasional dealer who has not and will never list through third-party aggregators, about how many extant copies of  O7M he was aware of. To which he replied:

"Girodias did not remember how many boxes were shipped before the Court Order, but Girodias did give a full box of 50 copies to his partner [Ah! Stolen or gifted? Another choice tidbit about this book]. When he died access to them passed to a person very close to me. I can attest that the box of 50 mint copies was gifted by Girodias. My first mint copy came from this box."

To which I replied, "Your first mint copy?"

His response:

"The late bookseller Seymour Hacker secretly purchased dozens of mint copies of the first edition of LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER from the lover of the deceased publisher. (Told to me by Hacker). For years he quietly put up a copy for auction every six months or so. This way he kept the price of the book in the thousands of dollars. It is enough for any one to know that I have at least one copy of 'Original Seven Minutes' in both mint and 'front cover removed' condition. It makes no economic sense to divulge how many total copies I have."

The ethical sense appears to be beyond him. This jus' ain't right.

Thus, The Original Seven Minutes is not a scarce book. With at least fifty mint copies extant, it is not even a rare book. With that many mint condition copies, a premium can't be placed on condition; almost every copy is brand new. Any copies in less than mint condition are the true rarities and, theoretically, should turn condition issues on their head.

The paucity of surviving copies in the marketplace of the first edition of O7M and their price is the result of the deliberate creation of an artificial shortage.

Making the Market

"Common sense tells us that the only way to increase the value of diamonds is to make them scarce, that is to reduce production" (Ernest Oppenheimer, diamond miner and marketer whose business would be swallowed by the De Beers cartel).

Until recently, De Beers completely controlled the international market for industrial- and jewelry-grade diamonds. Far from what we've been led to believe, diamonds are not rare. With the exception of large, multiple carat stones of exceptional clarity, color (meaning no color at all), and brilliance, diamonds are common. It was De Beers' paramount marketing strategy to control the price of diamonds by withholding their supply from the markerplace.

It is one thing for a rare book dealer to buy up as many copies of a genuinely rare book as they can acquire to set the market price. I have done this myself when, finding that there were only three copies of a certain book being offered worldwide on the Internet, I bought them all. I "made the market" for a book that was quite rare and, for a number of reasons, had been previously unknown to collectors of this particular genre of literature and possessed a degree of importance. Years later and long after my dealer involvement in that genre of collecting, that book remains quite rare with only a copy or two surfacing every now and then.

It is quite another thing to deliberately sell copies of a reputedly scarce book at an exorbitant price when you know that the book is actually common because you have access to four dozen or so from a private, clandestine stash and want to prevent your stratospheric price from nose-diving into Earth at Mach II, which would be a virtual certainty if the secret got out.  The operative plan seems to be to sell the last of the remaining copies on the day of death. Only afterward, while the dealer's carcass rots, when collectors begin to talk to each other - as like-minded collectors always do - will they discover that they've been had, big-time, that, far from being the coolest collector on the planet with a mint copy of a legendary rarity, they're just another collector with a book that everyone has; that the mint condition book they were told was scarce beyond belief in any condition and paid well into four figures for is actually worth, at best, $50-$100.

At that point, the only recourse left to the collector will be to visit the cemetery and autograph the dealer's grave in yellow. 

                 The reprint, OPS/3                                                     The controversial first edition, OPS/1     
Girodias lost a fortune when he was ordered to destroy all copies. But he made up for some his losses by issuing another edition of The Original Seven Minutes under the title Seven Erotic Minutes, without the offending Preface, without the J.J. Jadway byline, and without the wrapper blurb associating the book with Wallace's. With the news of the box of fifty copies of The Original Seven Minutes, that reprint may now be rarer than the original edition.

It may come to pass that more than 59 collectors will want to add the book to their collection. At that point, another generation down the line, the book may become scarce in the marketplace again. But it will be true scarcity, not bogus, as this example of professional misbehavior demonstrates.

_____

My thanks to Stuart Fanning for providing images of the two earliest editions of Girodias' Seven Minutes.

The facts concerning the case of Wallace & Simon and Schuster v Girodias/Olympia Press are drawn from the Introduction to Patrick J. Kearney's A Bibliography of the Publications of the New York Olympia Press (Privately Printed, Santa Rosa, 1988).

__________

Originally appeared in Fine Books & Collections on this date.