A Sliver of Flesh: Four New Short Stories of the Homosexual Life by Alexander Goodman

A Sliver of Flesh: Four New Short Stories of the Homosexual Life by Alexander Goodman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I haven't read one of these for a while. I was digitizing all the author's works for posterity and have done this one too. You can download it here.



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Mercenary Affections: Stories of the Homosexual Life by Alexander Goodman, ePub, download

Mercenary Affections: Stories of the Homosexual Life by Alexander Goodman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Download digital edition here.

A quick distraction. I've enjoyed digitizing Mr. Goodman's work, this is the second last one.
Check epubbud for digital editions.

Stories are:
A Murder Story - Some sailors on shore leave get up to some trouble and cruise the bars. Concurrently a gay murder across town involving sailors is discovered. These gays don't trust the police and know the killer will likely get off using a gay panic defense.

Just Old - A young man has a revealing talk with his grandfather about the older man's gay past.

The Hoarder - Was there more 17 year old studs just peaking in the 1960's? This one involves a young man who gets paid to work around the house and then inside the house. When he later goes missing the police show up to question the man who hired him. Wherever could he be? Don't look in the freezer.

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Gay Revolution by Marcus Miller, ePub, download

Gay Revolution by Marcus Miller
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Download this book here. I digitized it!

Five stars, it's not The Grapes of Wrath but for gay pulp subtitled "A Pleasure Reader" it's as good as it can get.
I first heard of this book when it appeared in Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps with a short chapter. The premise is the world's water supply has been infected with a drug that makes everyone gay, which in 1969 caused more consternation than now.
The book starts off with some quick baton passing, one characters dumps his girlfriend, next chapter is from the perspective of the girlfriend, she meets a travelling salesman, next chapter is from his perspective, etc. Eventually we meet a pair of CIA special agents assigned to the case and with them we stay.
The problem with later gay pulp is they're really unreadable as books due to the sex scenes on every third page, but the ones published in the 1960's are usually less saturated as is this one. Sex scenes are brushed over except for two and both are welcome, well-written and erotic.
Some of the pulpy aspects of the book ratcheted up the plot, making it perhaps less relatable to today's audience. Why were all the suddenly gay people all screwing in the streets, for example. Still it was cute, the story went somewhere, the characters were likable, all great pulpy fun, I'm glad I read it.

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Making It Big: Sex Stars, Porn Films and Me by Chi Chi Larue, EPub download

Making It Big: Sex Stars, Porn Films and Me by Chi Chi Larue
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Download the eBook here.

A poorly executed book with little content or redeeming value.
Having finished Thousand and One Night Stands: The Life of Jon Vincent, which was told in a straight-forward, direct way, I moved right into this book hoping for more insight into the late 1990’s world of gay porn stars from someone who was there. I was disappointed. As LaRue says:
“I have had sex with some of the stars of this industry, but I’m not going to name names here. Sorry if this disappoints you, but I’ve never liked kiss-and-tell books, and I’m not going to write one. That’s unfair to the other people involved. If they want you to know, let them tell you.”
I wasn’t so much looking for a kiss-and-tell book as just a tell. The best story in the book is about Ryan Idol threatening her with a baseball bat and that’s told in about one sentence. The whole book is short vignettes with a few paragraphs and then a page break, and rather than tell a linear story the book is grouped into categories like how to direct a porno or popular drag queens of 1996. The woman’s met Prince, Madonna, Cher, Jeff Stryker, Ryan Idol and tons more and each gets about a paragraph.
LaRue’s humour very occasionally comes out:
“Bradley’s also gotten me addicted to fans, the little handheld spreading kind that classy women throughout history have fluttered when swooning with the vapors or watching their plantations burn down.”
But the humour is too infrequent and I don’t know how well it translates to the page. The book was written with a ghost writer and I have no idea what he did, he certainly didn’t help flush out the narrative.
There’s a reason people usually write these books at the end of their career. LaRue seems so concerned with stepping on people’s toes that nothing gets said.

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Dancer From The Dance by Andrew Holleran, EPub download

Dancer From The Dance by Andrew Holleran
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Download book here.

A well written book, hauntingly melodic at times, yet ultimately short on plot.
The book is timeless is a way, describing the feeling all gay men have when they first come to the city:
“…especially the young ones, come into the canyon for the first time, quiet as deer, some of them, coming to your hand for salt: their dark eyes wide and gleaming with the wonder and the fear we had all felt at seeing for the first time life as our dreams had always imagined it… at seeing so many people with whom they could fall in love. The old enchantment composed of lights, music, people was transfixing them for the first time, and it made their faces even more touching.”
I remember well the days and nights spent dancing and looking for love:
“Any memory of those days is nothing but a strong of songs.”
Holleran writes very well and this is the first book of his I have read not dealing with AIDS. While there are many occasions in the book for beautiful prose:
“Love was the key: The popular songs he heard on the radio, Malone realized now, were in the end perfectly accurate. Each time he ran his lips across the concave depression of Frankie’s stomach, he banished further the nights of loneliness, the widow’s cold cream, the sterile years of his wasted youth, and he burrowed deeper at the thought of it into Frankie’s flesh.”
And touches of humour:
“I’ll go live in the woods,” said Malone.
“You’ll be lonely,” said Sutherland. “Even Thoreau went to town in the afternoon to gossip.”
Ultimately not much happens. You come to the city, you dance, you love, you die. Which now that I think of it could be the plot of a lot of people’s lives. I ultimately found the characters under-developed and wanted a beautiful story to go with the amazing prose.
“…what happens to most of these people anyway? They have their fling and then they vanish. They have to take jobs eventually as telephone operators, bartenders, partners in a lamp shop in some little town in the San Fernando mountains… and others take their places… but mostly they just vanish, and you forget about them unless you hear, one day, a certain song.”

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Somewhere Between the Two by Jay Little

Somewhere Between the Two by Jay Little

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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I read this book on the recommendation of Victor J. Banis in his autobiography Spine Intact, Some Creases.

I rather suspect Mr. Banis’ recommendation is based on memories of when he first read this book, published originally in 1956, than on a current reading. While it is, as Banis suggests, a behind the scenes tale of a female impersonator, in modern terms the book is far too focused on suicide and sad gay lives to really be able to focus on much else.

In addition to the sad gay lives, the author frequently lapses into verse so flowery it is nonsensical:
With whom would Terry taste of the scarlet fruit close to serpent waters?

The height of the nonsensical prose is during the few sex scenes:
Drowsily, not quite sure but that he might be dreaming, he watched the blurred vision in front of him, and when their ridged bodies contacted again in the night, the rose of love was blooming because they were both lonely and mortal. There could no longer be concealments and evasions. The life in which Bruce Sanger lived, floating like an island in oceanic dawn, had sent another wanderer to his shore of needs, boundaries, and events. It had come from no space and no time. It was as old as the world, and yet it was so mysterious and haunting as it wove its damp breath of memories over him.

They’re actually kind of funny, the author sometimes goes on for paragraphs about volcanoes and the crescent moon, etc.

I found the life of the female illusionist interestingly portrayed:
Each one created an illusion so close to reality that many in the audience gasped, "Do you mean to tell me that's a boy... really? You could fool me...." And that, to the impersonator, was more than adequate compensation for all the uncertainties and disappointments, rude remarks, corruptions, the anxieties and the heartaches and heartbreaks, with which their lives are beset.

I feel some of this may have been white-washed for the time period the book was written. There are maybe ten female impersonators in the troupe and only 2 are gay? They’re made to seem like straights are the norm in the business, and I don’t think that has ever been true.

The author talks of straight men coming on to the impersonators:
The animal scent within their loins was eager for new quests, an escape from the form of payment in installments called marriage.

So he doesn’t really make straight life sound great either. The gay life is played as darker than it was and the impersonator life is played lighter, so I don’t really trust the historical aspects of the book.

Also the melodrama really bubbles over the top in this one.

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A Sweet Gentle Boy and Other Stories by Alexander Goodman

A Sweet Gentle Boy and Other Stories by Alexander Goodman
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Download ebook here.

A weak, sub-par collection with no real standouts or historical significance.

Six short stories:
- A SWEET, GENTLE BOY - a man and his prostitute
- THE TRIP - a man has a plane ride where he imagines all the crew and passengers wanting to have sex with him
- ABSOLUTELY CREAMY - Probably the best. A new play is being put on in New York City off-off Broadway. Will it be too wild for the vice squad?
- THE CATCH - a man throws an orgy to thank his friends for their support... and to introduce his new 18 year old lover
- THE STORYTELLER - The worst. I hate it when the author breaks the fourth, or possibly fifth, wall. He talks about the mechanics of writing a story during the story. Ugh.
- DREAM BOY - Two old queens share gossip about their live-in beaus

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The Gay Year by M de F

The Gay Year by M de F
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I digitized this book and am selling it, you can buy it here.
Kind of a mixed reaction over this book.

I don’t feel the characters were fully fleshed out, although part of it could be I found it hard to relate to them. This kind of dark, moody pre-Stonewall literature, it seems in some ways as if it was written by a homophobe. If it was written today the person would be considered homophobic, writing a book containing two suicide attempts, one successful, and enough self-loathing homosexuals for a lifetime.

Part of the disconnect for me is that people must have really thought like this. There were suicides, even I at 35 can remember a time when every gay person you met had attempted suicide. In a lot of ways I don’t want to go back there, and perhaps that’s why there is such a mass rejection of pre-Stonewall literature, it’s that we as a group are not ready.

There’s plenty of forties lingo in the book:

It was good to be with Lou having a mug of coffee and chewing the rag. After what had happened to him this afternoon, Joe needed to chew the rag plenty.

But when someone falls in love, it’s instantly in love. It’s melodrama:

Joe sat beside the boy on the sofa. He pulled the sobbing head out of the pillows and slapped Harold’s face smartly.

I find nowadays very few face slaps.

And going back to the homophobia in the book, everyone is always so down:

…tiny, dark, ‘gay’ bars jammed with men and boys who, like themselves, were on the endless hunt for something to bring a little happiness into the bleakness called ‘the gay life’.

“I’ll never go for treatments—none of us ever will. I’d be afraid of what he might tell me—besides I don’t really want to help myself. I’m just weak and stupid and dumb and queer—that’s all. Weak and stupid and dumb and queer—.”

One of the guys meets a woman after trying suicide of course, who thinks she can turn him:

She recognized some of the familiar marks in this young man, but there was present another quality that told her this one was not meant for ‘the gay life’. She wondered if she could help him realize it.

“Joe, you know the story of Lucifer? If God’s brightest Angel fell from Grace, can we expect man to behave more judiciously?”

This equation of a gay life with Lucifer? I just don’t see why anyone would think someone chose to be gay with all these oppressive, negative connotations. Even this is later rationalized away:

Who created homosexuals? Maybe parents who failed to understand their sensitive sons, maybe the boys created themselves, maybe too stringent taboos on natural impulses—whatever it was, Joe concluded, it wasn’t God.

This idea seems popular from the time. To me, if gays were born gay it’s not their fault, if their parents made them gay it’s not their fault, so the answer is to say they made themselves, that way it can be their fault:

If the aggregate ‘they’ he’d hated so fiercely through his youth, had made him ‘gay,’ he had let them. He had given in to them. His coddling family couldn’t be blamed; he had allowed himself to be coddled.

So much self-hatred. It was all overwhelming for me.

And then, at the end of the book, to wipe it all away. As the title suggests, it’s simply a “Gay Year”. Then back to straight:

“I’m not really ‘gay’,” Joe repeated. “I’ve never really been homo. I’ve only been lonely.” It was as simple as that.

Most cases of homosexual love, Joe thought, were closer to bisexual than people recognized. Generally, one of the participants was womanly in his mental and emotional attitudes. If a man should be attracted to such a person, where is the homosexuality?

Yes so it turns out our hero was never really gay at all.

An interesting time capsule but not really a great reading book.

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Recollections of a Part-Time Lady by Minette

Recollections of a Part-Time Lady by Minette
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

DOWNLOAD EBOOK HERE or at it's permanent link HERE.

An excellent book and an important historical document.

Minette invites you to sit with her as she tells the story of her life. She goes back to a time when “there was no common culture then, no boob tube, so people just knew their own circles.”

She goes so far back, she talks about a queen she met who was performing in 1875. Crazy. I’ve never heard of a record this old before. Minette wrote this at the end of her life in 1979 and she knew old queens back when she was young that span this kind of huge time span.

The book isn’t professionally written and is more of a gossip memoir style, but it really adds to the feeling you’ve been invited into her home to hear her story.

She talks of the 1930’s where drag was illegal and a queen “had a special way with paper tits so that if the cops walked by she could crush them just like that.”

She talks of when the Puerto Rican queens moved in to town and: “When a queen would ask for $5, one of the Puerto Rican queens would raise a hand behind her , and someone else would make a lower offer behind her. In a fortnight, business was shot to hell. They should have had a hay hookers’ union.”

Minette has the wit of a consummate performer. Of her rent controlled flat: “It’s hard to beat a five-room flat for $32, even if the walls are Niagara when it rains.” ($100 in today’s money! In NYC!) She talks of a time when the customers were the “mark” and the object was to offload their money, similar to carny folk.

I loved this too brief chronicle. The book was self-published and has many mimeographed photos that don’t always reproduce well.

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The Young Homosexual by Lee Dorian

The Young Homosexual by Lee Dorian
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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I decided to digitize this book for the ages as I thought it would be a fun “Reefer Madness” style document on gay life. For the most part it was, but I found myself occasionally not just laughing at it and trying to point out the flaws in the author’s arguments which lessened my fun a bit.
I found many fanastic quotes and present a few of them here:

"Here I am," complains one college boy, "twenty years old, married, with a child coming along. When I run into my unmarried classmates on the campus, how can I help but envy them? That's why so many guys turn queer.
- I totally agree

THE SINGLE THING—THE ONE QUALITY—that makes the experienced homosexual a danger to the entire community is the remorseless recruiting that is carried on by homosexuals of both sexes.
- What is an “experienced” homosexual? Also I note I’m behind on my recruiting numbers this month. I hope they don’t pull my membership.

A discreet observation in the column of Dorothy Kilgallen, regarding the murder of a famous theatrical figure recently says, "None of the people close to him even guessed about his secret life, but the police now have reason to believe his murderer is on the high seas—" an obvious reference to the possibility that the man was murdered by a young sailor he had picked up around the Times Square section of New York.
- The author does this ALL the time, quote someone famous, for example he uses Ann Landers’ name about 30 times, then makes it seem like they said something anti-gay, when they didn’t. Also, is this one of those books in disguise, where it says anti-gay stuff to get past the censors, but in fact, if you’re gay and reading this, you’ve learned to go to Times Square for sailors while in NYC.

"Just straight sex is nothing," remarks a UCLA man during an investigation. "For real kicks you've got to make it with a fag, preferably a Negro fag, or have a hallucination. Pot (marijuana) or peyote (the hallucinating cactus) is the only kick left."
- Several of this author’s sources are things like “an investigation”, which I assume means his head. I can’t believe I’m refuting this guy’s crazy ramblings again! See what I mean? Also, hallucinating cactus???

The experienced lesbian does not approach a strange girl in a subway or even a bar. She sends out her scouts, in the form of other young girls who have been seduced into the Lesbian way of life.
- I wish gay men had scouts. *pouts*

By the time he was four, he was not only dressing up in his mother's clothes at every opportunity, but he had begun to be a young pyromaniac. Three times, he set the house on fire, one time causing considerable damage. One of the things the young boy slated to be a homosexual usually does, is set fires.
- ???

"Is the homosexual born or made?" Interestingly enough, while ninety percent of all analysts insist the homosexual creates himself, so to speak…
- This I thought was a good point. If they’re born that way, not their fault. If they’re made that way, also not their fault. So how to get around that and still blame the gays? They create themselves! Brilliant.

There are many forms of masturbation, and the alert parent should be aware of them. The child who likes to climb to the highest limb of a tree and clutch it in terror as he feels the branch swaying beneath him, is masturbating. The boy or girl who likes to "wrestle" a playmate is masturbating. Nose picking, nail-biting, bed-wetting and any habit which, says Freud, "has about it a kind of rhythm, is a form of masturbating."
- I need to go climb some trees. Stupid winter.

Like most homosexuals, I wasn't remotely interested in being changed—unless," on a rather simpering titter, "I could be changed into a woman."
- Now why the hell don’t I say more things with a “simpering titter”? From now on I am. Every time I speak, as soon as I find out what a “simpering titter” is, I’m using it.

The Court, in the same opinion, pointed out that to put a homosexual—especially a young person—in prison, is "a little like throwing Briar Rabbit into the briar patch.
- I laughed out loud at this one.

...of every ten girls who march down the aisle, seven are already pregnant, a statistic which would have caused headlines even ten years ago!
- Where is this man getting his information, a cereal box?

[if a man thinks he wants to be gay] he should spend an evening with a pair of homosexuals—one male and one female—who, because of their prominent position in the entertainment world, decided to contract a " front" marriage. At first one would be tempted to think, "This is great. They're so happy together. She answers the phone and talks endearingly to her girl friends; he answers the phone and talks endearingly to his men friends."
But hang around a while until both have had three or four Scotches and sodas and listen to the names she calls him and the other names he calls her. Watch her throw a Scotch-and-soda in his young, handsome face when he tells her, "You're nothing but a lousy c--- s---" and then sit beside her after he has stormed out of the house to go to his boyfriend, hear her say, "I try so hard to be a woman with him...."
- I laughed out loud at this one too.

All homosexuals are certainly not seriously mentally deranged. But we have found that all seriously deranged people are homosexual in that they are withdrawn, reclusive, narcissistic and masturbate to excess."
- That’s so crazy! I need to be alone now to think about this while masturbating in front of a mirror.

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Handsome Is... by Alexander Goodman

Handsome Is... by Alexander Goodman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Download book here.

I believe this is Goodman's only full length book, the rest I think are all short story collections.

The story, with a narrative as choppy as the Pacific Ocean, concerns a young woman who sets out to find what her boyfriend Tony has been up to. She travels to New York and meets all sorts of shady characters from the gay underworld.

In part two we learn Tony has been a live-in hooker for Paul, a Rock Hudson type of movie star. From there things spill quickly into melodrama with murder, S & M whipping scenes and a world where young men are available to the wealthy playboys for the right price.

As usual in Goodman's work there are elements of the men thinking they're straight, playing gay for a laugh. The older men are all out for one thing and will stop at nothing to get it. I'm digitizing all his work for historical purposes and this one falls somewhere in the middle.

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The Gay Rebels by Larry Price

The Gay Rebels by Larry Price
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This is my favourite series of sixties camp books, the Unique series, I love them, every line is gold. From the guys who smoke pot and after one drag run crazy down the streets, to transvestite old aunties wearing makeup, living for a clutch of young flesh. It's such a trip, I love it.

This one concerns Fire Island and like many pulps of the time is part story, part travel guide. Including details like "exclusive, plush island retreat, reached only by means of a ferry from Bayshore, Long Island" is invaluable for gay men in 1966 to find the place.

Published in 1966, these were some of the first books with explicitly gay themes to be published, but they really ran the risk of legal prosecution just for being gay. As such there is no explicit stuff, lots of double entendres and metaphors, and the gay life doesn't come off that well.

"In the gay life, it was all temporary. Physical. Nothing more. Undying devotion lasted from one orgasm to the next."

In this world, the young guys are studs and the old men, like the 22 year old villain of the book, are tired has-beens looking for cheap thrills.

"The three boys tossed a medicine beach ball to one another, then they play-wrestled. Gary's tight and tiny trunks half-slipped, exposing the sharp curve of his buttocks. He knew that would draw the queens.
It did.
Two of them came over, chatted idly and then they both invited the trio to a locker room at the end of the beach. Here, they really went way out.
"Put on these leather boots."
There were at least a half dozen pair of knee-length black leather boots. The boys selected those that fit them. They were naked and horny as all get out. The giggling older aunties went wild over the spectacle of good-looking young boys, bronzed and clean-cut, naked in their big leather boots.
"Line up," was the effeminate command of one of the older queens.
The three boys looked bashfully at one another. Gary, like these two, were still self-conscious about a public exposure of perversia. Many of the beach boys wouldn't let their buddies watch them. Some hardly cared. These were the exhibitionists."

I love the line "a public exposure of perversia." You can't write that stuff any more.

There's always a line in these books between going with men and going gay or being used like a woman, which for some reason is the ultimate negative.

"His biceps were still too boyishly undeveloped, but he showed promise of being handsome and sweet. Just the sort the gay queens took advantage of; just as Bull had tried to do—using him like a girl!"

It's like a 1960's gay soap opera, so much melodrama! Love!

"Sharp knives slashed at his garments and soon, Gary was naked. They were cruel—as cruel as only gay rebels know how to be when turning against one of their own kind."

For some reason this series hasn't taken off like other pulps have. I have seen a couple of the cover images on lighters but that's about it. I don't understand why, the stories are gold and there's original art by the late great Eric Stanton throughout, yet they're still going for around $30 each, less than the new John Grisham! I think I have all the books in the series but I've never seen a list, I've never seen them mentioned in the books on the pulp era, nothing. Let's get this rectified!

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Gay Psycho by Michael Scott, ebook

Gay Psycho by Michael Scott
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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I think this is the first time I've ever read a "one-hander" book all the way through.

I read about this book in The Golden Age of Gay Fiction and all I knew was that it was a pulp novel written in 1976 and set in Toronto. I've been trying to read gay fiction set in Toronto, there's like five books in total to choose from, so I really wanted to get this one.

The book is not available on the internet for sale anywhere at any price. I did find two copies in two libraries in the world, one in San Francisco and the other in LA, so on a recent trip to San Fran I copied this book, digitized it and just finished reading it.

To sum it up, not really worth the bother.

The book is written to be set in any city, there are no mentions to Toronto landmarks or the city, and only one passing reference to Yonge Street. I was hoping it would mention bars or baths of the time, but no. It did get into the Vice squad and the police harassment of homosexuals at the time but nothing specifically Canadian.

The story concerns a murderer named "John" (not his real name), also known as "icepick" who is killing gays and the police hunt for the killer. The mystery has a twist, but I had kind of figured it out by the end, and there was no real reason given for the killer's actions, which sucked.

The book seemed to be too focused on sex to let the plot or setting get in the way. I believe the author had limitations, like he couldn't go more than 6 or 7 pages without a sex scene, which I imagine stifles creativity. One thing the author needs more of is an angle. The first sex scene is good as a couple is breaking up and having sex one last time before they move on. There's resentment and anger and hot moves. It was good. Then we get a series of couples having sex who we know nothing about, which is less good, and in the middle when the sex starts to get good again in the movie theatre, it has a bad habit of being interrupted by a bloody murder, which is kind of a mood killer.

In typical fashion for pulps of the time, the cover has nothing to do with the story.  There's no whips or S & M in the book.

Decent enough I guess, and a unique footnote to Toronto's gay history.

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Happyland and Other Stories by Alexander Goodman

Happyland and Other Stories by Alexander Goodman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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INK
A Twilight-Zone style story. Four young men appear naked in a white room with no doors and no walls. How did they get there? And what will they do to pass the time?

TWO IMMORAL FABLES
1. The Knight
A young knight’s lover dies. Will anything rouse him from his melancholy? How about a nude virgin? Complete with (IM)Moral.

2. The Princess
A young man knows how to liven up a boring party. Slip on a dress and see what the Royal Guards are up to in the bushes. Complete with (IM)Moral.

HAPPYLAND
Reading this, it becomes clear the other stories are fillers. An excellent story of an amusement park named Happyland. The young guy who needs some cash, what is he willing to do to get it? The hustler with the quick temper. The park owner, being blackmailed for his gay sins, surely there’s a few minutes to spare and cruise the T-Room on the way to his meeting…
Mistaken identities, sixties vernacular and an extended session in a T-Room, an excellent work. The most erotic of Mr. Goodman’s works.


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Prison Confidential by Prisoner X

Prison Confidential by Prisoner X
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Yikes! I just finished Prison Confidential and what a doozy of an ending! I think I took one star away just for the ending as it was shocking.

The book was quite good, detailing prison life. Victor J. Banis, in the introduction says the book was smuggled out of an actual prison. He mentioned this in a recent interview as well, 40 years after the fact, so I am inclined to believe him but I do think several things were altered.

Banis admits names and locations and identifying details were altered for publication, but I think several other things were altered too. All the parts of the book are good, but put together as a whole it comes out uneven.

The book starts off while detailing daily prison life in the mid-1960's and introducing the characters who inhabit the jail. The characters are well fleshed out, although the narrator could allow a few flaws to be shown.

This moves into a long section covering prison violence and retaliation which doesn't really fit the more peaceful tone of the first half of the book. The violence escalates to riots and the explosive ending.

The book was published in 1969 and I feel most of the sex scenes were written to make them more explicit following the recent verdict of that time which allowed this description under law. A few of the scenes still play out as touching and explosions and fusions of togetherness, following the mid-sixties rules, but most get right into it, which was I imagine added afterward for titillation and as a jump on the explicit bandwagon. I think more physique magazines came out in late 1967 and 1968 than in the seven years previous, everyone jumping on the nudity bandwagon.

There's also the issue of how quickly and when someone straight would "go gay" in prison. The narrator seemed to turn pretty quickly, but I don't really understand why everyone isn't gay, so I wasn't sure how believable that aspect was.

I think the story is still relevant for today's audience and was well written, even if not always by "Prisoner X" himself.

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Ebook: The Crooked Man by Charles Beaumont

Download ebook (MOBI file for Amazon's Kindle) here or here.

Charles Beaumont’s “Black Country” was selected as the first short story ever to be featured in Playboy, but it was his “The Crooked Man” that drew the most attention. The story inverted the era’s rampant homophobia by chronicling the unjust plight of a straight man trying to escape detection and persecution in a society where being gay was the standard. Although the story was originally rejected by Esquire, Playboy agreed to publish it in 1955′s August issue despite an angry outcry from readers, to which Hugh Hefner later responded: “If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society then the reverse was wrong, too.”

I'm selling a book!

The Heart in Exile by Rodney Garland is available for purchase on the Amazon Kindle store, you can get it here. 

I've been working on publishing a few gay themed books for the Kindle lately and I had in the back of my mind that it would be nice if these books could find a wider audience.

There is so many questions around copyright, what is in the public domain and legal for me to distribute, that I never really bothered.

I found this great article, How do I find out whether the book is in the public domain? In the United States, copyright keeps getting extended due to Walt Disney, but in other countries the copyright expires 50 years after the death of the author.

Rodney Garland's real name is Adam De Hegedus and he died in 1958. As this work was not created in the United States and the author has been dead for more than 50 years, his work entered the Canadian public domain in 2009.  Amazon lets you publish works in the public domain providing you're the first to do so, which I was.  So I set the permissions to only be available for purchase in countries where the copyright is life +50 years and I am now selling the book on Amazon. 

The status is right now at "publishing" and it says the book will be available within the next 12 hours, ASIN # B0095IRZHY.

If this works out, I'll try another Garland book.  There's so few that fall into these narrow requirements....

I tried first submitting the book to Project Gutenberg Canada but their requirements for submission are beyond belief.  We're talking days of work to get the book to their standards.   I have no idea how they get any submissions.  We're talking putting the page numbers back in, noting how each page ends, whether with a period or the continuation of the paragraph, entering HTML code for Italics and bold, removing line indents, inserting line breaks after 70 characters, changing Em-dash's to --, etc.

Ebook: The Heart in Exile by Rodney Garland

I created an ebook version of this book, which you can download for Kindle here.


The Heart in Exile by Rodney Garland
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The novel is one of the first to openly discuss homosexuality in England, printed originally in 1953.

The book starts off well, along the standard detective line, with a femme fatale coming in to the shop and asking for help, her fiancé is dead and she wants answers.
Our hero detective is a gay (bisexual?) psychiatrist who takes the case due to his own involvement with the deceased and the book plays out as a series of investigations into the death.

There's several good things in the book, and it is worth reading. There's a lengthy tour of the British "underground" which is what they call the queer network. Gays would pick a bar, all go there until it was raided, and then pick another bar. There were no gay bars, only this network relay system. For a slice of post-war gay life in Britain, this book is it, and it portrays the scene well.

The mystery of the plot is okay, if a little half-baked.

The main problem is the extreme emphasis on social status. The class system was alive and well in London in the early 1950's and is mentioned on nearly very page. Generalizations pour off the pages, all working-class people stick together, you can spot working class people even if they try to hide it, the working-class have an inferiority complex, the upper-class have had too much of the Communist ideology so prevalent today, etc, etc.

There is the odd pro-gay passage, the narrator himself is gay, but overall this was the most negative book on homosexuality I've ever read. Inverts will never have real love, "normals" have it better, etc. Combine this with the constant class references, inverts who are lower-class can fit in better, etc, and it gets to be too much.

This class system presented doesn't exist in my life or way of thinking, so many of the pages and pages of generalizations about the different classes really washed over me. For example, the narrator goes to a party and everyone in the room is lower class and they're all staring at the three upper-class people in the corner with a mixture of jealousy and hatred. Class, class, class.

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Gay Pulp ebooks - Greenleaf Adonis Series

The website neatopotato has a bunch of cool adult pulp novels for download, I recommend you check them out.  They're easily convertible to your Kindle or Kobo and free.

Three of the books have no covers, and the cover is half the fun of these books.  I looked all over the net and couldn't find them, so here's two of the missing covers, complete with links.

Blow the Man Down by Jason Bonds

Glory Hole Cop by Barton Lewis

Blaze of Summer by Alexander Goodman

Blaze of Summer by Alexander Goodman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

DOWNLOAD EBOOK FOR KINDLE HERE.

Four short stories:

BLAZE OF SUMMER - A small-town teacher with a history of being blackmailed and having to run from town to town for being gay starts a relationship with a local farmhand with devastating consequences.

THREE IMMORAL FABLES - An interesting enough read, even if the stories go nowhere.

A CASUAL AFFAIR - Probably the best of the bunch, a theatre producer uses a boytoy to get investments for his latest play.

JOE'S OTHER HUSBAND - A couple argues in bed one night after one of them gets schooled in the world of S&M with a trick. High drama, as with most of the book. The partner complains that he doesn't care if the guys screws around, he just doesn't like it when he gets home tired. "I don't ask for much, why can't you just save a little for me?!?!?!"

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