Eric Stanton's The Return of Gwendoline

The Return of Gwendoline and Other Bizarre Art published by Vintage Fetish Classics and edited by Richard Pérez Seves includes two comic strip stories by Eric Stanton, The Return of Gwendoline (dating from 1965) and Deborah (dating from 1957), plus some of Stanton’s other drawings.

Eric Stanton (1926-1999) was an American fetish artist. His early work was heavily influenced by John Willie. His later work became seriously weird and disturbing, much much too much so for my tastes. But The Return of Gwendoline is still in the John Willie mould and in fact it’s a tale featuring WiIlie’s most famous creation, Sweet Gwendoline.

What made John Willie’s The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline so great is that it’s so good-natured. Poor Gwendoline gets herself into all kinds of scrapes (which invariably involve her being tied up) but nothing really bad ever happens to her. The chief villain Sir Dystic d’Arcy is more of a bungler than anything else, a figure out of melodrama or even farce, than a truly menacing figure. The emphasis is on cheerfully naughty fun.

Stanton captures at least some of that innocent feel in The Return of Gwendoline but it doesn’t quite have the same charm. And Stanton lacks Willie’s ability to come up with goofy outrageous storylines. There isn’t really much of a story here at all, whereas with Willie there was always an actual story.

There’s nothing wrong with Stanton’s drawings but again they don’t quite have the charm of Willie’s work. They’re more overtly erotic, but they lack just a little of the necessary spark.

Deborah on the other hand has an actual plot of sorts, about a young woman who is kidnapped because she is in possession of a key in the form of a pendant. It’s more engaging than The Return of Gwendoline. In fact it’s quite entertaining. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

This is fairly innocuous stuff. Unless you’re really sensitive to this kind of material you’re more likely to be amused than offended. It is supposed to be fun, and it is.

While I don’t think Stanton is as good an artist as John Willie I don’t want to sound like I’m judging him harshly. On the whole I like his artwork here.

This publisher has issued a lot of this sort of fairly mild S&M-tinged erotica (including other work by Eric Stanton) in very nicely presented editions.

Richard Pérez Seves has also written an excellent an exhaustively detailed biography of John Willie which I recommend very highly.

The work of people such as John Willie and Eric Stanton has had a considerable influence on pop culture in fields such as comics and especially underground comics. They’ve also has a certain influence on movies, notably Just Jaeckin’s delightful kinky adventure romp Gwendoline. And they’ve had a definite influence within the world of fashion.

The Return of Gwendoline is reasonably good fun. Recommended.

I’ve reviewed John Willie’s The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline which I recommend very highly even if you don’t share his erotic interests.

Gaston Danville’s The Perfume of Lust (Le Parfum de volupté)

Gaston Danville’s The Perfume of Lust (Le Parfum de volupté), published in 1905, is a kind of lost civilisation tale (involving Atlantis) but not at all typical of that genre. This is definitely not pulp fiction or straightforward adventure fiction. This is much more arty and more literary. Danville had an intense interest in the latest psychological theories of his day and that interest is reflected in this novel.

Gaston Danville was the pseudonym used by French author Armand Blocq (1870-1933). He’s hard to classify. He had links to both the Naturalist and Symbolist movements, two literary movements that were bitterly opposed. There’s also some very obvious influence of the literary Decadence of the fin de siècle.

The Perfume of Lust has a setup that could easily have been used as the basis for a rollicking adventure tale but Danville had other fish to fry.

This is a story related at third hand. This is a story related by a man named Robert Toby to his friend Vincent Tricard who then related it to the narrator of the novel. The narrator is of course then passing it on to the reader so maybe it’s a tale told at fourth hand. Neither the narrator not Vincent Tricard are convinced that the story is true but at the same time they don’t dismiss the possibility. We have to consider the possibility that it’s a tall tale, or a dream, or an hallucination or that it’s all quite true. This ambiguity is never resolved. Perhaps we never can tell dreams from reality anyway.

Robert Toby is a passenger on the steamship Dauphiné. The ship is hit by a gigantic wave. It survives but it is left rudderless and drifting. Repairs are eventually effected and then things start to get strange. The ship encounters an island where no island has ever been before. The Dauphiné finds itself stranded in a large bay surrounded by reefs, unable to regain the open sea.

It appears that some undersea earthquake or volcanic eruption has brought the seabed to the surface and created a new island. The strangest thing is the city. It appears to be an ancient city that sank beneath the waves sometime in the distant past. It might even be Atlantis.

Danville’s interest does not lie in the story itself but in the effects the island has on the passengers and crew of the Dauphiné. Psychological, emotional, sensory, sensual and erotic effects. Danville emphasises the influences of scents and textures and sounds which provide a kind of sensory intoxication.

The passengers certainly have their erotic instincts aroused. Danville mostly describes their erotic experiments obliquely. This was probably not for censorship reasons (writers such as Pierre Louÿs were going much much further at around the same time). It’s more likely that Danville was fascinated by the erotic but not entirely comfortable with such things. There’s a very strange orgy scene in which the participants get very excited but they don’t seem to actually do anything.

In some ways this works in the book’s favour. It’s not simply about sex, it’s about eroticism and sensuality in a much broader sense.

There’s also a sense in which the Dauphiné’s passengers have found a king of paradise but it’s a paradise that might not be good for them and which might be taken away from them. There’s a brooding sense of doom and melancholy. The undersea seismic activity has not ceased. This island and its mysterious exotic lost city suddenly emerged from the waves but there’s no way to know if it will remain in existence for a week or a year or a century. There’s no way to know if escape from the island is possible. These uncertainties add a certain spice to the island’s pleasures.

This is technically science fiction, of a sort, but it’s a novel that might well mystify most science fiction fans. It found it oddly mesmerising. Recommended, but maybe not to everyone.

This is one of the many French science fiction, fantasy and decadent works that have been translated (or to use his preferred terminology adapted) by Brian Stableford.

Judith Rossner’s Looking for Mr Goodbar

Judith Rossner’s novel Looking for Mr Goodbar was published in 1975 and was a huge bestseller. The 1977 film adaptation was a major hit. Both the novel and the film have since disappeared into obscurity. They deal with grown-up subject matter that is now more or less off-limits. Today you’d have to add lots of trigger warnings and even then the novel probably would not get published today and for several reasons the movie certainly could not be made today.

The novel was inspired by a real-life case of a young female schoolteacher who lived a double life, cruising the singles bars at night looking for pick-ups.

The novel reveals the ending right at the very beginning. The movie doesn’t quite do this but the novel was so notorious that viewers at the time probably knew how the movie was going to end. Nonetheless I don’t want to reveal what might be considered spoilers for the movie so I’m going to be very vague about certain plot details.

I often find that when I watch a movie and read the source novel shortly afterwards I find myself dissatisfied with the movie. This however is an interesting case - both the novel and the movie are seriously flawed but extremely interesting and they’re flawed and interesting in quite different ways.

In this review I’ll be devoting quite a bit of attention to the difference between the novel and the film because those differences are so intriguing.

It’s significant that the movie was made in 1977 and the key events of the story clearly take place in the mid-70s. It’s a very 70s movie. The key events of the novel all take place in the mid to late 60s. It’s very much a 60s novel.

Theresa Dunn is a college student having an affair with her professor. The affair lasts four years but it’s far from smooth sailing and then Theresa finds herself dumped. She graduates and becomes a teacher. She likes teaching small children. Her attitudes towards children are as contradictory as her attitudes towards most things.

Her childhood was difficult. She suffered serious illness which left her with a slight limp and a large scar on her back. Her Catholic upbringing caused her problems as well. The movie deals with her childhood very economically but very effectively. We learn everything we need to know in a few brief scenes. The book explores her childhood in painstaking and obsessively unnecessary detail.

Theresa’s relationships with men are turbulent and mostly disastrous, complicated by her sexual problems. She picks up men in bars. She becomes involved with men who are clearly trouble. She pushes away any man who falls in love with her. She becomes involved in the drug scene. She gets mixed up in the swinger lifestyle. She becomes, briefly, a hooker (mostly for the thrill of rebellion rather than the money). She becomes trapped in a potentially dangerous spiral of risk-taking behaviour.

In the movie she’s a woman looking for love in all the wrong places. In the novel she’s a woman looking for sex in all the wrong places. In the novel it is quite clear that Theresa likes rough dangerous sex. The rougher and more dangerous the better. The movie does offer hints of her sexual obsessions but they’re downplayed. Even in 1977 and even with an X rating there was no way a major studio was going to allow sadomasochism to be dealt with openly and honestly. Theresa’s sexual kinks are the core of her story and since the movie sidesteps that side of her sexuality Theresa’s motivations in the film end up being unclear and most of the story’s impact is lost. In that respect the movie compares very unfavourably with the novel.

The movie gives us Theresa’s story, with just a couple of unnecessary and undeveloped sub-plots. In the novel those sub-plots are still unnecessary and poorly developed but they’re a much more annoying distraction. In the novel my impression is that Rossner wanted to combine Theresa’s story with a sociological-political-cultural history of the 60s. Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with that but it makes the novel much more unfocussed and rambling than the movie. So in that respect the movie is superior. Incidentally Rossner hated the movie.

The novel has major problems but at least it tries to grapple with confronting and uncomfortable subjects. I think both novel and film are worth checking out but neither is totally satisfactory. I’m still recommending the novel.

I’ve also reviewed the movie.

The Woman and the Puppet by Pierre Louÿs

If the essence of the decadent world view is that love is a disease then Pierre Louÿs’ 1898 masterpiece The Woman and the Puppet (La femme et le pantin) is the quintessential decadent novel.

It is Carnival in Seville, and a man is captivated by the briefest glimpse of an extraordinary young woman, whose beauty is matched only by her air of mystery. He is determined to have her, and asks advice of a friend. Don Mateo is a man of the world, a legendary connoisseur of female beauty, but Don Mateo is horrified when he realises the identity of the woman. It is none other than Concha Pérez, and she is (as he informs his young friend) the worst woman in the world. His experiences with Concha have convinced him to avoid any further entanglements with women. He proceeds to recount the story of his own infatuation with her.

He had met her on a train, briefly, and then the acquaintanceship was renewed quite by accident. Concha, then very young, had been working in a cigar factory. She had seemed eager to accept the attentions of Don Mateo, and he is soon convinced that she is as much in love with him as he with her. He is only too happy to help Concha and her mother in their financial difficulties.

His happiness seems assured, but every time it seems that their relationship is finally about to be physically consummated Concha finds some obstacle to place in his way. When he becomes insistent, she and her mother leave hurriedly and secretly, taking a considerable amount of Don Mateo’s money with them.

But their paths are destined to cross again. She is now a flamenco dancer, and she is graciously prepared to forgive him for the wrong she’s done him. Soon he is as obsessed as ever, and Concha tells him she is willing to give herself to him. He buys her an expensive house, and finds himself locked out. He finds her dancing naked for foreign tourists, and in a rage he beats her. She is now convinced he loves her, and is therefore willing to sleep with him.

A cycle of jealousies and beatings and passionate sex escalates, as she taunts him with real and imagined infidelities. She flies into jealous rages as well. Don Mateo tires of her, only to have his passions inflamed again and again.

This is more than simply a tale of obsessive love. It’s reminiscent of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s classic Venus in Furs, with the relationship between Don Mateo and Concha having very strong elements of sado-masochistic sex, of shifting patterns of dominance and submission, of humiliation and cruelty. 

This is a seductive and memorable novel of twisted sexuality, with an impressive degree of psychological insight. 

And it’s beautifully written. One of the great 19th century novels. Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925) was a Belgian novelist and poet, possibly the greatest writer produced by the fin de siècle Literary Decadence. Very highly recommended.

There have been no less than five film versions including Josef von Sternberg’s exquisite The Devil is a Woman with Marlene Dietrich giving one of her greatest performances as Concha.

Guido Crepax's The Story of O

The Story of O, written by Pauline Réage and published in 1954, is one of the most famous and most notorious of all erotic novels. It’s one of the select group of erotic novels that can be taken seriously as literature. It was hugely controversial in its day with the fact that it was a novel about sadomasochism written by a woman adding to the scandal.

In 1975 it was turned into an excellent movie directed by Just Jaeckin. At exactly the same moment Jaeckin was shooting his movie Guido Crepax was adapting it as a graphic novel. These two adaptations coincide so closely in time that it’s unlikely that either influenced the other.

The Story of O concerns a young woman known only as O who is taken to The Château at Roissy by her lover René. O is to be trained in the art of submission. Not just submission to whippings - she is also taught to make herself available to any man who desires her.

René’s half-brother Sir Stephen adds a complication. Does O belong to René’s or Sir Stephen? Which of these two men does she love? Which of them loves her?

O is not in any sense a prisoner or a slave. She is free. She is not sure if she wants freedom and is not quite sure what the word means. This is one of the major themes of the story. Do any of us want freedom? Is love more important than freedom? What if O makes a free choice not o be free?

This is a story about sex but it is also most definitely a story about love.

Other complications arise when Anne-Marie enters the picture.

Crepax was one of the boldest and most innovative comic book writer-illustrators of his generation. His style both conformed to and rejected the technical conventions of comics. He was equally bold both stylistically and thematically. He was also known for comics that dealt with dream states and fantasies. The Story of O is not a dream story but Crepax’s approach works well here. It is in some ways a story that takes place in a hidden world unknown to most people, the kinky sexual underworld.

Personally I think Jaeckin’s movie is better. This is partly because Jaeckin, having had enormous mainstream success with Emmanuelle, was not making a sleazy grindhouse movie. He was aiming once again at the mainstream market (and The Story of O was a major commercial hit). This meant that he had to focus mostly on creating an atmosphere of eroticism whilst making the sex scenes tasteful and not too explicit. His movie was very much softcore erotica. I think this works I the movie’s favour.

Crepax by contrast was not constrained in any way by censorship so his graphic novel is much more explicit and often crosses the line into hardcore.

The movie also has the advantage of having rather subtle performances by Corinne Cléry as O and Udo Kier as René (and yes I’m aware that I’ve just used the words Udo Kier and subtle in the same sentence but I stand by that - his performance is nicely underplayed). Those performances bring these two key characters to life in a way that Crepax doesn’t quite manage.

The graphic novel is however certainly stylish.

Crepax did a series of adaptations of erotic novels such as Emmanuelle. He also adapted other novels. His version of Henry James’ famous ghost story The Turn of the Screw is superb.

Crepax’s The Story of O retains most of the spirit of the novel which is a provocative look at desire, freedom and the all-consuming desire to give oneself entirely in love. Crepax provides us with a fine example of intelligent erotica done in a graphic novel format.

I’ve reviewed Just Jaeckin’s movie The Story of O (1975) elsewhere.

I’ve also reviewed two collections of Guido Crepax’s comics, Evil Spells (which I highly recommend) and Private Life.

Arthur Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle (Dream Story)

Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 short novel (more a novella really) Traumnovelle, also known as Dream Story or Rhapsody, was the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut.

Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) was a successful although controversial Viennese writer. He wrote many plays and short stories as well as two novels. He can be considered to be both a Modernist and a Decadent. He qualified as a doctor and practised medicine before turning to writing full-time.

Traumnovelle was published in 1926 and although no time period is specified it clearly takes place before the First World War, in the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The hero fought several duels during his student days and it is clear that duelling is still reasonably common. There is very much an atmosphere of fin de siècle decadence.

Fridolin is a 35-year-old Viennese doctor, happily married to Albertine. They have a six-year-old daughter. After a masked ball Fridolin and Albertine discuss sexual temptations that they have experienced. Albertine tells her husband of a young Dane with whom she was tempted to have an affair. This disturbs Fridolin more than he expected.

Fridolin has a slightly unsettling encounter with the daughter of a patient who has just died. The woman, Marianne, tells Fridolin that she is love with him. Fridolin beats a hasty retreat.

Fridolin then has an encounter with a young prostitute but the fear of syphilis prevents him from doing anything.

He doesn’t want to return home. He walks the streets until dark. He runs into Nachtigall, an old acquaintance from his medical school days. Nachtigall is now a slightly disreputable piano-player. Nachtigall tells Fridolin of an odd piano-playing job he has to go to that evening. It involves playing the piano at what might be private house parties, or secret meeting, or orgies. He really doesn’t know what goes on at these parties since he is blindfolded, and he has no idea where the parties take place although he’s fairly sure the locations are a number of country houses. All he knows is that he is blindfolded and taken somewhere in a coach. Fridolin is fascinated and wants to go as well. A password is required, which Nachtigall may be able to provide.

But first Fridolin must get hold of a costume and a mask - everyone at these meetings wears masks. While obtaining the mask he has another odd experience, involving two men dressed as judges and a young girl.

Fridolin manages to attend one of the secret meetings. The men dress as monks, the women as nuns. But the women soon shed their nuns’ habits. Fridolin has no idea if he is witnessing a commonplace orgy or a religious ritual or a meeting of a bizarre esoteric or even political cult. What happens to Fridolin at this strange house party, and what happens to one of the women who tries to warn him off, leaves him bewildered.

His attempts to contact Nachtigall again, and to learn the fate of the woman at the house party orgy who tried to save him, leave him even more bewildered.

If you’ve seen Kubrick’s movie it will be obvious from what I’ve said so far that it’s a remarkably faithful adaptation of the novel. Most of the incidents of the movie are taken directly from the novel. There’s also the same sense of a blurring of the line between reality and fantasy. There is no way to be sure which events really happen and which are dreams or fantasies or illusions. Everything might be real. Everything might be a dream. Or the events might be a mixture of dream and reality.

There’s the same sense of decadence and forbidden pleasures and the same sense that what is happening might be sinister, or it might be just a rather wild party.

Even the conspiracy theory angle which fascinates so many viewers of the movie is there, although it is given much greater prominence in the movie. Secret societies, whether political or religious or occult, were not exactly unknown in period leading up to the First World War. No-one was really certain how many such societies actually existed, but plenty of people believed in their existence. And some almost certainly did exist. There were real conspiracies in that age.

There are some differences between novel and film. In the novel Albertine has a dream which becomes pivotal. Fridolin seems to regard her dream as being more real than his real-life adventure, and given that we have our doubts about the reality of his adventure perhaps it is more real. As in the movie there is also the possibility that Fridolin’s adventure is real, but that he has misinterpreted its meaning. In fact he has no clear idea at all of the significance of the events at that mysterious country house.

As in the movie the real question is whether Fridolin’s marriage can survive such a series of revelations and adventures, real or imaginary. Has Fridolin betrayed Albertine? Has she betrayed him?

There are obvious Freudian influences (and Freud and Schnitzler admired each other’s work). Whether Fridolin’s adventures are real or just dreams doesn’t matter, since dreams are more significant than conscious thoughts. Schnitzler was linked to the literary avant-garde and had a great interest in literary explorations of both the conscious and unconscious mind. He was one of the pioneers of stream-of-consciousness fiction.

Traumnovelle is a fascinating novella. If you’re a fan of Eyes Wide Shut or of decadent fiction it’s a must-read. Highly recommended. The English translation has been published by Penguin.

Guido Crepax's Private Life

Private Life is the fourth volume in the superb Complete Crepax series from Fantagraphics. The series aims to collect all of Guido Crepax’s comics. The comics in this volume were written between the mid-60s and the mid-80s.

Guido Crepax was the name used by Milan-Born Guido Crepas (1933-2003). Exciting things were happening in the world of European comics by the 1960s, beginning with the first appearance of Jean-Claude Forest’s Barbarella in the French V Magazine in 1962. European comics of the 60s bore no resemblance to American comics. European comics were aimed at grown-ups. They were sexy and sophisticated, they were witty and wildly imaginative and they were stylistically adventurous.

Crepax would push all of these elements very far indeed. He would attract immediate attention when his first comic adventure, The Lesmo Curve, appeared in Linus magazine in 1965. This was also the first appearance of his most famous creation, the fashion photographer Valentina. Valentina would appear in countless Crepax comics. Her adventures often involved elements of science fiction and fantasy, plentiful hallucinogenic dream sequences, espionage, crime and general weirdness. Plus a great deal of eroticism.

Private Life focuses, as the title suggests, on comics that tell us about Valentina’s emotional life and her relationship with her lover, art critic Phil Rembrandt. As a result there’s not quite as much of the outrageousness, bizarre inventiveness and stylistic flamboyance that you’ll find in Valentina’s other adventures. Crepax however still manages to give us some trippy dream sequences and these comics are by no means totally lacking in delirious weirdness.

Unlike almost every other comic book heroine Valentina ages over the course of her many adventures. At the beginning she is a carefree 22-year-old. She will find a stable emotional relationship with Phil Rembrandt and they will have a child. By the time you get to her final adventures she’s rapidly closing in on middle age.

Another unusual feature is that, in between their extraordinary surreal adventures, she and Phil have a normal family life. The baby has to have his bath. The dishes have to be washed. The laundry has to be done. And while Valentina and Phil both have glamorous jobs they do have to work for a living. This contrast between perfectly normal domesticity and bizarre adventures gives these comics a distinctive flavour.

Crepax’s original intention was to write a comic about an art critic named Phil Rembrandt who has a double life. He is also a superhero named Neutron. He has only one superpower but it’s pretty impressive. He can temporarily paralyse people with his eyes. Crepax soon realised that he wasn’t all that interested in doing a conventional superhero comic and that aspect started to fade into the background. At the same time Crepax’s focus shifted more towards Phil’s fashion photographer girlfriend Valentina.

Crepax’s comics became gradually more surreal and experimental. Reality and dream become hopelessly intertwined. It is never possible to be sure how many of Valentina’s adventures are real, and it could be argued that Valentina’s real life takes place in her dreams.

The Comics

The Lesmo Curve introduces us to Valentina. And it introduces Valentina to Phil Rembrandt, who will become her husband and the great love of her life. Phil is also the superhero Neutron. Valentina and Phil will go on to share all kinds of bizarre adventures.

In The Lesmo Curve beautiful girls are marrying rich men, and the rich men keep meeting with fatal accidents. The latest intended victim is a racing car driver. At this stage Crepax was still finding his feet and this story isn’t as outrageous or bizarre as many of the subsequent stories. But it’s an entertaining story.

Ciao, Valentina involves a photograph taken by Valentina. People are prepared to go to drastic lengths to get their hands on it even though it seems like a remarkably innocent photo. There has to be some key in that photograph, and of course there is.

This is obviously another early story and it still has an at least vaguely conventional thriller plot. The plot is an intriguing anticipation of Antonioni’s Blow-Up. It's fun.

That all changes and things take a turn for the weird with the next stories in this collection. Funny Valentine, Filippo and Valentina, Fearless Paper Doll Valentina and Valentina the Fearless are odd little snippets and also offer glimpses of Valentina’s childhood.

Valentina’s Baby is a series of strange dreams that Valentina has while in labour with her son Mattia. And Valentina’s dreams are very strange indeed.

Manuscript Found in a Stroller is a whimsical little throwaway story about a very strange discovery our heroine makes when she checks her washing machine.

In Fallen Angels Valentina seems to be contemplating having an affair, with a man named Arno. There’s definitely something between these two but Valentina is hanging back. There’s also some cool falling statuary.

In The Empress’s New Clothes Valentina finds herself all alone on a blank page, patiently waiting for Crepax to turn up to create a story for her. Not wildly original (Chuck Jones had been playing with such ideas in Daffy Duck cartoons for years) but it’s a whimsical little throwaway story. It’s also a bit disturbing since, no matter how bizarre and unlikely her adventures, we’ve never before been confronted so starkly with the idea that Valentina is just a comic-book character. It’s Crepax being playful, but it is disturbing.

Le Zattere, Venice is just Crepax reminiscing about his own childhood and it’s a bit dull.

Peitro Giacomo Rogeri is much more interesting. A girl leaves a ’cello in Valentina’s studio and then disappears. She claims the instrument is 250 years old. In fact it was owned at one time by Paganini. Several groups and individuals want to get their hands on that ’cello. There are apparently secret documents concealed in the instrument.

With Anthropology we move into authentically weird Crepax territory. How much of the story is a dream is uncertain. Valentina encounters the Subterraneans, strange human-like but non-human creatures which figure in many of Valentina’s adventures. And Louise Brooks makes an appearance, although maybe it’s not Louise Brooks or maybe it’s Louise Brooks getting mixed up with other women in Valentina’s dream.

Private Life is a slightly older Valentina reminiscing about her past adventures (and wondering how many of them were real). It’s Crepax saying farewell to Valentina, and perhaps Valentina saying farewell to herself. Although the ending didn’t necessarily entirely close off the possibility of further Valentina adventures it’s obvious that Crepax felt that he’d gone as far with the character as he could.

Final Thoughts

Although this volume includes the earliest Valentina comics my personal view is that if you have never encountered Valentina before you’re better off starting with the third of the Fantagraphics Complete Crepax volumes, Evil Spells. I think it’s a better introduction to Valentina’s world and a better illustration of the reasons she became such an important pop culture icon. And on the whole Evil Spells is a stronger collection.

Once you become obsessed with Valentina then you’ll certainly want to pick up Private Life to find out more about what makes her tick. So Private Life is highly recommended, but grab Evil Spells first.

John Willie’s The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline

The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline is a hardcover volume published in 1974 which collects most of John Willie’s comics and many of his drawings.

John Alexander Scott Coutts (1902-1962), who used the pseudonym John Willie, is perhaps the most famous figure in the history of fetish art and literature of the 20th century. You might be wondering what on earth I’m doing reviewing his work here but if you read on you’ll see that he is not an entirely inappropriate subject for this blog.

John Willie became something of a cult figure in the 70s and he has had a considerable influence on pop culture. Just Jaeckin’s wonderful and delightful 1984 movie Gwendoline was inspired by Willie’s comics. Willie was himself inspired by early movie serials such as The Perils of Pauline.

John Willie was a writer, artist and photographer and was the editor and publisher of Bizarre magazine but he is probably best known for his comic strips featuring his heroine Sweet Gwendoline.

Poor Gwendoline finds herself the victim of sinister plots by dissolute aristocrat Sir Dystic d’Arcy and d’Arcy’s henchwoman the Countess. Gwendoline does however have an ally - a beautiful glamorous lady secret agent code-named U-89.

What will strike the reader immediately about the Gwendoline comics is just how good-natured they are. Gwendoline is continually falling into the hands of the villains and invariably finds herself being tied up, in varied and elaborate ways. But she never actually gets hurt. Her adventures are lighthearted, goofy, outrageously melodramatic and amusing. Sir Dystic D’Arcy is a stock melodrama villain, but really he’s more of a spoof of a stock melodrama villain.

The Countess is unscrupulous and scheming but again she’s more of a melodrama villainess than a genuinely threatening figure.

Gwendoline is sweet and naïve but while there was the danger that such a heroine would end up being a bit saccharine she is in fact likeable and has her occasional feisty moments. Agent U-89 is basically one of the good guys, although sometimes she’s a tad morally ambiguous.

Sir Dystic d’Arcy is such a bungling villain that we never feel that Gwendoline is in any serious danger.

The mood always remains playful and lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek.

Her first comic, simply titled The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline, is a racetrack mystery melodrama with Sir Dystic D’Arcy plotting to get his hands on Gwendoline’s home.

The second comic, The Wasp Women, concerns (among other things) a sinister plot to steal blackberries.

In the third adventure The Escape Artiste Gwendoline decides that since she’s always getting tied up she should learn how to escape. She has a bet with Agent U-89. If U-89 ties her up and she escapes U-89 will have to cook dinner. If Gwendoline fails to escape after a couple of hours then she will have to prepare dinner. U-89 ties Gwendoline up repeatedly and poor Gwendoline proves to be something of a failure as escape artiste. So it’s always Gwendoline who ends up cooking dinner. It’s all silly playful stuff.

I suspect that the fourth comic, Gwendoline and the Missing Princess, was written some years later. Willie’s style has changed slightly - it’s become more lush. This adventure is also much more explicitly erotic, in fact it’s quite risqué for its time. In this comic there is, for the first time, nudity. There’s still an amusing and complicated adventure plot.

The book also includes some of Willie’s water colours and these make it obvious just how much the style of the 1984 Gwendoline movie was directly drawn from John Willie.

This book provides a fascinating glimpse of one of the odder corners of 20th century pop culture. It might not appeal to all tastes but the erotic content really is quite tame (very tame indeed by the standards of the 1970s when the first edition of the book was published). It has a certain offbeat cheerfully naughty but at the same time rather innocent charm. Recommended.

Norman Lindsay’s Age of Consent (1938 novel)

Norman Lindsay (1879-1969) was the one truly great painter that Australia produced (and he was arguably the finest painter of erotic art of the 20th century). While his fame rests mainly on his painting he was also a very successful writer. His novel Age of Consent was published in 1938.

Age of Consent was filmed in 1969. It was an Anglo-Australian co-production directed by Michael Powell and it’s a movie that deserves a lot more recognition.

Both novel and movie deal with a meeting between a painter and a young woman. She becomes his model, and his muse. In the novel Bradly Mudgett is forty years old and he’s broke. He’s always broke. He ekes out a precarious existence as a painter. In the movie he becomes Bradley Morahan, a much older man and an internationally acclaimed artist who decides to turn his back on the New York art world and return to his home country, Australia.

In the book Bradly rents a shack at a place called Margoola Beach. It’s primitive but it’s cheap and it’s isolated. Bradly does not like the company of people. He has his dog, Edmund. Edmund is more than enough company. The shack is surrounded on one side by the ocean and on the other by a lagoon. It’s not quite an island, but almost.

Bradly is slowly coming to realise that he’s reached a crisis in his career. He has never achieved anything approaching real success. He is afraid to take risks. He knows how to produce paintings that will sell for a few pounds. He has found a safe formula which is at least enough to keep starvation at bay.

Then he sees the girl. At first he’s horrified that there are other people in the vicinity of his hideaway. Then something about the girl strikes him. In the past he’s done nothing but landscapes. He hasn’t done figure work since he was a student. But now he thinks he wants to paint the girl. She seems to be the missing ingredient that will bring his paintings to life. She agrees to pose for him.

The girl is Cora. She’s almost feral. She lives with her foul-tempered gin-sodden grandmother. Cora is not exactly socialised. Like Bradly she doesn’t know how to deal with people. She is however a perfect model.

And he makes an amazing discovery. He is now painting pictures that are better than anything he’s ever done before. Much better. He is finally finding himself as a painter. And he’s starting to consider taking a few risks. He’s done a painting of Cora and he decides he’ll ask twenty pounds for this one. He’s not just doing good work. He’s doing work that he suspects will be saleable, at decent prices.

Then the first disaster strikes. Young Hodson shows up. Bradly had met him, briefly, in Jillabong. Now Hodson expects to be greeted like an old friend and he expects Bradly to put him up. Which is a problem. Bradly has just enough money to last him for a few months, precious months to spend painting. Now he has to feed Hodson as well. He can’t turn Hodson out. The police are after him. Bradly doesn’t have many principles but he dislikes the police and would never turn a man over to them. Not even an annoying pest like Hodson.

A bigger problem is Cora’s grandmother. She’s convinced that Cora is whoring herself out to Bradly. Cora is under-age. That gives the grandmother a lever with which to blackmail Bradly. In fact Bradly hasn’t laid a finger on the girl. She just poses for him. But Bradly is terrified of the grandmother’s threats.

This is of course (like the movie) a coming-of-age story. Cora is just becoming aware of herself as a woman. It’s all very confusing for her.

It’s also, in a way, a coming-of-age story for Bradly Mudgett. At the age of forty he knows nothing of women. His experiences with women have been confined to a few encounters with prostitutes. But Cora is getting under his skin. He thinks it’s just because she’s such a good model but unwittingly he’s getting used to having her around and he’s growing fond of her.

It’s also a story of an artist belatedly coming of age as an artist, slowly learning that maybe he is a real artist after all.

This is a very lighthearted semi-comic novel. It’s charming and throughly enjoyable and it’s highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed Michel Powell's very good movie adaptation here - Age of Consent (1969).

Milo Manara's Click! And Other Stories

Click! And Other Stories is a collection of erotic comics by Milo Manara.

Milo Manara (born Maurilio Manara in 1945) is perhaps the most famous living European comics artist and writer.

I’ve never had any interest in comics but recently I have developed an obsession with European comics, an obsession kicked off by Jean-Claude Forest’s Barbarella and solidified by my discovery of Guido Crepax. It seemed logical enough to move on to Milo Manara. I have to say that I think that compared to Forest and Crepax Manara is a lesser talent.

The comics in this volume are all overtly erotic. I have no problems with eroticism in comics, if done well. The eroticism in Barbarella is playful and witty. The eroticism in Crepax’s comics is much more strange and complex and sometimes disturbing but it’s done very stylishly, Crepax is always classy, even when he gets dark and disturbing. In this volume of Manara’s work he is too often merely crudely sexual. It feels a bit grubby. And it’s too obvious.

Il Gioco (Click or Le Déclic) dates from 1985 and is one of Manara’s best-known erotic comics and was followed by several sequels. Or perhaps it’s more a series of four linked stories.

Click is a one-idea story, although it’s an amusing idea. A sex therapist has developed a micro-machine that can be implanted in the brain. It’s controlled by a small transmitter about the size of a cigarette pack. The device is claimed to be a surefire cure for impotence. Another unscrupulous therapist, Dr Fez, steals the device and decides to find out if it will work on women as well. He wants to try it out on Mrs Claudia Christiani, a woman notorious for her lack of interest in sex.

The device works spectacularly well on Claudia, leading her into all manner of embarrassing situations. That’s pretty much it for the plot. Then there’s lots of explicit sex.

Click! 2 rehashes the plot of the first comic. The only difference is that Manara introduces some environmentalist themes which seem to be tacked on for no particular reason. There’s lots of explicit sex.

Claudia is a crusading TV journalist and she’s a particularly annoying member of a particularly annoying breed.

She becomes even more annoying in Click! 3. There’s a plot strand about forcing a girl (by very unpleasant means) to use psychic power to find diamonds. There’s a crazy guru in the jungle. And lots of explicit sex.

Click! 4 is even more stridently political with Claudia lawyer husband defending an evil chemical corporation. As usual Dr Fez shows up with his transmitter to send Claudia into more sexual frenzies.

The other story in this volume is Rendezvous in B-flat. One again there’s a political subtext, and once again it doesn’t amount to much more than telling us that politics is crooked and corrupt which I think most of us kinda already knew. It’s the story of a would-be politician who gets into debt with a loan shark. His wife has to repay the debt, in a very unpleasant way. It’s a pretty nasty story.

I don’t find the eroticism in these stories to be genuinely erotic at all. To be interesting eroticism has to be more than a succession of explicit sex acts. Manara just goes straight to crude sex. And it’s pretty crude and pretty nasty. It’s also relentless and it gets a bit tedious.

I’m not usually sensitive to such things (I’m not the sort of person who reads books looking for things to be offended by) but the level of sexual violence directed at women is a bit hair-raising.

I found these comics to be lacking in style and wit and I didn’t really enjoy them at all. Your mileage may vary of course.

I’ve enjoyed some of Manara’s later comics quite a bit so I’m not writing him off by any means.

Jean-Claude Forest and Guido Crepax are more to my taste. I highly recommend Forest's Barbarella and Crepax's Evil Spells.

John Cleve's Master of Misfit (Spaceways #5)

Between 1982 and 1985 Playboy Press published the nineteen books in the Spaceways series of science fiction sleaze paperbacks. Master of Misfit was the fifth book in the series. It was published in 1982.

These books were credited to John Cleve, a pseudonym used by American science fiction writer Andrew J. Offutt (1934-2013). He wrote under a dozen or so different pseudonyms. To confuse things somewhat the name John Cleve was used by other writers. It’s possible that some of the Spaceways books may have been collaborations.

Like most sleaze fiction these books have either been ignored or regarded with a sneer. And science fiction fans are often quite disapproving of the idea of injecting sex into their favourite genre. But like so much American sleaze fiction of the period from the 50s to the 80s they were written by a guy who wrote “legitimate” science fiction as well as sleaze. And the other book in this series that I’ve read, Purrfect Plunder, was a rather pleasant surprise.

Master of Misfit opens with a bit of a cyberpunk vibe. Cyberpunk was just starting to make waves in the science fiction genre in 1982. The movie Blade Runner came out that year, William Gibson had had his first cyberpunk story published, Bruce Sterling’s first stories set in his Shaper/Mechanist universe had appeared. The cyberpunk ethos was already in the air.

Dorjan is a thief. Dorjan is one of his names. He has many others. He’s a very successful thief and pirate. He’s not quite human. He spent some time as the slave/pet/personal stud of the very wealthy and very powerful Murrah an Rahmyne. It amused her to have certain modifications made to her slave’s body. Some were intended to enhance his performance as her personal stud but others were intended simply to amuse her. Dorjan has retractable razor-sharp claws, he has 360 degree vision and he has lightweight but extremely powerful wings which can be neatly and unobtrusively folded when not in use. Dorjan is the captain of the pirate spacecraft Misfit and other members of his crew have also been enhanced by genetic and biomechanical means.

All of which, when combined with a universe in which high-tech crime and space piracy both thrive, certainly qualify this novel as proto-cyberpunk if not an early example of full-fledged cyberpunk.

Dorjan is out to steal the Heart of the Universe. This is a fabulously valuable necklace of gold inlaid with firegems, firegems being (literally) living gems. Stealing this jewel is impossible, or would be impossible for an ordinary Galactic (as the descendants of the humans from Earth who colonised this corner of the galaxy are known). But Dorjan is much more than human.

It’s not just a matter of stealing the necklace. Dorjan and his crew have to make a safe getaway from the planet Panish.

We’re also introduced very early on to Coppertop. She has had many names also, and an adventurous life. She has been a slave and a whore but now she’s the very rich widow of a very rich man. She is now known as Lizina Harish. She loved her husband very much and she mourned his passing sincerely but now two months have elapsed and for those two months Lizina has not had a man. She’s practically crawling the walls as a result. Tonight she is most definitely going to have a man. She has one picked out. He seems to be rich and very good-looking. She’s more than willing to accept his invitation to spend the night at his penthouse. Instead of getting a night of passion she gets kidnapped by slavers, and subjected to exquisite tortures (after she’s been raped).

The two plot strands intersect when Dorjan realises that the gorgeous woman he couldn’t help noticing is a slave. He knows she’s a slave because his First Mate has an unusual talent. He has a kind of limited psychic ability. He just knows when someone is a slave, even when they don’t appear to be.

Dorjan and his crew are thieves and pirates but they draw the line at slavery. Most of them, including Dorjan, have been slaves themselves. They have an intense dislike of slavers, and they are always willing to take a break from thieving to rescue a slave.

Dorjan and his crew have another agenda. At one point in their wanderings through the galaxy they discovered an asteroid that had been turned into a spacious habitat capable of housing several thousand people. Since the asteroid had been abandoned they claimed it. They intend to establish their own tiny independent community there, a haven for escaped slaves.

There are going to be complications. Coppertop belongs to Ganessa. Ganessa operates the finest mobile whorehouse in the galaxy. Coppertop was to be a star attraction. Ganessa is not a woman who takes kindly to having her possessions stolen from her, and she paid good money for Coppertop.

There are plenty of adventures to come, plenty of action, more thieving and lots of sex. Including sex with aliens. Dorjan has discovered a new species of intelligent alien. She’s incredibly cute, incredibly female and there’s nothing in the universe she likes more than having sex. And she’s totally sexually compatible with humans. There’s also some much weirder alien sex but there’s lots of god old-fashioned regular sex as well.

The secret of combining sleaze fiction with other genres such as science fiction is to integrate the sex fully into the plot. In this case the author does that very successfully, since the plot mostly revolves around prostitution and sex slavery, but with a definite science fictional flavour.

The sex is reasonably graphic.

Master of Misfit is fast-paced, action-packed and very sleazy. The cyberpunk feel is very marked (and handled in a fairly effective way). I suppose you could call this book sleazepunk. Whatever you decide to call it it’s entertaining and it’s highly recommended.

I also recommend the next book in the series, Purrfect Plunder (which features a particularly interesting alien species).

The Lady from L.U.S.T. #2 Lay Me Odds

Lay Me Odds is the second of Gardner Francis Fox’s Lady from L.U.S.T. sexy spy thrillers, written under the pseudonym Rod Gray. It was published in 1968.

Eve Drum, ace secret agent for L.U.S.T. (League of Underground Spies and Terrorists), has a problem. She’s on a mission in England and she was supposed to pick up a microfilm but she finds her contact man dead. There’s a possibility that he hadn’t picked up the microfilm before he was killed. It might still be in the hands of his own contact man, a man known as the Satyr. Or the Satyr might know the name of the person currently in possession of that microfilm. Finding the Satyr should be easy. He hangs around the strip clubs in Soho.

The best way to find him would obviously be for Eve to get a job as a stripper. That’s no problem. Eve has no inhibitions whatsoever about taking all her clothes off in front of an audience. Her strip act (as a bashful bride) proves to be a hit and she does find the Satyr. He’s prepared to give her the name she needs as long as she agrees to have sex with him. Eve also has no inhibitions whatsoever about having sex in the line of duty. Eve enjoys sex a great deal. And when she sees the Satyr naked she figures that this will be a very pleasant duty indeed.

She gets the name and the trail takes her to Hamburg. Naturally it takes her to Hamburg’s red light district. The trail will later take her to Innsbruck. This is 1960s spy fiction so some exotic locations are a must and Fox makes good use of them.

Eve has no doubt that the microfilm has fallen into the hands of L.U.S.T.’s deadly enemies, H.A.T.E. (Humanitarian Alliance for Total Espionage). It turns out to be more complicated than that. There’s an internal power struggle within H.A.T.E. and Eve is caught between two deadly factions.

Along the way she acquires a slave. He’s a handsome young German but he just wants to be Eve’s devoted slave. In fact she will discover that he has other more exotic sexual fetishes.

The plot includes enough twists and double-crosses to keep things interesting.

This is refreshingly non-ideological spy fiction. H.A.T.E. is like SPECTRE, it’s just a vast criminal organisation that sees espionage and terrorism as purely business propositions. Fox doesn’t indulge in any political messaging. I’ve now read four of his books and I haven’t got a clue what his political beliefs were. I like that. He just wants to entertain us.

The secret to making a sexy spy thriller work is to strike the right balance between the sleaze and the secret agent action. And Fox, in both his Lady from L.U.S.T. and Cherry Delight thrillers, got that balance right. There’s an enormous amount of sleaze in this book but there’s also non-stop action and mayhem. With an impressively high body count. At one point Eve kills four men within the space of about fifteen seconds. The action scenes are executed with energy and a certain amount of style.

Even is well equipped for her mission. She never goes on an assignment without her explosive panties. Yes, her panties are a deadly weapon.

Eve is highly trained in the normal secret agent skills such as unarmed combat and firearms but she’s equally highly trained in the art of love-making. There’s no sexual activity between a man and a woman that Eve hasn’t tried and in which she isn’t highly proficient. Her controller, David, approves of this. He knows that a lady spy has to have advanced sexual skills. He’s even prepared to assist her in her training in this area.

In 1968 the Sexual Revolution was in full swing and that’s reflected in the book. Eve takes a normal healthy interest in sex. She likes sex and she feels no shame or guilt about it and it’s assumed that the reader will feel the same way.

The sex is moderately graphic with some detailed descriptions of the more interesting parts of both the male and female anatomy (Eve is an expert in both subjects) and the fun you can have when those parts of the respective anatomies come together so to speak. The sex gets decidedly kinky at times. Eve’s slave is a good boy but he craves discipline and Eve is happy to oblige. She’s not really into that sort of thing but it’s the only way to get him excited enough to satisfy her so she’s willing to put some effort into it.

Eve also has no interest in sex with girls but in the line of duty she’s willing to give it a go. Lady spies have to be flexible.

Lay Me Odds works extremely well as sleaze fiction and it works pretty well as a fast-paced action-packed spy thriller as well. Despite the high body count it’s a fun lighthearted romp. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the first of the Lady from L.U.S.T. books, Lust, Be a Lady Tonight, and the first of Fox’s fairy similar Cherry Delight thrillers, The Italian Connection. Both are also great fun.

Robert Silverberg's Gang Girl

In 1958 there was a major convulsion in the science fiction world and most of the magazines on which writers relied to publish their stories ceased publication. This was a particular problem for younger writers. Writers like Robert Silverberg, who although only in his early twenties was already making a name for himself. Fortunately his pal Harlan Ellison came to the rescue, offering him a contract to write cheap paperback erotic novels for Nightstand Books. He’d have to write a couple of such novels a month which sounds daunting but Silverberg was sure he’d have no problems. And he was correct - in the next five years he churned out 150 sleaze paperbacks under the name Don Elliott.

Gang Girl was one of the earliest, appearing in 1959. It’s a juvenile delinquent potboiler and it’s violent and it’s sleazy. Of course by later standards it is in some ways incredibly tame. There’s a lot sex and it’s graphic enough to ensure the reader knows exactly what is going on, but the language is toned down enough to avoid any inconveniences, like being prosecuted for obscenity. In that respect it’s tame but in other ways it’s still quite startling in its depiction of the mindless brutality, the crazed obsession with sex and the sheer stupidity, boredom, viciousness and futility of New York juvenile gangs in the late ’50s. It’s a lot more open about the sex and violence than any mainstream novels or movies dealing with the subject.

Lora Menotti is sixteen and she’s the deb of the leader of the Scarlet Sinners but now her parents have moved to a new housing estate (all tower blocks) in an effort to get their daughter away from gang life. It doesn’t work. Lora immediately joins the gang in her new neighbourhood, the Cougars. But Lora has no intention of just joining the gang. She intends to run it. That means she’ll have to persuade the gang President, Whitey, to dump his current deb and make her his deb. As Whitey’s deb she’ll be number one girl in the gang, and he has no doubts that she’ll be the one calling the shots.

With her 39-inch bust and her body like a sex goddess she has no trouble getting men to do what she wants them to do. Getting Whitey to dump his current deb, Donna, isn’t going to be a challenge. There is however a minor problem. Whitey always likes to mark his debs to establish his ownership of them, which he does by carving his initials (with a lighted cigarette or a knife) into one of their breasts. Lora has no intention of letting any man carve his initials into one of her spectacular breasts. They’re going to be her meal ticket in the future (she has ambitions to be a call girl). So now her challenge is to maintain her position in the gang without submitting to such treatment.

Lora isn’t too worried. She is utterly ruthless and her mastery of the art of manipulation is something to behold.

Lora’s machinations aren’t just for the purposes of gaining advantages for herself. She is very turned on by violence - nothing gets her more excited than seeing someone being beaten up, except perhaps seeing someone killed. If the victim is subjected to humiliation that’s even better. And it’s best of all if the victim is another woman who might be a rival. Her response to what happens to Mae (one of the debs who happens to be in Lora’s way) is incredibly chilling. Not surprisingly Lora’s arrival among the Cougars triggers a great many outbreaks of violence.

While I said earlier that this book is tame by later standards that’s not really entirely true. You won’t encounter any crude terms for male or female body parts but some of the sexual violence is hair-raising to say the least (such as a truly chilling gang rape). Some of it you just wouldn’t get away with today.

Gang Girl is obviously unashamedly trash fiction. Much of its appeal comes from that. There is however a bit more to it than that. Robert Silverberg was after all a fine writer and even when consciously churning out pulp sleaze he was unable to avoid offering some insights into some of the dark corners of the human psyche, particularly relating to sex and violence. He does try to get inside Lora’s head and what he finds there is deeply unsettling. Lora is not a good girl gone bad, she’s not a victim of circumstances, she’s not a product of a broken home or of childhood trauma. Her evil comes from within. For her the gang life simply has the effect of removing the normal social inhibitions that prevent people from acting on their most primal selfish instincts. It allowed her to shed all her sexual inhibitions very early on and she’s gradually shed all her moral inhibitions.

Perhaps if she had never joined a gang she might have been a nice girl but it seems unlikely. Being selfish and manipulative seems to be an inherent part of her personality. Her prodigious sexual appetites always seem to be inherent. Even without the gangs she would probably have been trouble.

Gang Girl delivers plenty of cheap violent sleazy pulp entertainment but there’s just enough substance there that you don’t have to feel too guilty about enjoying it. OK, you might feel a little bit guilty. There’s also enough dark subject matter to almost qualify it for noir fiction status.

Highly recommended.

Sin Hellcat

Before making names for themselves as crime writers Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake kept body and soul together by churning out lurid paperback erotica for published like Midwood Books and Nightstand Books. They wrote countless such books including five in collaboration, the third of which was Sin Hellcat, published by Nightstand Books in 1962. For what it’s worth it was Block’s favourite of the five collaborations.

The sin hellcat of the title is Jodi but much of the book is taken up by the reminiscences of the narrator, Harvey. He’s a successful advertising executive, very unhappily married and not liking his job very much. Not that he had ever had any real ambitions, except to be a success. He didn’t care what he did, as long as he was a success. At the time he first met Jodi, twelve years earlier, he was majoring in English at college. Jodi wasn’t his first girlfriend but she was the who had the most impact on him. Maybe he should have married her but he didn’t love her and she didn’t love him and they thought that that mattered.

Jodi is now a success as well. She makes twelve thousand a year (a vast amount of money in 1962) as a high-class whore. Now their paths have crossed again and he remembers their long ago affair, and he remembers his other affairs. All of which now seem much more attractive to him than his marriage. It’s clear that his marriage is both loveless and sexless.

Now he’s run into Jodi again and (after a night of passion together) she has a proposition for him. It sounds easy, illegal, lucrative and fun and it certainly appeals to him more than going home to his wife. All he and Jodi have to do is take a package to Brazil. That’s all. The package turns out to be something they had not anticipated. No, it’s not drugs or diamonds or guns or military secrets or anything like that. It’s not even exactly immoral, but it is a very awkward package.

Harvey Christopher is an odd character. He’s been motivated by selfishness but somehow it hasn’t worked out. He’s got the things he thought he wanted but they didn’t make him happy and the things that might have made him happy he didn’t manage to hang on to. Like Jodi. He just can’t forget Jodi. It’s not like he’s still in love with her because he never was in love with her, but he was happy with her. Now she’s a whore but at least that’s an honest living compared to advertising.

Harvey isn’t really a bad guy. He just hasn’t quite figured life out. He’s found out what he doesn’t want. He doesn’t want the life he’s got. But he doesn’t know what to do about it. Jodi isn’t quite the Whore with a Heart of Gold but she’s not a bad person either. She’s in much the same position as Harvey. She makes a lot of money as a prostitute and she has a really nice apartment in Manhattan and she’s not unhappy but she isn’t really happy either. Life and love and sex have turned out to be pretty complicated for both of them.

These sorts of books were of course little more than a succession of sexual escapades. By today’s standards they’re incredibly tame. That’s what makes them interesting - the authors had to describe the sexual encounters in such a way as to leave the reader in no doubt as to what was going on but without being able to be too graphic. It was a balancing act. They had to provide enough detail for the reader to know exactly what kinds of sexual acts were being described, but without going into too much detail. Which makes them naughty fun rather than anything even remotely approximating to pornography.

They’re even more fun when, as is the case with this novel, the authors could actually write. Westlake and Block have the knack of generating some sexual heat but without enough actual fire that might get the publishers shut down or arrested. It’s the art of titillation and these two writers do it well. It’s like old-school burlesque where you always think the girls are going to show you a great deal and they never show you quite as much as you expect, but you enjoy the show anyway. It’s just graphic enough to have been considered very racy indeed by the standards of 1962.

They also manage to provide a certain amount of wit and amusement.

It’s all done in a way that is a lot less crass than most of what you’ll encounter in modern mainstream Hollywood movies or mainstream literature. It’s both naughty and innocent and it’s cheerfully and playfully trashy. And trashy and sleazy it most certainly is, but the trash of 60 years ago is a lot more enticing than the trash of today. If you like vintage trash sleaze fiction you could do a lot worse. Sin Hellcat is recommended, if this is your sort of thing

Reno Tramp

Reno Tramp is one of those salacious sensational American sex and sin pulp novels that were so popular in the 1950s (this one was published in 1950). At the time they were considered to be very racy indeed although today they obviously seem very tame and it’s hard to imagine just how disreputable they were considered to be at the time. One of the leading writers of such fiction was Florence Stonebreaker (1896-1977). She wrote a lot of them (she wrote eleven novels in 1952 alone) and wrote slightly more respectable romance novels as well.

Brenda is in trouble. She’s in Reno and she’s been living with a guy called Charley. Which has been nice since he’s spent lots of money on her. Now Charley has lost all his dough on the roulette tables so naturally she’s told him that she’s through with him. And Charley is not being sensible about it. Surely he must understand that if he now has no money  then it’s all over. What use is he to her with no money? He’s even been unreasonable enough to have sex with her before telling her he’s lost all his money, which means she’s just had sex with him for no reason. And now he’s waving a gun about and talking about shooting himself, which is incredibly inconsiderate of him. When she packs her bag and closes the door behind her she hears the shot and now she’s in an awkward spot. What if the police think she shot him?

The only one she can think of to turn to for help is gambling racketeer Carter Kemp, owner of the Blue Jug Club. That means she’ll have to become one of Carter’s girls. That means being a whore and Brenda might be a tramp and a tart but she’s not actually a whore. Well maybe once or twice but that doesn’t count. Those were emergencies and when a girl needs money urgently what is she to do?

Carter claims his girls are not technically prostitutes. If one of the patrons at the club wants a girl for an evening, or even just for an hour or two, Carter introduces him to one of his girls. He’ll even arrange a private room for them, so they can get to know each other better. But once they enter the private room if money then changes hands how is Carter supposed to know that is going on? If he knew such things were going on that would mean that he was running a house of prostitution. Perish the thought. In fact Carter makes his money from the suckers at the gambling tables, not from his girls. The girls are just free entertainment for the suckers.

Carter can indeed help her out of her jam and offer her a job as one of his girls, but she will need to do a couple of favours for him. The first favour is obvious - Carter always likes to sample the merchandise he provides for his customers. The second favour is more complicated and is likely to lead Brenda into all sorts of even further complications.

Sex is a deadly weapon but for Brenda it’s as dangerous to herself as it is to the men whose paths she crosses. Love is a deadly weapon too but she doesn’t need to worry about that. Love is for suckers. It’s so tiresome when guys fall in love with her. She always knows when it’s happening.  Like with Johnny. When he slaps her real hard she knows he’s in love with her. She doesn’t actually want to hurt him but if he gets hurt that’s his problem. Still, the sex with Johnny is kinda nice. But guys with no money have no right to fall for her.

The story is told entirely from Brenda’s point of view and what makes her interesting as a character is her extraordinary lack of awareness of the situations she’s getting into and even of her own nature. She is ambitious. She knows what she wants. She wants money. Lots of it. Unfortunately she has no coherent plan for achieving this. She has a breathtaking body and she should be able to use it to make big money, either by marrying a rich sucker or as a high-class prostitute. Instead she’s wasted her efforts on snaring small-timers and she’s allowed lust to cloud her judgment - she’s gone for good-looking guys who have some money but not enough to give her the big buck she craves.

When Carter Kemp tells her to take her clothes off so he can inspect the merchandise she  is shocked and horrified. He’s not even good-looking. At the same time, as Carter runs his eyes approvingly across her naked body she finds herself really enjoying the experience. Especially when he gives her the sort of look that a master gives to his slave. That really excites her. She uses sex to get things out of men but she has no understanding of her own sexual feelings. She thinks she only has sex to get money and for the life of her she can’t figure out why sometimes she just wants to give herself to some men. She is 23 but she hasn’t grown up at all since she gave away her virginity (to a boy who didn’t even have money - she was so dumb in those days).

There’s an immense amount of sex in this novel, and not a single instance of it between people who are married to each other. This was 1950 so of course none of it is in any way graphic but it still manages to be plenty sleazy. It’s the feelings evoked rather than the actual acts that provides the sleaze content - things like naked girls being inspected like slabs of meat and beatings as foreplay (which Brenda finds very arousing). It’s very open about things like prostitution, and even about the male prostitutes who service rich women who get bored and lonely waiting for their divorces in Reno (and they’re out-and-out prostitutes rather than mere gigolos).

This is of course an incredibly trashy novel, a representative of an incredibly trashy genre. But it’s surprisingly well-crafted entertaining trash. And Brenda is in her own way more interesting than you might expect - she’s too scheming and selfish to be a heroine and too ruthless to be a victim but at the same time she’s too vulnerable to be a femme fatale. She doesn’t even know if she is really a whore, or if she really wants to be a whore. She hasn’t thought any of it through. It’s not just that she doesn’t understand love. She doesn’t even understand sex. She’s selfish in the way a child is selfish but she’s not evil - you have to know that what you’re doing is wrong to be evil.

Will this bad girl get what she deserves? You’ll have to read it to find out.

Reno Tramp is obviously most interesting as an example of the disreputable side of 50s pop culture. Like exploitation movies these books practised a balancing act, offering as many sleazy sexy thrills as they could without going far enough to get the publishers closed down. It’s often forgotten that there was more to 50s pop culture than Leave It To Beaver or Doris Day movies. Under the resectable surface of that decade there was plenty of interest in sex, including illicit sex (or maybe especially illicit sex).

It’s interesting to compare Reno Tramp to Ward Miller’s Kitten With a Whip, from a few years later and from a different but closely related genre. Both deal with young women whose sexual power is more dangerous than nitro-glycerine and just as unpredictable. And both dealing with young women who are deadly because they themselves don’t really understand what sex can do to them, or to men.

And Reno Tramp is definitely sleazy fun. Recommended.