Vintage Pulp

November 23 2024

WEATHER THE STORM

Rainy with a chance of murderous ex-lovers.

This awesome Paul Rader cover for Russell Trainer’s 1963 novel No Way Back made us think we were dealing with another natural disaster story—and you know we love those—but the art deceived us. The book is actually a sleaze tale—maybe the nipples should have clued us in—with only the last fifteen pages set during a storm. It’s about a man who returns from the Vietnam War to find that his wife has gotten involved in an affair with a woman who’s also taken his spot in his real estate business. While it’s filled with titillation, it’s relentlessly anti-gay, with Trainer calling homosexuality depraved, perverted, wicked, and other slanders. It would be interesting to know, considering how hot his love scenes are, whether the moralizing came from his mind or those of Midwood editors. The climax where Trainer’s lesbian turns homicidal is unlikely, at best. Readers might have believed it in 1963, but they wouldn’t now. As we’ve said many times, book and poster art have gotten worse since the mid-century, but culture has gotten better.

Midwood, Russell Trainer, Paul Rader, cover art, literature, lgbt

Vintage Pulp

November 2 2024

THE HEAT OF DESIRE

Wanted by everyone, loved by none.

With George McGee’s 1961 novel Desire Under the Sun we were hoping for a hot and heavy set-in-Mexico sleazer with possibly a little gunplay. We didn’t get that, exactly. It mostly has to do with a gold mine in an unnamed state in the western U.S., and one man’s attempt to steal a fortune from another. The man who owns the mine is crazy and at one point even chains up his poor wife Lupe and makes her a gold digging slave. She’s the cover figure in Paul Rader’s art, but in the story she’s not a vampy mama. But this is Rader we’re talking about. All his women were vamps, none more so than this one who’s going to have a very interesting a-shaped tan on her torso.

Lupe is facing a terrible future of working to exhaustion in the mine, then being shot and buried. Unless of course her husband dies somehow. Then the mine and everything in it is hers. Enter an ambitious hunter with dreams of getting rich. He’ll consider rescuing Lupe—at a price. There’s also a repressed incel who wants Lupe for himself—at a price. And there’s a family of hungry mountain lions watching all this, planning a human repast. It sounds weird, we know, but the story isn’t bad. It’s just limply written. But the Rader cover, all on its own, makes Desire Under the Sun a little nugget of gold. It’s another treasured addition to our collection.

Midwood, George McGee, Paul Rader, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

September 30 2024

HER SPECIAL NEEDS

I wouldn't say I'm one of the girls, so much as one of those girls.

Paul Rader was tapped by Midwood books so often he like a house artist. Paperbacks with very nice Rader covers can get expensive, but not in this case. We got lucky and found Richard Mezatesta’s 1963 sleaze tale One of the Girls for twelve bucks. It deals with the lovely Barbara Sellers, nineteen and horny as hell in New York City, paired up with a jealous, violent lover, but who wants to find a worthwhile replacement and expand her social horizons. Instead, an eely smooth pimp first gives Barbara some serious bedwork, then turns her out for rich customers.

As always with the call girl sub-genre of sleaze, the lead’s rationale for turning to prostitution is unconvincing, but it isn’t the point anyway. The point is titillation, and Mezatesta is pretty good on that front. Barbara satisfies numerous clients, wrestles with feelings of love for one man, and takes the requisite journey into self-loathing, yet finds quitting the sex-for-pay life difficult. Will she be a prostitute forever? Will she get married and live happily ever after? A gamut of endings are always in play in these novels, which means you can never guess until the final chapter. In all, this particular effort was pretty good.

Midwood, Richard Mezatesta, Paul Rader, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

September 28 2024

STRICTLY BUSINESS

I'm not evil. I'm just ambitious and men hate it.

Above: a cover for Tall, Blonde and Evil, painted by Paul Rader for Midwood Books and author Greg Hamilton, 1964. It’s another entry in the seemingly endless category of racy office covers. See some amusing examples here, here, and here.

Midwood, Greg Hamilton, Paul Rader, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

August 22 2024

WILLING AND ABLE

Well? Don't just stand there staring. Undo something!

1960’s So Willing is credited to Sheldon Lord and Alan Marshall, but they were pseudonyms used by Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake. According to Block, the two wrote this, their second collaboration as Lord and Marshall, by trading chapters through the mail. They would occasionally try to trip each other up with unexpected plot twists, and we can only imagine it must have been a hell of a lot of fun. They tell the tongue-in-cheek tale of a seventeen-year old upstate New York horndog named Vince who’s so successful with girls he decides for variety to hunt up a virgin. He fails a couple of times, ends up running away to New York City with a nineteen-year old married nymphomaniac (their term, not ours), and eventually hooks up with an heiress. Good sleaze novels are diamonds in the rough. You have to dig through a lot of filth to find one. So Willing is better than average because it’s so obviously a lark, but even with Westlake and Block behind the typewriter it’s no gem. We think erotica is the most challenging of all genres for writers. The cover art on this Midwood edition is nice, but uncredited.

Midwood, Sheldon Lord, Lawrence Block, Alan Marshall, Donald E. Westlake, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

July 27 2024

NUMBERS GAME

Math isn't my major, but I bet we have dozens of possible combinations—maybe even a hundred if Biff and Daphne show up.

Above: a cover painted by Paul Rader for Max Collier’s novel The Swap Set, from Midwood books, 1965. Sexual swapping was a huge theme in mid-century pop literature, so of course we have a substantial amount of these in the website. You can see a couple of our favorites here and here, and an entire collection here.

Midwood, Max Collier, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

January 22 2024

SCANDALOUS BEHAVIOR

Sleaze with cheese and Mayo.

The 1962 Midwood Books sexploitation novel Scandal was written by Dallas Mayo, aka Gilbert Fox, and has uncredited cover art. Some of Midwood’s offerings were tamer than others. Scandal falls on the mild side, with a story set in the fictive burg of Sedgemoor, where a set of local bros are about to throw a big stag party around the same time a Hollywood producer rolls anonymously through scouting for a possible movie location. The tale is told round robin style, with a name mentioned at the end of each chapter preceding the next chapter told from that person’s point of view. In this way Mayo keeps cycling through about eight characters. By the end, the Hollywood producer loves one of the stag party strippers, another stripper finds lesbian love, a married couple rekindle their sex life, and so forth. It’s cheesy stuff, but Scandal is interesting for the social attitudes on display, even it isn’t very hot. Get extra Mayo here.

Midwood, Dallas Mayo, Gilbert Fox, cover art, literature, lgbt

Vintage Pulp

December 26 2023

CAN’T TALK, HANDS FULL

Actually, darling, the moment you left I starting having this tremendous stiffness in my lower body.

Another day, another ripe Midwood cover. The art on these are always like visual punchlines, which is why people love them so much. This particular effort is from Victor Olson, who painted covers for many men’s magazines, including Saga, Stag, Male and others. Laura Duchamp was a pen name used by author Sally Singer, one of the few sleaze writers who was actually female. She was also prolific as March Hastings. Goodbye, Darling appeared in 1964.

Midwood, Victor Olson, March Hastings, Laura Duchamp, Sally Singer, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

October 16 2023

MEASUREMENTS OF A MAN

It's a score sheet. I didn't tell you in advance because I didn't want you to get nervous. But I guess you did anyway.

Above: one of our regular check-ins with paperback illustrator Paul Rader, whose work is always excellent. In addition to being adept, his pieces are usually humorous. See some good examples here, here, here, here, and here.

Midwood, Paul Gregory, Paul Rader, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

July 14 2023

JOYLESS SEX

If you use your imagination you can picture people getting royally screwed.

There are a lot of late-stage sleaze novels from Midwood Books, which went out of business around 1980 (Wikipedia says 1968, but it’s wrong). We chose to read Will Rudd’s 1978 romp Joy Ride for one reason—the cover features Swedish model Anita Hemmings, aka Annika Salmonsson, who we have upcoming on a rare headshop poster from 1972. Sadly, the book is a poorly written, overly long, raunchy but heatless story about a chump named Pollack whose cross country trip takes many strange turns.

But there is one point of interest: the cast of characters includes a couple named Harry and Meg. Harry is fair-skinned, while Meg is a “little lighter than her hair,” which is “tan and long.” Weird, right? They don’t otherwise bear any resemblance to the royal couple, but still, you get unprompted visuals to accompany moments like: Meg, who’d opened her eyes and was beholding the world through semen-smeared glasses, felt Harry’s cock swell gallantly in her mouth. It was worth a chuckle, but don’t let it lure you. The book is really, really horrible.

Midwood, Will Rudd, Anita Hemmings, Annika Salomonsson, cover art, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

December 4

1918—Wilson Goes to Europe

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sails to Europe for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, France, becoming the first U.S. president to travel to Europe while in office.

December 4

1921—Arbuckle Manslaughter Trial Ends

In the U.S., a manslaughter trial against actor/director Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle ends with the jury deadlocked as to whether he had killed aspiring actress Virginia Rappe during rape and sodomy. Arbuckle was finally cleared of all wrongdoing after two more trials, but the scandal ruined his career and personal life.

December 3

1964—Mass Student Arrests in U.S.

In California, Police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and sit-in at the administration building in protest at the UC Regents’ decision to forbid protests on university property.

December 3

1968—U.S. Unemployment Hits Low

Unemployment figures are released revealing that the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen to 3.3 percent, the lowest rate for almost fifteen years. Going forward all the way to the current day, the figure never reaches this low level again.

December 2

1954—Joseph McCarthy Disciplined by Senate

In the United States, after standing idly by during years of communist witch hunts in Hollywood and beyond, the U.S. Senate votes 65 to 22 to condemn Joseph McCarthy for conduct bringing the Senate into dishonor and disrepute. The vote ruined McCarthy’s career.

December 1

1955—Rosa Parks Sparks Bus Boycott

In the U.S., in Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city’s African-American population were the bulk of the system’s ridership.