Vintage Pulp

December 15 2024

TERRIBLE ESTATE OF AFFAIRS

Guess she won't be renting it out for themed parties and weddings after all.

We normally call Southern plantations slave farms because they’re historical places of subjugation and pain. Some don’t realize that (or pretend not to), and actually stage events like weddings in such places, but facts are facts—they’re blood-soaked ground. So how does an author make that setting useful for a sleaze novel? We’ve experienced a few attempts.

Derrick Fairman’s 1962 post-Civil War effort Fancy House Lady is set in fictive Feniman’s Landing, located somewhere on the Mississippi River in a state we later learn is Arkansas. Sara Crenshaw has inherited her family’s broken down estate and decides to renovate rather than sell. That renovation turns out to be for naught—as the cover reveals—when the dreaded Ku Klux Klan torch the property. That happens in chapter six of sixteen, but close to halfway through by page count. The book would have been much better had that event come as a surprise.

But okay, you go in knowing that, thanks to the cover art. Wrapped around this crucial incident is the tale of smart, beautiful, and stubborn Sara, who opens a casino in her antebellum mansion—as was her right according to the laws of the time—but is singled out by a bunch of pious and pompous lessers, who in Bible-driven hubris believe they have the right to tell everyone around them how to live. You already know they ruin her casino. The rest of the story is about if, how, and what form her vengeance will take.

Though Fancy House Lady is merely lightweight sleaze, it’s pretty well written, and lays bare ugly truths that have always existed in most cultures. It’s about sex, but it’s also about mob mentality, toxic patriarchy, and the ease with which religion can drive people to embrace hatred yet call it the opposite. Feniman’s Landing is just the made-up town of an inconsequential novel, but it’s a place that, in basic character, could exist anywhere in today’s world. For sleaze, we have to give this one a thumb’s up.

Arkansas, U.S. Civil War, Fabian Books, Derrick Fairman, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

April 13 2023

KNIT WIT

Here's a hint—it's for keeping something warm, it'll be really useful in about eight months, and by then we'll have the same last name.

Above: the front cover of Our Flesh Was Cheap by Eve Linkletter, 1959, for Fabian Books. Linkletter, whose photo appears on the back cover, wrote a handful of books with sensational titles, such as Dime-a-Dance Hustler, B-Girl Decoy, Lesbian Orgies, and The Gay Ones.

We’ve heard that Our Flesh Was Cheap is far better than it looks. It’s a first-person narrative about an eighteen-year-old Tijuana prostitute named Rosa, and the American woman who brings her San Diego with fake papers and gives her a job as maid. Unfortunately, though Rosa tries to let go of her past, her past doesn’t want to let go of her. We may buy this one if it appears at a reasonable price.

Mexico, Tijuana, San Diego, Fabian Books, Eve Linkletter, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

April 30 2019

SEX THERAPY

You have multiple personality disorder—they're all insatiable nymphos.

Above: a cover for Sex Queen by Roger Blake, aka John Trimble, for Fabian books, copyright 1962. Add this to our growing therapy collection, which you can get into starting here. The art is uncredited, but it could be Bill Edwards.

Fabian Books, Roger Blake, John Trimble, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

January 17 2019

SWIMMING LESSON

Seriously? You're stranding me? Just because I said even cold water can't make a man shrink that much?

When we first saw Naked Return we thought, “A sleaze novel entirely about a woman who has to get home naked? We can’t wait to see how this is drawn out to 144 pages!” But the book isn’t about that. There’s a literal naked return, alright. It occurs in the first chapter when the lead character Sharon’s boyfriend steals her swimsuit, leaving her to get home by walking through the woods and into the middle of a packed garden party. The other 95% of the story is a middling drama about her trying to choose between two men, one in Spain and one in the U.S. Yaaaaawn. But at least the book only cost five dollars. The art is uncredited, and the copyright is 1960

Fabian Books, Georgia McIntosh, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

July 25 2017

RED DRESS EFFECT

They say this color makes a woman more desirable— *burp!* *grunt* —so you want me or what?

As usual with Fabian Books the cover for Cherita is uncredited, but their low rent house artist really scored a hit here. This is a beautiful image of a woman testing the putative phenomenon that red dresses increase one’s attractiveness. As for the story, it’s a drama about a woman searching for her lost sibling. The tale becomes a sort of a love story when she falls for a man different from the many she’s known, a musician who plays a local nightspot. Ann Freeman—most likely a pseudonym but we don’t know for whom—also authored the Fabian sleaze novels Between the Two and Emotional Jungle before fading from the literary scene. Copyright on this is 1961.

Fabian Books, Ann Freeman, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

March 15 2017

HASTA LA VISTA

These two are just dying for a vacation.

Yes, it’s another book about people stranded on a boat. We just finished the excellent Dead Calm a few days ago, and wrote about it yesterday, and afterward we read all of Return to Vista in time to write about it today. Yes, it literally took one day to blaze through, and we even mixed in a few glasses of white wine and assorted interactions with the Pulp Intl. girlfriends. Return to Vista is not as ocean bound as Dead Calm. In fact, most of it takes place on dry land. Well, semi-dry—the action starts in New Orleans, moves to Vista Island, and stars a cynical journalist back home from some tough years covering the Korean War.

Various online sources say Return to Vista led to an obscenity bust for publisher Sanford Aday. We came across mention of it more than once. But we dug a bit deeper and as far as we can tell it isn’t true. It can be difficult to keep track of this stuff, because Aday had run-ins with legal authorities everywhere from his hometown of Fresno to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and all the way out to the Hawaiian Islands. Today in 1961 police raided his facility on North Lima Street in Burbank, empowered by a search warrant that specifically mentioned the novel Sex Life of a Cop, discussed here.

However, the warrant also said police could gather additional relevant material, so they loaded up other books, as well as mail, packages, cartons, bank statements, checks, bills of lading, work records, labels, rubber stamps, et al. They basically emptied Aday’s offices with the intent of depriving him of the ability to conduct business. Return to Vista was seized in the raid, but it was part of a haul that included sixty-two titles comprising an astonishing 400,000 paperbacks. Thus we don’t think it’s accurate to say Return to Vista specifically resulted in an obscenity bust. Unless there’s more info out there than we know about—which is always possible.

Return to Vista‘s purplest passages deal with interracial sex. Also, the two characters you see on the cover decide one last romp is in order before they starve at sea. Sex must bring them luck, because they survive to fight commies. Or at least, they think they’re dealing with commies. Turns out the people they’re up against are actually even purer utopians than the political sort. Return to Vista wasn’t good, exactly, but it was fun. Author John Foster, whose actual name was John West, showed some imaginative touches. He went on to write 1961’s Campus Iniquities before fading from the literary scene. The above is from 1960 with uncredited cover art.

New Orleans, Fabian Books, John Foster, Sanford Aday, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

September 15 2016

A FOOL AND HIS HONEY

Hi, babe, I'm back early from— Aw, shit. Not again.

Twice a Fool was published by Vega Books, above, and by Fabian Books, a version that was identical in every way except the company logo. That’s because both Fabian and Vega, along with Saber Books, were owned by Sanford Aday, as we’ve mentioned before. Bunny Strand was in reality sleaze author Bernie Strahn, who also wrote such highbrow classics as Reaching High, The Bedroom Imposter, and Sex Party: The Rape of Lori Grant. Info on him is scarce, but we’ll keep digging. Twice a Fool is copyright 1960 with uncredited cover art.

Fabian Books, Vega Books, Bunny Strand, Bernie Strahn, Sanford Aday, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

June 24 2016

LABOR OF LOVIE

Whew. I'm bushed. You know, when you said you needed your field plowed I was thinking along totally different lines.

Above, a typically low rent cover from Sanford Aday’s sleaze imprint Fabian Books, uncredited but probably by Bill Edwards. Dolores Dee was actually an author named Delores Cardwell, and Passionate Lovie, which seems to be the only book she wrote, fits squarely into the sub-genre of farm sleaze where a sexually precocious hayseed wants out of hickville. “What goes on in the big towns?” she wonders constantly. The only way to find out is to work her charms on several hapless men. 1959 copyright.

Fabian Books, Dolores Dee, Delores Cardwell, Sanford Aday, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

June 26 2012

WHISKEY BUSINESS

Actually, you’re drinkin’ the kerosene I use for my lantern. The moonshine’s over yonder. But I am duly impressed.

Above, the cover of Clouded Passion by Arthur A. Howe, for Fabian Books, 1962, with Bill Edwards cover art of a country girl chugging booze like a Zeta Tau Alpha. Fabian, as well as Vega Books and Saber Books, was owned by Sanford Aday, who made himself a constant target for various morality groups, including Citizens for Decent Literature, which was headed by that paragon of virtue Charles H. Keating. Aday was eventually convicted of obscenity, along with his associate Wallace de Ortega Maxey, for shipping a single copy of the book Sex Life of a Cop to Michigan. Aday got twenty-five years, but the conviction was overturned by a Supreme Court decision. The novels from Adey’s three publishing houses are somewhat collectible today, and most of the covers were exactly like this one—amusing but low quality. If you’re interested, you can see a group here.

Michigan, Citizens for Decent Literature, Fabian Books, Saber Books, Vega Books, Arthur A. Howe, Sanford Aday, Wallace de Ortega Maxey, Bill Edwards, Charles H. Keating, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

July 5 2010

A TASTE OF HONEY

The happy hooker goes to Rex's house.

The 1963 tell-all Honey Baby, for which you see the uncredited cover art above, is a novel narrated by a call girl named Honey Baby Ashley to author Rex Nevins. The as-told-to framework must have worked nicely, because in 1964 Nevins wrote another book called The Swingers, which was told to him by a spouse swapper named Sherri St. John. Call us cynics, but we tend to think Honey Baby Ashley and Sherri St. John both came directly from Rex’s dirty little mind. But we can understand, because we have two imaginary friends, too—they’re called our readers.

Fabian Books, Rex Nevins, cover art, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

June 19

1953—The Rosenbergs Are Executed

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted for conspiracy to commit espionage related to passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet spies, are executed at Sing Sing prison, in New York.

June 18

1928—Earhart Crosses Atlantic Ocean

American aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly in an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean, riding as a passenger in a plane piloted by Wilmer Stutz and maintained by Lou Gordon. Earhart would four years later go on to complete a trans-Atlantic flight as a pilot, leaving from Newfoundland and landing in Ireland, accomplishing the feat solo without a co-pilot or mechanic.

June 17

1939—Eugen Weidmann Is Guillotined

In France, Eugen Weidmann is guillotined in the city of Versailles outside Saint-Pierre Prison for the crime of murder. He is the last person to be publicly beheaded in France, however executions by guillotine continue away from the public until September 10, 1977, when Hamida Djandoubi becomes the last person to receive the grisly punishment.

June 17

1972—Watergate Burglars Caught

In Washington, D.C., five White House operatives are arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel. The botched burglary was an attempt by members of the Republican Party to illegally wiretap the opposition. The resulting scandal ultimately leads to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, and also results in the indictment and conviction of several administration officials.

June 16

1961—Rudolph Nureyev Defects from Soviet Union

Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev defects at Le Bourget airport in Paris. The western press reported that it was his love for Chilean heiress Clara Saint that triggered the event, but in reality Nuryev had been touring Europe with the Kirov Ballet and defected in order to avoid punishment for his continual refusal to abide by rules imposed upon the tour by Moscow.

INSATIABLE APPETITE

George Gross art for Joan Sherman’s, aka Peggy Gaddis Dern’s 1950 novel Suzy Needs a Man.

TIT FOR TAT

Swapping literature was a major subset of midcentury publishing. Ten years ago we shared a good-sized collection of swapping paperbacks from assorted authors.

TO DIE FOR