Comments on: A Strange Erotic Journey from Milan to Minsk

A Strange Erotic Journey from Milan to Minsk

Horace Rumpole — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:44:26 -0800

In September 1969, Simon & Schuster was preparing to publish Irving Wallace's The Seven Minutes, a novel about the obscenity trial of a fictitious book of the same name by the fictitious author J.J. Jadway. Maurice Girodias, head of the erotica and avant garde literature publishing house the Olympia Press had a clever idea: what if I publish Jadway's book?

Not surprisingly, he didn't get away with it, but did re-release it under the (barely) new title The 7 Erotic Minutes (full text of the book, NSFW). Russ Meyer directed a movie based on Wallace's novel, but the film was a flop.

By: solipsophistocracy

solipsophistocracy — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 06:09:41 -0800

A bold and brave publisher in Paris but with a self-destructive streak, he would routinely scamper amongst cow-pies and deliberately splat a few; Is this a saying I'm unfamiliar with, or is this description saying that Girodias just liked to play around in poopy fields?

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 06:24:21 -0800

5 years later Philip José Farmer wrote Venus on a Half Shell in the guise of Kilgore Trout, Kurt Vonnegut's fictional alter ego.

By: zenwerewolf

zenwerewolf — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:02:53 -0800

got Venus on a Half Shell here on my shelf - I'd always wondered if it was Farmer or Sturgeon. Thanks for clearing that up for me Kattullus

By: KokuRyu

KokuRyu — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:05:53 -0800

Quite honestly, I think Farmer is a better writer than Vonnegut.

By: steef

steef — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:11:54 -0800

Venus on the Half-Shell: Available for the first time without lurid covers! (Warning: lurid cover.)

By: graventy

graventy — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:25:16 -0800

Aww, someone doesn't like price manipulation on the rare erotic book market!

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:30:55 -0800

..... so, is it any good?

By: Phlogiston

Phlogiston — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:37:23 -0800

Neat. It reminds me of the I, Libertine hoax.

By: misha

misha — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:00:16 -0800

That I, Libertine story was new to me, too, and I enjoyed it, as my folks are huge Shep fans (but for the love of god, they should get rid of about half of the exclamation points! in! that! article!).

By: languagehat

languagehat — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:49:59 -0800

Wow, that's an extremely interesting story—thanks for posting it, Horace Rumpole! (I find it odd, though, that you didn't highlight the fact that a collector is holding on to a large stash of mint copies, artificially inflating the price; I thought that was one of the most interesting parts.)

By: schoolgirl report

schoolgirl report — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:30:17 -0800

It's no Rochelle, Rochelle.

By: Horace Rumpole

Horace Rumpole — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:35:45 -0800

Thanks, languagehat. I wrestled with how to make this into a reasonably pithy FPP and it seemed like the nature of the book itself required a ton of explanation before I even got to that part of it. The secret stash of copies is the most interesting part to me as well, but I wasn't sure if it was too inside-baseball for the non-book-collecting-nerds in the audience.

By: Halloween Jack

Halloween Jack — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:09:02 -0800

..... so, is it any good?

Fuck-fair fun fair. Fuck her, fucker. Fucker, fucker, fuck me fucker. Fuck me faster, fuck me, fuck me.

...and it gets worse.

By: Jody Tresidder

Jody Tresidder — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:29:44 -0800

Tea-and-crumpet Mefites might remember the fleetingly famous UK book by a fictional author, Fly Fishing by J. R. Hartley. wiki has a nice digest: The fictional character [J.r. Hartley]appeared in television advertisements for British commercial telephone directory company Yellow Pages, first shown in 1983. The character was played by the actor Norman Lumsden. The advertisement shows an elderly man going into several bookshops in London's Cecil Court asking for a book called Fly Fishing by an author named 'J. R. Hartley'. Every attempt fails, and the next scene shows him at home looking dejected. His daughter, sympathising, hands him a copy of the Yellow Pages, and the next scene features him looking delighted as a bookshop replies that they have a copy of the book. He asks them to keep it for him, and they ask for his name. He replies, 'My name? Oh, yes, it's J. R. Hartley.' An author who had brought out a book about fly fishing in 1991 noted how much of a cult figure the fictional Hartley had become, and published it under the pseudonym J R Hartley. Two further books on the subject followed, under the same name.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:06:19 -0800

Great story, thanks! And yeah, the discussion of the morality of "making the market" for a supposedly rare book was the most interesting part for me, too. Funny the author sees no moral questions in quietly buying up all known copies of a book in order to control the price later - which he not only admits to, but treats as perfectly normal practice. Seems kind of a dick move to me, though.

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:44:25 -0800

I <3 defictionalization.