Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback [Paperback]

Susan Stryker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2001

From homicidal homos to locked-up lesbians, and almost every sexually dangerous combination in between, Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback is the first complete expose of queer sexuality in mid-twentieth century paperbacks. Compellingly written by historian Susan Stryker, Queer Pulp gives a complete overview of the cultural, political, and economic factors involved in the boom of queer paperbacks. With chapters covering gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexually oriented books, a lively overview of the genres, and loads of scorching paperback covers, Queer Pulp reveals the complicated and fascinating history of alternative sexual literature and book publishing. Featuring the work of well-known authors such as W. Somerset Maugham and Truman Capote to the low-brow and no-brow scribes who worked under several names, Queer Pulp is the entertaining and informative introduction to these lost, salacious literary genres.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This pair of paeans to the paperback offers two diverse focuses, with some crossover. Culture historian Lupoff's heavily illustrated account traces the paperback's roots to the 1800s but focuses primarily on the era from 1920 onward, with emphasis on the many players who took the penny dreadful and morphed it into a legitimate publishing form to create empires. Stryker, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society in San Francisco, focuses on the tawdry side of paperback publishing, which in some cases was an extension of the pornography trade tailored for the reading middle class. Though some of these pulp books were penned by serious scribes trying to elevate writings with a homosexual focus into a legitimate art form, most failed to get beyond the sleazy cheap thrills for which they were intended. Many of the trashier ones e.g., Hot Pants Homo, Lesbo Lodge were so bad that they have become kitschy collector's items. Both volumes are profusely illustrated with loads of covers from the sublime to the ridiculous, making them quite browsable. Libraries needing a straight (no pun intended) history of paperback publishing should consider Lupoff's title, strangely available as a pricey hardcover, while those serving gay communities will do well with Stryker. Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Susan Stryker is a Bay Area writer, activist, and scholar, and has been a visiting faculty member in the women's studies department at U.C. Berkeley.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books; First Edition edition (September 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811830209
• ISBN-13: 978-0811830201
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #506,527 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fine coverage of paperback passions, April 18, 2004

By 

Robin Benson - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback (Paperback)

Susan Stryker has written a succinct account of this corner of American paperback publishing during the middle of the last century. The four areas she covers are lesbian, bisexual, transgender and gay with each chapter having the relevant book covers (150 in all) nicely placed so they are near the appropriate text.

She covers the two sides of the pulp fiction market, the big mainstream publishers, who issued literature in a mass market format and so had to present Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Somerset Maugham, Truman Capote, Radclyffe Hall, James Baldwin and others with suggestive images (the predictable shapely female with the half unbuttoned blouse) and come-on cover lines to generate sales, I bet they would have loved to change the titles to something more racy though. The other side was the very cheaply produced (but expensively priced) paperback that had no literary pretence and was produced for the 'one hand reader'. Plenty of these latter covers are shown and the designs are as predictable as the words inside but when you see them presented, sometimes four to a page, their overwhelming blandness becomes fascinating, however there are some that look as if a designer has been able to produce something creative with art and typography.

So many of the lowbrow and no-brow paperbacks are parodies of the genre, 'Hot Pants Homo' by Percy Fenster, 'The Man They Called My Wife' by Stark Cole' or 'Take My Tool' by Vivian LeMans, all with the appropriate tacky graphics and blurbs. Overall an interesting book (and well designed, too) about a slice of pop culture publishing that sold copies in the millions. Another book, also well designed, covering the same subject is Jaye Zimet's 'Strange Sisters' (ISBN 0140284028) with two hundred covers of lesbian pulp fiction. Both books will be appreciated by graphic designers and pop culture fans.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Time Will Tell, July 2, 2006

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback (Paperback)

Taking a similar tact to Michael Bronski's epochal PULP FRICTION, ace historian Stryker parlays a collection of battered pulps into a periscope through the murky waters of gay and lesbian acceptance in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. She's able to show, just through the cover alone, how bisexuality proved to be the wedge that eventually toppled Amewrica's binary notions of sexuality. Triangle books, two men and a woman, two women and a man, perhaps seemed safer for timid 50s readers to understand, or at any rate aroused mass curiosity, and before you know it, the "divided path" had made way for full on "queer passions."

Stryker devotes separate chapters to the paperback revolution itself, as well as to lesbian, transgender, and gay male bodies of work. The covers are sometimes humorous, sometimes inane, but all of them give off a nervous sexual energy that still fills you up through your hands and eyes. She delves into the lives of the primary pulp creators, insofar as they have been divulged, and makes you feel with them as they created this enormous corpus. Chronicle Books has outdone itself with its huge, creamy graphics and must have had a good time doing so, with some amusing juxtapositions.

What happened to the end, though? The book ends without so much as an adieu, nearly in the middle of a paragraph. Perhaps the book's chic designer overrode whatever conclusion tthe author had written; they had perhaps run out of illustrations and, like Alice in the Lewis Carroll book, saw no sense in a book that had neither "pictures nor conversations." Instead, an able bibliography appears, meekly enough, and a tidy 4 page index.

Some of these authors are new to me, but I hope very soon to be able to pore through some of the books of Chris Davidson (GO DOWN, AARON; CAVES OF IRON; A DIFFERENT DRUM; THE GOLDEN TUFT), who sounds the most far-fetched of the lot. Will I be using one hand, or two, only time, or Tim, will tell.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Interesting!, March 25, 2006

By 

Shawn Thompson (Joplin, MO) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback (Paperback)

This is an easy read and very fascinating at the same time. Stryker accomplishes bridging the gap between the social atmosphere of the golden age and covering the different genres of books typically associated with "queer" (i.e. bisexuality, transexuality, and homosexuality) while giving a plethora of examples in each category. You just might find a pulp in this book you must read.