Sin-A-Rama: Sleaze Sex Paperbacks of the Sixties [Hardcover]

Brittany A. Daley (Editor), Adam Parfrey (Editor), Hedi El Kholti (Editor), Earl Kemp (Editor), Miriam Linna (Editor), Jay A. Gertzman (Contributor), John Gilmore (Contributor), Michael Hemmingson (Contributor), Robert Silverberg (Contributor), Lynn Munroe (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2004

“What most distinguished these paperbacks wasn't their narratives but their frequently amazing covers, swashes of erotic eye-candy that, as surely as a Warhol soupcan, now define an era. And so the emphasis in this first-rate celebration is on the covers, with hundreds reproduced in what looks like accurate (i.e., soul-shocking) color.”—Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Older readers may remember the lurid soft-X-rated paperbacks-titles like Topless Waitress, Lake of Lust, Casting Couch and so on-that crowded the shelves of newsstands and candy stores but more often adult bookstores in the 1960s. What most distinguished these paperbacks wasn't their narratives but their frequently amazing covers, swashes of erotic eye-candy that, as surely as a Warhol soupcan, now define an era. And so the emphasis in this first-rate celebration of these paperbacks is on the covers, with hundreds reproduced in what looks like accurate (i.e., soul-shocking) color. Most of these reproductions appear in the editors' grouping of sex paperbacks into various themes (Asphalt Jungle, Sex at Play, Butch Swish, etc.) but more show up in the startling essays and profiles that precede these groupings-startling for the several well-known authors profiled (Donald Westlake, Ed Wood, Lawrence Block) and for the praise-going by the illustrations, well justified-for a handful of the star cover artists. The book opens with overviews of the history of softcore paperback publishing by Jay A. Gertzman and Stephen J. Gertz and, most notably, by acclaimed SF author Robert Silverberg, who in "My Life as a Pornographer" recounts how by 1962 he was "turning out three Nightstand books a month" and earning enough money to buy "an enormous mansion in the finest residential neighborhood of New York City." A catalogue of "sleaze publishers" and a list of author pseudonyms (Miriam Gardner: Marion Zimmer Bradley; Paul Merchant: Harlan Ellison, etc.) close this informative and giddily entertaining book.
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Review

Deeply satisfying...a lavish tribute to the courageous authors, illustrators, and editors...There is much to admire about SIN-A-RAMA. -- Boston Globe, March 20, 2005: The Golden Age of Sleaze

More kitschy fun than arousing...an amusing peek into an underground pulp-publishing industry that has been almost entirely forgotten. -- Seattle Weekly, March 9, 2005: Seattle Weekly Pick

Product Details

• Hardcover: 268 pages
• Publisher: Feral House; 1st Ed. (U.K.) edition (November 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932595058
• ISBN-13: 978-1932595055
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 6.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #451,726 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Hemmingson lives in southern California and Baja California. Michael Hemmingson writes and publishes books, stories, essays, and ethnographic research projects. Michael Hemmingson writes and sells screenplays and film treatments. Michael Hemmingson has been pegged as a novelist, playwright, cultural anthropologist, sociologist in the symbolic interactionism school, auto-ethnographer and criminal scalawag. Michael Hemmingson has been associated with the minimalist Gordon Lish School of Writing. Michael Hemmingson has been accused of being a writer of crime noir literature. Michael Hemmingson has been labeled an author of literary erotica. Michael Hemmingson has been cast into the waters of the AvantPop School of Prose Writing. Michael Hemmingson has edited anthologies, zines, and newspapers. Michael Hemmingson has composed literary criticism and collected ethnographic data in the qualitative inquiry school of social science research. Michael Hemmingson has written speculative fiction and weird westerns. Michael Hemmingson sometimes dashes off a poem. Michael Hemmingson is not Michael Hemmingson. Michael Hemmingson is Michael Hawthorne.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great historical & pictorial depiction of sleaze paperbacks!, January 20, 2005

By 

Pop Culture Enthusiast - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sin-A-Rama: Sleaze Sex Paperbacks of the Sixties (Hardcover)

Sin-A-Rama is the only book on this subject on the market today. Sure, there have been plenty of books discussing the 1940's/1950's pulp paperbacks (sci fi, mystery, etc titles) but this is the only one thus far to delve into the realm of the taboo world of 1960's sleaze paperbacks! The editors do a wonderful job constructing the historical basis for these lurid gems, while also providing the reader with pages and pages of full-color pictures of these naughty novels. The book features great articles by Jay A. Gertzman, Brittany A. Daley, Earl Kemp, and Steve Gertz to name a few. Furthermore, the book features excellent reference material at the back including lists of pen names by Earl Kemp and a publisher's catalog by Brittany A. Daley. The book is also littered with interesting quotes from these rule-breaking books. I would highly advise readers to seek out this book! Oh and I don't know if Amazon.com's personnel ever reads these reviews but there is an error on this book's order page. The editor list is incorrect as the editors were actually (as listed on the back of the book): Brittany A. Daley, Hedi El Kholti, Earl Kemp, Miriam Linna, and Adam Parfrey.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sleaze by the million, May 15, 2005

By 

Robin Benson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sin-A-Rama: Sleaze Sex Paperbacks of the Sixties (Hardcover)

It soon becomes apparent when reading the first few chapters of this interesting book that in this tiny part of the publishing industry were an equally small number of people (mostly males, obviously) yet they were responsible for producing millions of trash paperbacks that sold in the Fifties, Sixties and early Seventies. This book is a celebration of their endeavours.

Because of the very competitive arena in which these publishers worked, with twenty or more new titles each month the covers were the main selling point and the three hundred plus reproduced in this book show that you don't mess with a successful formulae. They had to show a female (unless it was for the gay market) as provocatively posed as possible with a two or three word title to complete the package. It has to be said though that the quality of these illustrations is pretty poor which only makes the work of one or two artists really stand out. Robert Bonfils, in particular, consistently turned out quality art and sleaze artists like Stanton, Bilbrew and Bill Ward were made for this market. No cover design could be too tacky for this publishing genre.

The bulk of the book are the cover reproductions (each with date, publisher, author and artist credits) with several short essays in the front. The two about soft core publishing on the East and West coasts were interesting because they actually explain the background to the publishers and more importantly how the books were distributed through the network of adult book stores in most cities and towns. The back has a useful list of publishers and authors pseudonyms. I was slightly disappointed with the books production though, there is no real page design, paragraphs are excessively long and columns just fall short because no one bothered to make adjustments to the picture sizes to compensate. Despite this 'Sin-a-rama' will probably be the only book to comprehensively cover the publishing world of paperback sleaze.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars colorful, informative survey of popular paperbacks, December 25, 2004

By 

Henry Berry "Henry Berry" (Southport, CT) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sin-A-Rama: Sleaze Sex Paperbacks of the Sixties (Hardcover)

The countless lurid, sexually suggestive pictures of the covers of the mass-market paperbacks of the decade of the 1960s are what cannot help but attract the most attention. But there's more to this retrospective than the sensationalistic covers for enthusiasts of popular culture and paperback book collectors. An inside view of the "sleaze paperback" industry of the time is recounted in essays by four writers; one of whom spent some time in jail for peddling [...]. Passages from some of the books illustrate the genre's elliptical, yet unmistakable style for dealing with the sexual subjects and scenes so the books could get by the [...] censorship. The hundreds of paperbacks identified by their covers with author, publisher, and artist in the caption are divided into main categories appealing to readers of different backgrounds and sexual fantasies. "Sick Suburb," "Butch Swish," and "Sin Revue" are some of these. Another feature beyond the pictures is 15 interviews with writers in the field. A listing of the publishers, an index of pseudonyms used by most of the writers working in the genre, and a second index of the authors real names followed by their pseudonyms are found in the back matter. All in all, a copious collection of a vein of book cover art which also has material on the genre as an area of popular culture flourishing in the 1960s and influencing the culture's regard of sexual matter and treatment of it in following decades.