Space Base!

xNovel!

Here's a sleazy one - a site called xNovel, featuring PDFs and cover scans of classic adult novels! And it's free. You can even torrent all 1300+ novels at a go, if you like. xNovel is searchable, and is arranged by date (of entry to the collection, not publication), author, and (my favourite) series.

As cinematic porn was in robust full bloom during the 70s and 80s, you may well ask why people bothered reading their smut? Different strokers and all that, but it is interesting to note that three fetishes keep coming up over and over again in this deluge of engorged sex paragraphs and amusing social justification.

These three fetishes, oddly enough, are big targets for prosecution when they're depicted onscreen (so, as we've seen before, mediums restrict/determine content, and because of this may in turn cause other mediums with differing restrictions/determinations to be produced. It's the same reason you see so many pairs of tight white underwear on these paperback covers).

The fetishes in question are: incest, S&M, and bestiality.

The later was the biggest shock in looking over these old whackbacks; it never ceases to amaze me what a market there was for this sort of thing in the late 70s/early 80s. In fact, I would like to examine that in some greater detail - but we'll save that for another post [Here that is, by the way!].

For the moment, here's some very sleazy (non bestiality-related) covers from xNovel's collection. Almost certainly not safe for work.

Incest themed -







the hard stuff -






Even incest combined with S&M -



Like porn films, these book covers often emphasize watching, the kink of voyeurism - which, as film watchers or book readers, we too are taking part in.


Similarly, one feature of these covers I love is that of the shocked observer. They let us feel the agony with the ecstasy, the shock with the titillation, the shame with the joy. Everybody wins. Here's a few good examples.




Sometimes the shock comes from the innuendo...



...sometimes from the utter lack thereof.


There's an awful lot of sucking going on.









Plenty of word play.




In some cases, a picture really is worth a thousand words. What has this poor girl done to earn such ridicule? Suggest heavy petting as a viable alternative?


Can you believe there was a paperback adult novel called Glory Hole Cop?


And finally -



DON"T MISS THE SEQUEL TO THIS BARRAGE --
THE BESTIALITY EDITION!!!

Lobsang Rampa!

I started buying books by Tuesday Lobsang Rampa when I was still a teenager. They were fairly common in the used book stores and second-hand charity shops I frequented, and I liked both the covers and the subject matter.

I started with "The Third Eye", which, unbeknownst to me, was Rampa's first work (published in 1956) & his biggest hit; here, he tells of life studying to be a lama in a Tibetan Buddhist mountain enclave. The title refers to trepanation, a procedure in which a hole is bored into the forehead, piercing the skull and - in this case at least - granting Rampa special powers.

"The instrument penetrated the bone. A very hard, clean sliver of wood had been treated by fire and herbs and was slid down so that it just entered the hole in my head. I felt a stinging, tickling sensation apparently in the bridge of my nose. It subsided and I became aware of subtle scents which I could not identify. Suddenly there was a blinding flash. For a moment the pain was intense. It diminished, died and was replaced by spirals of colour."

I knew nothing at the time of Rampa's life beyond the books, nothing of Cyril Henry Hoskins. There was no internet at that time, remember. And frankly, it never occurred to me to question the veracity of what was being described.

I just liked the stories - exotic adventure tales that were rustic yet psychedelic, with passages full of wonder and the fantastic. Not to mention buttered tea and tsampa.

If you are interested, there are a couple of sites offering Rampa's books as free PDFs, complete with the drawings that appeared in the originals. Dude's even on Facebook.

Mammon!

Located in a copy of "Only Words" by Catharine MacKinnon of all things.

666 Under The Skin!

Details from a hand-out I received in front of Honest Ed's on Bloor Street in Toronto.

Who Walk In Darkness!

I first read "Who Walk In Darkness" when I was 19 or 20, working as a security guard. For a few weeks I was assigned to work in an apartment complex for retirees, and there I found a tattered paperback copy of the novel - on a small shelf of books in a commonroom, a sort of tiny library for the residents of the building.

Over the next week or so, I devoured the book on my dinner breaks. I loved the writing so much (and this copy was so beat up anyways) that I considered stealing it. In the end I decided against such action, and left "Who Walk In Darkness" where it was.

Years later, I found another copy and that is the edition you see above. The original copy I read 'on the job' had the greenish cover with a couple walking, seen below.




A trawl of the internet suggests, remarkably enough, that "Who Walk In Darkness" is now relatively unknown. First published in 1952, this was Chandler Brossard's debut novel, and was set in the Greenwich Village of the late 1940s - a bohemian scene in which apparently straight-laced young people "smoke tea" (pot), listen to jazz, slack off in general, and have intense conversations.

The story behind the novel is an interesting one, and told in some detail here. In a nutshell, Brossard based some characters in the book on people he knew in the scene (notably Anatole Broyard), and this caused no small amount of trouble; in fact, legal considerations led to the novel published in France being considerably different than the one published in North America (hence the note on the cover regarding the 'suppressed version').

Whether you see it as the first beat novel, the first hip novel (or new wave novel), or even the American existential novel, "Who Walk In Darkness" is well worth seeking out. It was reissued in 2000, so you shouldn't have too much trouble finding a copy.