Lesbian Pulp Fiction. Katherine V. Forrest
never again so notably lesbian nor remotely successful as the book that launched the tidal wave of lesbian fiction.
Fawcett Gold Medal was the leading publisher in pulp fiction (Tereska Torres, Ann Bannon, Vin Packer), but other significant publishers were Avon (Randy Salem); Bantam (Shirley Verel, Della Martin); Beacon (March Hastings, Randy Salem, Artemis Smith); Hillman (Kay Martin); Monarch (Marion Zimmer Bradley writing as Miriam Gardner); and Midwood Tower (Randy Salem, Joan Ellis).
The diversity and quality of what I found not only surprised me, it dictated a necessity for parameters. So, before proceeding further, I’ll explain what those are and why you will not see excerpts from books you may fully expect to find here.
Since the intent (and title) of the collection is Lesbian Pulp Fiction, the decision to do it justice by confining the selections to books published as original paperbacks seemed obvious. Hardcover fiction could be its own separately rewarding venture, at another time. To my dismay, the decision immediately led to the first major omission, the beloved classic novel The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, written under the pseudonym Claire Morgan. Some of us (including myself) first found and read it in paperback; but its initial 1952 publication was in hardcover from Coward-McCann.
The golden age of the lesbian pulps by definition limited the historical timeframe: the first paperback was issued by Pocket Books in 1950. This precluded prior decades and superb novels, including that cornerstone of all our lesbian literature, Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928). Hall’s decade, by the way, saw major lesbian-themed work by giants of world literature, Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein. Notable pre-1950 and hardcover novels are listed in the bibliography.
One book excerpted here, The King of a Rainy Country by Brigid Brophy (1957), requires mention for an odd reason: its publisher. Anyone with knowledge of the publishing industry would challenge the presence of Alfred A. Knopf on a list of paperback publishers. But the novel is indeed a paperback, its publisher explaining on the back cover its reasons for this “experiment.” Obviously the format was subsequently deemed an unsuccessful experiment for Knopf.
In Lee Server’s Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers (2002), Marijane Meaker recalled the instructions given to her by Gold Medal editor Dick Carroll: “The only restriction he gave me was that it couldn’t have a happy ending… Otherwise the post office might seize the books as obscene.” Her introduction to Spring Fire’s 2004 reissue addresses at greater length the conversation with Carroll, and how the mandatory ending of the book—madness and suicide—came to be.
When Three Women (1958) by March Hastings (Sally Singer) was reissued by Naiad Press in 1989 she insisted on revising it to the positive ending she would have given it had she been allowed to do so by editors at Beacon. “To compare the two endings of Three Women would require a book of its own,” she says today. “We all know the publishing climate in those days: same sex affection is out of the mainstream loop in this country, therefore, give it to us overtly for fun and games (hetero titillation) but make sure you tack on an ending of misery, punishment, sadness—that was the commercial voice, loud and distinct.” But she also remembers, “The voice of survival said to me, ‘Give them what they ask for now. You will have your way, later.’ Personally, I was both optimistic and nervous. I had a true and beautiful readership that I cherished. I gave them my integrity in the story-middle, and the feelings there implied our secret pact that one day it would all come right—which it did.”
Ann Bannon remembers no specifically stated restrictions for her first Gold Medal novel published five years later, and avers that not one word was changed in the manuscript of Odd Girl Out she turned in to Dick Carroll. No matter. The tenor of the times, its rigid moral framework, were crystal clear to her, and she produced remarkable, vivid, crucially important fiction within the dictates of that framework. Ironically, a great value of her books today is their unvarnished reflection of their times. Irony indeed when books of this period were for a time regarded as an embarrassment and generally repudiated by feminists during the ’70s and ’80s for their depiction of a “self-hating” world. The historical perspective of our post-feminist world has restored the luster these books deserve for their sexual courage, exemplified by Cleis Press’s reissues of Spring Fire and the Ann Bannon novels with covers reflective of their initial publication.
Back in those days, when the vast majority of lesbians were like isolated islands with no territory other than risky lesbian bars to call our own, and no way of finding more than a few of one another, we were in every way susceptible to accepting and even agreeing with the larger culture’s condemnation of us. We despairingly hoped that stories in the original paperbacks would not end badly but realized that in the view of the larger society, “perversion” could have no reward in novels about us, even those we ourselves wrote. For unrepentant lesbian characters who did not convert to heterosexuality, madness, suicide, homicide awaited, or, at best, “noble” self-sacrifice, such as Stephen Gordon surrendering Mary Llewellyn to Martin Hallam in The Well of Loneliness.
The good news: it’s not true that all but a precious few of these books ended badly.
Most of us believe that The Price of Salt is the first lesbian novel with a happy ending—Therese and Carol end up together—although it’s tempered by the steep price Carol pays for her relationship with Therese, the loss of her son. Aside from the lyrical beauty of Highsmith’s writing (“It would be Carol in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell…”), the affirmation of the ending is a prime reason why the novel is treasured by so many lesbians.
The first unadulterated happy ending actually belongs to a novel published more than a decade earlier, in 1938: Torchlight to Valhalla by Gale Wilhelm (reissued by Naiad Press, 1985). A slender, elegant, finely written novel despite its heavily Hemingwayesque prose, its main character is Morgen, a writer; and much of the novel is taken up with her resistance to her persevering male suitor, Royal. When she first sees Toni she understands instantly her every reluctance toward heterosexuality: “I didn’t know what I was waiting for, I didn’t even know I was waiting, but when I saw you I knew.” The love scenes between the two are spare, delicate, and exquisite; and the two women end up together.
Some pulp novels of the ’60s have alternative outcomes, if not precisely happy ones. In Chris, Randy Salem’s classic 1959 novel, Chris rejects both Carol and Dizz to salvage her self. In the Shadows by Joan Ellis (1962) ends with Elaine, who is in love with her brother’s wife, leaving her possessive husband to find her own future. In the final scene of Ann Bannon’s Odd Girl Out, Laura is in a train station going off to “live my life as honestly as I can.”
Some endings are even better. In These Curious Pleasures by Sloane Britain (1961), it’s a triumph for the lesbian reader when Sloane, the novel’s main lesbian character, asks Allison to see if a reservation is available on Allison’s flight to the coast (the equivalent, in those dark times, of asking Allison to marry her)—only to discover that Allison, in hope, had made one for the two of them the day before. In The Third Street by Joan Ellis (1964), Karen leaves her husband for Pat; and in Odd Girl by Artemis Smith (1959), Anne ditches husband Mark, and chooses Pru over two-timing married Esther. All five of the Bannon novels end either with women together or going off to an open future. Paula Christian’s Edge of Twilight (1959) and Another Kind of Love (1961) end positively, as do Valerie Taylor’s The Girls in 3-B (1959) and Return to Lesbos (1963).
The Third Sex (1959) by Artemis Smith is notable on several counts. Its last line is a celebratory toast: “To Ruth and Joan, who are no longer alone.” Like the Ann Bannon oeuvre, it takes place in an authentic gay milieu, contains portraits of gay men as well as lesbians, and features a marriage of convenience—lesbian Joan is married to gay Marc for mutual protection. It also portrays a stone butch (Kim) with a femme (Joan), and Joan’s sexual exploration and fluidity of sexual roles are a precursor to lesbian behavior today.
Clearly, many of the writers of that era, like March Hastings, maintained an integrity of vision and did their best to write what they wanted to write. The jacket copy writers were the ones who did society’s work