Pervert’s Library

by Hugh Jones
Published in 1965 by Brandon House

This early representative of the pseudo-sociological exposé is a tough one to review for a couple of reasons. First, unlike many books of this genre that followed, this book does a fairly good job of selling the notion that it is reporting the unvarnished truth about its subject matter. Second, it somehow manages to straddle the imaginary exploitation line of simultaneously condemning and glamorizing the people it mentions.

The first clue that the “facts” we’re about to be introduced to may not be on the up and up, is that the foreword was penned by the imminent pseudo-psychiatrist Dr. Leathem. The appearance of a byline featuring the extraordinarily prolific Dr. Leathem is fair warning that you’re leaving the hallowed halls of the academia to peer through the glory hole in the men’s room stall.

Jones begins by explaining what a fetish is. Surprisingly, rather than suggest that having a fetish is in and of itself clear evidence that one is pathological, Jones takes the position (notably progressive for its time) that a having a fetish may or may not require psychiatric intervention.

Each chapter is devoted to a particular fetish and the book is devoted to the most common fetishes. Oddly, even though this book covers 15 or so fetish categories it is notably thin on lurid details, kinky or otherwise.

The standout chapter in this one is the one devoted to a tight jeans fetish. I’ve read about lots of fetishes (including some that make even me – and likely Jones too if he were familiar with them – cringe) and have never encounter a fetish for tight pants. Don’t get me wrong, there’s likely no bigger booster of hip huggers worn on the right hips than myself, I just never contemplated them as fetish wear per se.

That isn’t why I found this chapter so interesting though. Rather what made it fun to read was that rather than relay accounts from the perspective of a man that enjoyed tight pants, Jones wrote this chapter from the perspective of girls who enjoy the attention they get as a result of wearing them. As the story goes, a certain manufacturer sends out samples of the newest styles to select clubs of girls around the country. The girls then sit around and discuss the merits of the pants and report their thoughts back to the manufacturer. I suspect that the dynamic was supposed to mimic Beatles fan clubs and the like. It’s priceless at any rate.

At the end of the book, Jones includes a selected bibliography that lists most of the famous psychological books about fetishes. This was a nice touch that helps sell the notion that the book is reporting the facts. Unfortunately, I’m still not buying it.

Given the year when this book was published, it’s not too surprising that the book plays coy. Publishers had to be careful to keep their material above board lest it be subject to censorship. Still, this book plays it too safe and fails to either educate or titillate.

If you want vivid, heart pounding erotica, this is not the book for you. But as an early time capsule of erotica disguised as educational material, The Sexual Fetish in Today’s Society is a winner.

by Robert H. Sheldon
Published in 1968 by Viceroy Books

I approached this book with a bit of trepidation and uncertainty as to whether I would be able to finish it. It was not because I don’t like perversion. Anyone who knows me well will vouch for my deep affinity for perversion. The back cover which features the word “incest” in large type caused my uncertainly. While the first (thankfully) short chapter is devoted book is devoted to that very topic.

With a title that promised perversion, I had hoped the book would take me for a shocking journey into the recesses of the depraved sexual mind. Instead, I journeyed back in time, specifically San Francisco in the 60s at the height of hippie culture.

Having been born after the 60s, and having parents who were anything but counterculture, it’s sometimes hard to relate to the turmoil and confusion of the Vietnam era. While I often hear people who lived through 60s talk about sweeping social revolutions and the incumbent fears that they produced, it usually comes across as self-aggrandizement. Old hippies can claim that they ended the war in Vietnam all they want, but they’re full of shit. In fact, I’m certain the Vietcong weren’t sitting around in their tunnels hoping that the next “Love In” was going to be the one that put the peace movement over the top.

But I digress. Good exploitation takes the worst fears of the middle class and puts them on garish display. By that standard, this book is an example great exploitation. (The implied bestiality didn’t hurt matters either.) Most of the tales follow the sexual exploits of outsiders, be they bikers, hippies, the young, blacks, and so on. I can imagine the various exploits of sex and drugs would make the average middle class Midwestern hausfrau flip her wig.

Readers with modern sensitivities may find themselves shocked by some of the racist language in the book. While I learned a new slur “ofay” (a slang term for crackers like myself), it’s not one that I’m likely to ever use. Oh, there’s a lots of uses of the “nigger” thrown in the mix too. Particularly humorous when a character is touting their virtues as sex partners.

If you want an accurate historical document of sexual outsiders, I can’t really recommend Perversion and Beyond, but if you want insight into the fears of the middle class during the end of the 60’s, you can’t go wrong.

by Cliff Barrett, Ph.D.
Published in 1972 by Impact Library

Though the attention grabbing cover blurbs promise insight into a world of women who either “live and love by whip and pain and twisted torture” and “…females who attain amazing summit fulfillment by painful agony aberrations,” Whip Worship reads more like a series of random stories thrown together willy-nilly instead of a cohesive narrative of any form.

The first scene of the book is a rather standard case history of two teenage sisters. (Well, the tale they tell of turning tricks while hitchhiking isn’t exactly standard but the “case study” format of the concerned psychologist is.)

Next, we are then treated to a first person account of a group of soldiers enjoying the spoils of war. Even though the gangbang triple penetration described therein is arousing, the abrupt shift in writing styles is abrupt so much so that it proves distracting.

There’s little need to describe the rest of the scenes – they vacillate from tired third person narratives of sadistic prostitution rings to the confession of a depraved bisexual masochist – the sort of girl that fantasies are made of – to an upper class masochistic man who enjoys the charms of street urchins of both sexes. It’s the last vignette I mentioned that serves both as a crescendo of depravity and the books’ highlight. Despite the fact that it wasn’t at all arousing to me sexually, the vivid descriptions of enjoying cunnilingus with a VD sufferer and the glass table show made me feel a little morally superior. No matter how twisted or demented my fantasies might become, I can take solace in the fact that I haven’t sunk quite as low as Mr. Upper Crust.

In sum, this is a mess of a book. Readers who enjoy their smut straight, predictable, and internally consistent should stay away. However, sick fucks like me will find themselves happy.

by Valerie Solanas
Published in 1996 by AK Press

Valerie Solanas who is most famous for attempting to assassinate Andy Warhol originally wrote and self-published SCUM Manifesto in 1966 if the epilogue’s publishing history is to be believed (other sources I found cite the date as 1968). Though Solanas’ diatribe against men and society in general never explicitly mentions what the acronym SCUM stands for, it is popularly recalled as an acronym for Society for Cutting Up Men.

This book isn’t much of a sex book, so you might wonder why I listed it here. To Solanas, sex is an activity devoid of value to women. Her claims of asexuality and hope for a future completely devoid of sex are evidence of a sex obsession more pervasive than and destructive as sex addiction. There are also the last few passages which I’ll address later.

Seemingly produced during fits of mania interspersed with short bits of depressed transitions, it doesn’t take long to realize that SCUM Manifesto is clearly the product of a deranged mind. No wonder I enjoyed it.

Solanas’ use of then-current slang is particularly charming . Solanis often describes women, or at least the ones that share her viewpoint, as “groovy.” On the ohter hand men, in Solanas’ view, are creatures almost wholly incapable of doing anything of any worth. As she wrote, “The male has a negative Midas touch – everything he touches turns to shit.” She also is a strong critic of capitalism and the money system; claiming that so long as they are existent women will never be able to reach their full potential.

If there is anything kinky about this book it is the ending where the final few pages read like they were intended as a primer for Femdoms. She writes of men in the SCUM Men’s Auxiliary:

“…SCUM will conduct Turd Sessions, at which every male present will give a speech beginning with the sentence: “I am a turd, a lowly, abject turd,” then proceed to list all the ways in which he is. His reward for so doing will be the opportunity to fraternize after the session for a whole, solid hour with the SCUM who will be present…”

Coming in at just the right length for what it is, SCUM Manifesto is a fun and entertaining read.

by Sean Greene
Published in 1968 by Ram Classics

I’m at a loss to describe this book – this may well be the most disturbing thing I’ve ever read. It isn’t without its merits I suppose, but frankly I would hope that no one would seek out this book.

While “The Gang Bangers” promises an expose of devotees of “multiple sex,” instead it delivers a sickening stream of rape, incest, and pedophilia. Like so many other books of this ilk, “The Gang Bangers” recounts the therapy sessions of our narrator as he counsels a family of deviates. Usually the label “deviate” seems more comical than anything else. That’s not the case here.

This tale begins with an introduction to Barbara, the daughter. One by one we meet the son, the mother, and the father. While the descriptions of their early sexual experiences are designed to titillate, the non-stop stream of what we now know as child molestation is anything but erotic. This lurid tale reaches its apex when Mary, one of the family’s counselors, lets go of her professionalism and succumbs to her own carnal desires.

One of the few interesting moments in this book is when we meet the father. We read about his earliest sexual experiences which consist of incest and rape. Just as we think we’ve reached the sickening depth of human perversion, we learn the father has an even more shocking sexual secret – brace yourself for it – the father has had homosexual relations.

The only positive thing (and this is a stretch not remotely worth the price of admission) about this book is how vividly it represents is the changing societal views of sexual abuse since the 60s. Still, I found it difficult to reconcile how descriptions of child sexual abuse are treated in a matter of fact tone, while it was the revelation of the father’s homosexual experience that draws the author’s most scornful words: “The faggot father – the deviated daddy…” It was enough to make me cringe with nervous laughter.

Tacked onto the end of this book is a trip to Alabama to meet with Lorenzo’s three lovers. The only thing this tale adds is a bit of gender balance to the sickening proceedings; unlike the other encounters of gang banging, this scene features several women and one man.

Were we simply presented with the three meat market women and their encounter with the butcher, this scene might have had erotic possibility. However, our author found it necessary to give case histories to the three aggressive women and we’re “treated” to more descriptions of rape and abuse. (Let me just add if you’re going to do that with a sausage, for the love of God, have enough sense to use a condom.)

by Jill Baker Boyle
Published in 1969 by Ram Classics

This book is the “autobiographical” account of Jill’s travels across the U.S. as she meets men and women that she has met through adult personal ads.

As our tale begins, Jill is home in Los Angeles with her husband, Lance, and her lesbian lover, Elise, preparing to bid them adieu as she departs in her van for a year of carnal adventures. After a goodbye evening of “triple loving,” Jill discovers her lovers have a surprise for her going away present: a painter has added “Hi-Ways and Bi-Ways” to the back of her customized van.

Jill’s first stop on her adventure is a meeting with a shy young lesbian, Joan, who lives a mere ten miles away. Inside Hi-Ways and Bi-Ways, Jill introduces Joan to the joys of lesbianism while parked outside the Laundromat. Before Jill departs, she plays matchmaker for Joan and her landlord.

Pressing forward on her journey, Jill travels to San Francisco to meet Mark. After a few days of shared passion and a night of drunkenness, Jill and Mark make their way to meet with Mark’s old girlfriend, Cora. Mark and Cora’s earlier romance ended because Mark was a high class boy and Cora was a girl born on the wrong side of the tracks. I won’t spoil the action for you, but this tryst contains the book’s best line “Take off that cheap nightie, baby, and let me see those tits of yours.”

Jill’s heads to Denver to meet a young married couple, Kansas City to meet a frumpy librarian with an interest in dildos, on to Chicago to meet with a transvestite named Robert, and finally to Indiana to meet yet another shy young lesbian, Lois.

We learn that Lois lives on a farm with her brother, Tom, and his wife, Wilma. Tom turns out to be an abusive drunk and Wilma is the object of Lois’ desires. Eventually, all four of them have an encounter on the farm which culminates in the best visual scene in the book. I can only describe it thus: garden hose enema.

When Jill tires of fun and frolic at the farm, she and Lois head to New York, the last stop in Jill’s itinerary. Jill plans to attend a private sex party and the final scene really heats up. You’ll have to read the book to see how it all ends.