SEXIS WRONG

Lady Harpur from another source edition. He hadn’t read either.
Same book.
In May 1968 he issued Orgy of the Young Virgins by Sandra
Jameson, a photo-offset reprint of E.L. Publishing’s book of
the same name. Five months later Marvin issued The Debauched
Maiden by Kittin Haywood, a photo-offset of another
source edition. Again, same book; both reprints of the
classic A Town Bull.
Marvin put out the only openly published edition of The Lascivious
Hypocrite; Or, The Triumph of Vice, originally published
in 1890, an English translation of Le Tartuffe Libertin, an 1845
French erotic novel often
erroneously attributed to
Sade due to its false eighteenth-century
issue date.
He issued the only open
edition of Samuel Putnam’s
rare, masterful clandestine
manuscript-only English
translation of Antonio Vignale’s
sixteenth-century
classic of gay erotic facetiae,
La Cazzaria (The Book of
the Prick). He published the
first American edition of A
Diary of the Senses by Helen
Tucker, originally issued
in Paris by Oceanic Press
in 1958, the first book in
the English language and
perhaps any language to deal with transsexuality. He issued
a godawful translation of Denis Diderot’s 1748 ribald classic
of loquacious labia, Les Bijoux Indiscrets, under the title The
Talking Jewels (from his APS imprint; he’d later reissue the
novel as a Collector’s Publication under the title The Talking
Pussy).
Hungry for fine literature…with hot parts? Marvin issued a
photo-offset reprint of Joyce’s Ulysses, apparently reasoning
that the erotic aspects of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy would
more than offset the overwhelmingly nonerotic text. This is
the paperback Doorstop Edition, collating to 933 pages of
text plus 43 pages of ads.
Marvin commonly offset-reprinted books already offset-reprinted
by smaller publishers, merely changing the title and
author, cutting the other publishers’ introductions, or leaving
the introduction intact but cutting the name of its writer. He
did all the editing himself, not for content so much as a little
change here, a cut there to economize on the printing or provide
a legally distinguishable edition. He wasn’t very good at
it. For instance, he cut the name “Allan Saunders, M.A.” from
the introduction to a book from Continental Classics, a small
publisher out of Long Island City, New York, but neglected
to cut the first line from the last paragraph: “Continental
Classics is proud to present…” He issued photo-reprints of
photo-reprints published by Classical Novels and Collector’s
Editions, two small publishers of which we know nothing,
their copyright pages providing no identifying information
save for a date. He also found E.L. Publishers, a small operation
out of New York that published The National Registry
Official Swingers Publication, a great source for material. He
offset-reprinted a slew of their titles, many the first open editions
of American clandestine originals from the late 1940s
and early 1950s.
All porn publishers during the era had high spots in their catalogue;
all had low. There were many in between, oftentimes
so outlandishly ridiculous that it’s difficult to know whether
the author was unintentionally comic or deliberately so. By
way of illustration, we proudly present Collector’s Publications’
Cave Man Sex. Please, bear with me:
Mongoon stood in front of his dirt cave and
couldn’t for the life o’ him understand what those
crazy signs his wife was making meant but he
figured she wanted his cock inside her again, even
though he had balled her four times already this
morning. “Oo. Oo,” he said, scolding her for being
so bothersome. But then his cave man instinct
brought his cock up real high and real thick, so
he hit her over the head with his wood club, and
fucked her good and hard while she was still
unconscious.
That was how Mongoon liked taking his fucks,
with the women quiet like a sleeping dinosaur.
Mongoon’s wife was called Ah-ha-oh, a name that
sounds strange, but is really exciting and sexual
when grunted passionately. For Mongoon and Ahha
had no language as such….
Nor did the anonymous writer, who, though fitting somewhere
between hack and imbecile, provides a Joycean touch.
When we first meet the characters, they speak in a sort of
Chinese/Native American pidgin: “Itchy-ook no sleep with
Mongoon.” “Come, fuckie.” “No fuckie with Mongoon.” As
the story progresses, their language, like Stephen Dedalus’ in
Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, becomes more
sophisticated:
“Listen, Omer, you come up here immediately. If
she doesn’t think Mongoon’s son is good enough
for her, then she doesn’t deserve to be deserted
by you. Now, I want you to stop being a fool and I
242 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SEX IS WRONG