brian cassidy bookselle

19.
[Gay Interest]: [Pulp]
[Collection of 24 Gay-Themed
Pornographic Titles from Surrey Ltd.]
(Santee, CA): Surrey House, (1970-1979)
12mo. mass-market paperbacks. Original pictorial wrappers all. All
from publisher's “HIS 69” series. Generally very good to near fine.
The bibliographic case for porn has been made by many before us, and
better. Yet still this bookseller finds himself (perhaps somewhat
defensively) marshaling arguments in favor of the inclusion of some
two-dozen 70s-era porno pulps in a catalogue such as this. And when
he further scrutinizes his intentions, your cataloguer must admit
that such appeals are not merely the carnival barkings of a sideshow
book hawker; nor are they mere post-structuralist ass-covering. Instead,
he finds sincere interest in how, for example, these books'
identical formats (repeatedly 184pp.) and frequent lack of even a
title page reflect a possibly shaky but ultimately efficient business
model. Or how the publisher's subtle but regular name changes
(Surey, Surree, etc.) hint at both possible sub-rosa regurgitations of
content as well as perhaps lingering obscenity concerns. Or how
the two-word noun-modifier titling formula (TRUCKER’S TAIL, SCHOOL
MEAT, LUSTY LIFEGUARD, FARM BOY, TOWEL BOY, DICK DOCS, TRUCKER
COMIN’, etc.) suggest a thorough understanding of target markets.
Whatever the reasons, Surrey “turned out traditional pulp novels
of quality [and] represented the last true flourishing of gay pulps
until the ad-vent of Badboy Books in 1992” (Gunn and Harker, 1960s
GAY PULPS, U. of Mass. 2013, p. 15). Wait, what? Was that a university
press supporting quote? Really? Has this bookseller finally
protested too much? Per-haps. So we will instead resort to the
last refuge of the scoundrel salesman: scarcity. OCLC locates no
more than a handful of holdings for any of these titles, with the
same institutions repeatedly named. So there.
-900-
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