NEXT!

“The Mantis and the Moth” by Max Weatherly.
I am starting to question whether I actually even have any ability to discern good from trash. Maybe in books as in life “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
Because, again, I found this to be not trashy fiction at all.

Now, I don’t know if it is true, as the cover alerts me that “This book assures Mr. Weatherly a place alongside Truman Capote, Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers.” Because even though I have read all those folk I just cannot judge such a thing. And I also know that “The Ballad of the Sad Cafe” and “Other Voices Other Rooms” hit me pretty hard, in a way that this book doesn’t. But that could as easily be correspondent to the very different, much younger, place I read those other books in.

Still, it was good, it was dark, it was twisted, and reminiscent of my idol Shirley Jackson. Therefore I liked it but it didn’t hold a candle to “We Have Always Lived In The Castle” which is much more of a drama as well as a mind fuck.

Onward through the trash

“Jane-Emily” by Patricia Clapp.
Actually this one is not so very trashy. I grabbed it because I remembered liking it as a kid. And I still like it. A little ghosty, a little possession thing going on. I’m good with that.

All main characters are female and actually quite, quite, strong for a bunch of pre-suffragettes. It is really a story of five disparate women. It’s decent. I seem to recall reading it in the fourth grade. The copyright is ‘69 so that is possible. It’s probably not for that age normally, much more a YA thing.

Remedies

As a counter agent to one type of trashy fiction, I picked up this, and some other trashy fiction at UBU’s, super cheap, book sale. I can no resist the 50 cent books.
(And no, troll, that was not a typo, grammatical error or whatev.)

This was a classic Harlequin. Some fairly chaste kissing and a lifelong, inescapable, romance culminating in an honourable proposal of marriage in less than a week. Set in a romantic location ( Bahamas for this one) with just a smitch of research on local customs, foodstuffs, and imports and exports thrown in for veracity.

I had to exclaim “Oh no she dit-int” when the British, dowager, Grand-mama made a comment about “packs of darkies”. This sent me scrabbling around the front of the book looking for copyright dates. Apparently, while it was first published as “Nurse Incognito” by Harlequin in ‘64, there was an earlier, hardback, version in Britain. Still one would think, since this was reissued under its current title in ‘73, someone would have pointed out that that simply isn’t done anymore.

Edit: I just had to teach spellchek “darkies”. I think my point has been proved.

Whoa Nelly

I am not afraid of porn. I’m not particularly interested in it either.
I just read a filthy, filthy, book. And not filthy in a good way like Nitro von Borax’s “Pigglyland”. My cup of tea is like, looking at pictures of emo boys kissing or reading some mild erotica. Nothing too taxing or graphic. Having read “The Happy Hooker” when I was 10, then having lived the life I have, I am just too jaded to be thrilled by the hardcore.
When I picked up this particular novel that came with a load of books primarily comprised of self-help, christian mysticism, get rich schemes, vitamin bibles, and computer language manuals from Oliver's fathers estate I expected the male version of a bodice buster. Perhaps I might have a mild frisson', eh?

It says on the back cover “Mother’s Three Daughters" is one of the most famous works of fiction of the early twentieth century, thought to be the work of French novelist Pierre Louys, (I can’t find the umlaut anywhere, it should be over the Y), the author of “Aphrodite”.
It goes on to summarize the plot and then quotes Wayland Young saying
“ A notable modern novel written out of a perverse compulsion.... This is one of the largest and most real presentations of the whore-charachter in European fiction.”
If only that had meant something to me at the time!

The cover art did nothing to warn me either. As usual you just can’t take the era out of the girl. The three models in the photo are so definitively from the late 60’s, early 70’s. No amount of faked up, turn of the century, chemises and pantaloons could ever convince anyone otherwise. As well as so clearly not being 10, 14 and 20 years old like the prostitutes in the story. Oh, did I not mention that two of the prostitutes were under 15? The most sadistic and jaded one being the 10 year old? Anne Rice’s weak attempts at a titillating baby vampiress has NOTHING on this.

I will never, ever, think of the victorians and post vicky’s the same way again. Corphragy, sadism, incest, anal, bestiality and really, really, naughty, potty mouths. This so totally explains why generations all around that era were so completely conflicted. And here I was wondering what the hell was going on with Japanese porn lately, what I thought was a “sudden and new” obsession with corphragy, it turns out is just another turn of the wheel.

I am way out of my league with this one, I think a couple months strict diet of children's books is needed to put my digestion back in order.

(Did I mention the male narrator is a royal asshole?)