Through this first Checklist, I came into contact with Miss Damon, and because paperback lesbiana was blossoming on all the stands, we quickly resolved to publish another Checklist. I had fully intended to give Miss Damon full credit for her work last year; however, the mimeograph work on last year’s list was so poor, the quality of the paper so bad, and some unreliable reviewers fouled me up so badly on data, that I refused to foist off any portion of the blame on other shoulders.
The relaxing of censorship of recent years—as documented in the Supreme Court judgment relevant to Lady Chatterley’s Lover, etc.—has meant, in recent fiction, fewer taboos and in general a franker treatment of sexual themes. On the whole this is a good thing. However and unfortunately, it has also released a flood of trash and borderline erotica, of no literary worth and “interesting” only for the sexual content. Your editors have conscientiously waded through all this newsstand slush (and believe me, we get no kick out of it) because experience has taught us that even the worst peddlers of commercialized sex-trash sometimes come up with exceptionally well-written, honest and sincere work. For instance, Beacon Books (a subsidiary of Universal Publishing and Distributing Company)—some of whose paperback originals can be called printable only by the uttermost charity,—are currently also publishing the work of Artemis Smith, one of the major writers in the variant field today.
However, actually reviewing the majority of this stuff is impossible. Most of these books are not novels at all. They have impossibly complex plots—or no plots at all—since the story exists only as an excuse for the characters to jump into amorous exercise with the closest male, or female, or sometimes both. This sort of thing, “lesbian” only remotely, belongs more properly to the field of curiosa. One can, of course, display a Place Pigalle post card in a gallery with the Botticelli Venus, and classify them both as “nudes”. I personally consider this an insult to the Venus, and the devotee of “feelthy peectures” will find the restraint and taste of fine art too tame for his jaded tastes.
We are unalterably opposed to most censorship—but after wading through almost a hundred books whose only excuse for existence is to provide phony “thrills” for people too inhibited, too ignorant or too fearful to provide their own, well—- we think wistfully of some self-imposed standards of taste.
We also realize, flatly and realistically, that too much license in this stuff is going to bring on a wave of public reaction which may impose a sure-enough censorship—making the standards of the 1940s and 1950s look liberal.
Now obviously the field of homosexual literature is going to place a certain emphasis on the sexual problems of humanity which will be quantitatively greater than that of—say—the Western novel, or the detective story. Sex alone has not been made an excuse for consigning any novel to the trashbin. If the treatment is honest, the characters even remotely believable and the purpose of the book seems reasonably genuine, then the quantity of sex is purely a matter for the author’s discretion; and be it much, as in the works of March Hastings, Artemis Smith or Henry Miller, or little, as in Iris Murdoch’s delicate and subtle THE BELL, or Shirley Jackson’s THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE,—- we give the book judgment only on its merits as a book.
However, in self-defense, we have had to find a way to dispose of the more repetitive rubbish. Allowing for differences in taste, and granting that many people like their books well-spiced, if there is a reasonably well-written story along with the sex we have called it “Evening waster”—on the grounds that it may very well provide pleasant entertainment for anyone not a hopeless prude. But if the story is just a peg on which to hang up a lot of poorly written, gamy erotic episodes, with no literary value, and just evasive enough to keep the printer out of jail, then we have given it short shrift with the abbreviation “scv”—which cryptic letters are editorial shorthand for “Short Course in Voyeurism”—and have been the basis of a lot of jokes in the tedious business of passing reviews around the editorial staff (The junior and senior editors live a thousand miles apart and have never met; the others who occasionally contribute reviews are scattered from Alabama to Oregon.). So we have to have some fun in the endless correspondence—and “scv” books are fair game.
Regrettably, we are well aware that some people are going to use this designation in precisely the opposite fashion than we intended—- go through the list picking out the sexy books and carefully avoiding the others. Well—we shan’t spoil your fun. Each to her own taste, as the old lady said when she kissed the cow.
We wish here to give some slight acknowledgment to all those who, over the years since the initiation of this endeavor, have contributed overlooked titles, pointed out our errors, sent comments, criticisms and sometimes cash, laboriously tracked down elusive data, worked as unpaid researchers and stencil-cutters, and in general helped us to feel we were not working in a vacuum.
Special acknowledgments are due to Dr. Jeannette Howard Foster, unfailingly generous and gracious in allowing us to pick her brains; to Leslie Laird Winston, of the Winston Book Service; to the editors of THE LADDER, Del Martin in particular, for helping us to publicize our Checklist, and for allowing us to use reviews run in the Lesbiana column; to Forrest Ackerman, for endless help and encouragement; and to Kerry Dame, whose generous gift of stamps proved invaluable to the heavy load of correspondence necessary to keep this one-woman publishing house rolling. And to all those others, anonymous by choice, who have sent small gifts of cash and stamps, turned up elusive paperbacks for me in news-standless West Texas, contributed reviews and data, and, above all, provided cheer and encouraging support. We hope this Checklist is half as much fun for you to read as it was for us—all things considered—to prepare.