No Lust Tonight by Don Elliott aka Robert Silverberg (Midnight Reader #429, 1962)

This one reads more like a Loren Beauchamp than a Don Elliott, if that is even possible, being both are Silverberg, but the Beauchamps always seemed to have a bit of a darker overtone than the Elliotts,

This one opens with a burglary in the house of the Lamsons, a fairly well to do couple. The burglar ties the husband up and forces him to watch the rape of his wife, Moira. But there is something odd: the burglar resembles Lamson in body sizem hair, etc., and it almsot seems like Moira knows who her rapist is…she does go frigid and starts to see a psychiarist…and the shrink violates all codes of medical ethics by telling the husband what the wife says in the sessions. (Reminds me of soemthing from the TV show Mad Men where the main guy pays a shrink to make his wife believe there is something wrong with her.)

The shrink also suspects Moira knows her rapist, that he is a man from her past, a guy who “got away” and she only married Lamson because he resembles this guy. This turns out to be true,  the guy is an ex-boxer turned small time crook and pimp of Greenwich Village bar hookers. Moira had dated him but would not sleep with him unless they married, so he jilted her.

Lamson sets the guy up for a fall and…

You can read the book for what happens. Not a bad read, as always with Silverberg,

 

Pickup – Don Elliott aka Robert Silverberg (Sundown Reader, 1964)

A nice crime noir from Silverberg toward the end of his stint with Greenleaf Cornith. This one is about a criminal, Jimmy, traveling across the U.S., going from one woman to another, robbng gas stations and stores for money. He is running away from a painful break-up; he was with Maureen, a woman he loved, for years, and one day he catches her in bed with another woman. He is a bit oif an old-fashioned prude, lesbians make him sick. Now he hurts women to get back at Maureen, or all of womankind, “you witches are all the same” — he makes women fall for him, then he leaves them heartbroken the way he was.

Until he meets a hooker in a hotel bar, Helena, and the table gets turned…right off she pegs him as a killer, especially when she finds his gun with the silencer. As the cover blurb states: “Passion threw him into a cesspool of sin!”

Well, a fun read, as always with the Don Elliotts.

 

Diary of a Dyke by Don Elliott aka Robert Silverberg (Pleasure Reader, 1967)

I really wonder if Robert Silverberg penned this one for a couple of reasons: the publication date is 1967 and he has written that he stopped writing these books around 1965, although it is possible the manuscript sat around at Greenleaf for a year or two (half a dozen came out in 1966); and it does not jive with Silverberg/Elliott’s sytle, which always had a dark side…this book is light and airy and often funny.

It is the diary of a woman who has jsut turned 32 and is bored with lesbian sex. She engaged in a six girl orgy and yawned. She has been with men before, so she is really bu but prefers girls…until she sleeps with a VP at her work, Tom, and she her interest in sex is rekindled…maybe she will go straight, as many lesbian novels at the time had the characters do,

Around the same time, Lawrence Block wrote three diary-like lesbian novels as Jill Emerson…one, I Am Crious Thirty, is about a woan turning from 29 to 30 and wondering about her sexuality…in fact these two books are quite similar.

Silverberg claims that no other writer used the Don Elliott name, and only one, Carnal Counselor, was frmed out to a ghostwriter when he could not make a deadine.

Either way, a fun read.

Would-Be Sinner by Don Elliott aka Robert Silverberg (Evening Reader #1215, 1965)

This is, perhaps, the best of all the Silverberg Don Elliotts we have read so far, perhaps because its subject matter is of great interest, and close to home (or fantasy) of the author.

Michael Storm is a whirlwind success of a first novelist, stuck in the second novel hell — can he produce a wonderful follow-up or is he but a one-hit-wonder?

In his late 20s, he was working a PR man who had a way with words, a copy wizard, and while he was capable of making a good living doing that, he yearned for more, and two women in his life knew it; they in fact urged him to write a novel, one a girl at the office, Eileen, whose gives her virginity to him, and one a wanton but wealthy bi-sexual lawyer, who offers to be his patron, or sugar momma, giving him what money he needs so he can quit working and focus on writing his novel. (As for the reality of that, these women are really out there, we here have experienced that first-hand.)

He writes an enormous, 323,000-word tome on Madison Avenue and the American Dream, accepted based on a partial.  The publisher knows this will be heralded as an American classic of modern times, and it is: great reviews, great sales, movie rights to Hollywood, all kinds of foreign rights sales — Storm makes $200,000 in the first year, quite a chunk of change for the early 1960s, and if invested right, he could live comfortably foe the rest of his life…he need not ever write another word again…but he wants to, he wants a second, third, more novels…but does he have them inside him?  Can he acquire, as the cover copy states, “a sin career”?

He finds many women are eager to sleep with a famous author…and when he goes out to Los Angeles to work on the treatment for a film to his book, working on a studio lot, he finds an endless supply of would be actresses and secretaries and PAs to have sex with, so much that h soon becomes bored for th lack of the chase and challenge.

Back in New York, he befriends Harris Merrill, an author ten years his senior who had one smash-hit novel, a classic, and never wrote again (like a female version of Harper Lee); instead, in his 10-room Park Avenue abode, he dives into LSD, peyote, shrooms, and having wild sex orgies on the drugs.  Storm tries it and fears becoming just like Merrill. We cannot help but wonder if Merrill is loosely based on Philip K. Dick…(Note here, Silverberg has people waiting 3-4 hours at a psiocybin party to take effect, when the effect of that drug really takes 30-60 minutes to start…and he has Storm throw up after taking them, when vomitting is more a part of peyote, not psiolocybin.)

After Merrill’s OD and death, the darkness inspired Storm to writ his second novel, also a masterpiece.

But what of love? A wife? Can a man have the whole world and be alone?  Storm finds out no, that it all is meaningless until he has someone to share it with.

The ins ans outs of the publishing business makes for an interesting read, the giant blockbuster of a novel with fortune and fame a fantasy for the young Silverberg, unlike the hustling life of a paperback hack found in Thirst for Love as David Challon.

This one should get a reprint.

Two Don Elliotts We Would Like to Find

Those Who Lust by Don Elliott aka Robert Silverberg (Leisure Books, 1967) and Those Who Watch by Robert Silverberg (Signet, 1967)

Another erotic novel set on a yacht!   Kathryn is recently divorced, no easy task as her ex- would not grant her the dissolution at first. To celebrate, she goes out with her lawyer, gets drunk, and winds up sleeping with her lawyer, despite the fact she does not like him or find him attractive.  Then an old flame from her teen years shows up and she sleeps with him too.  She walls into the typical “wild divorcee” nude.

She sees an ad, a woman is looking for “ravel companions” on a yacht around the world. The woman, Carla, and her co-hort, is of the idle rich who likes to play sexual games: getting straight woman on the boat and “turning” them in lesbian orgues.

Kathryn is ready for the turn…

Those Who Lust is not a remarkable story, for Don Elliott/Silverberg, but what is apparent is that the prose is more confident and smooth than the 1960-62 Don Elliotts.  By 1967, Silvernberg, 12 years now as a professional writer, sharted showing maturity, as evident in his SF during that time.

In fact, an SF book published the same year as Those Who Lust is Those Who Watch, about a UFO crash in New Mexico and aliens who have been keeping their eye on humanity.  There is a Kathryn in this one too…

Is she the same Kathyrn? Did Kathryn from Those Who Lust, after her lesbian romp sea voyage,m move to New Mexico and get entangled with aliens?

It’s fun to think so…

Lust Demon by Don Elliott aka Robert Silverberg (Sundown Reader #376, 1966)

This s a novelized version of a short story in Illicit Affair by Mark Ryan. Common practice of the prolific writer: if you have no new ideas, expand an old short story.  So the story is basically Chapter One of Lust Demon.

Opens with a man named Carter driving from San Francisco to L.A. on the coast.  Half-way, he spots a naked woman sunning on the beach. He stops to talk to her.  Her name is Judy.  She’s gorgeous, built, athletic, blonde, tanned. She seems to be a free love type of the era and soon he has his clothes off and they’re fucking on the deserted beach…she suggests a swim. They go out, and she clamps her muscular legs around him and pulls him under the water, drowns him, and leaves his body to sink.

In the story, that’s all we get, a sorta cautionary tale about you never know what strangers will do, hinting at maybe the girl is some sort of demon siren out to get passing men. In the novel, we learn of her motivations: Judy simply hates all men, and she uses their own desires for her against them, and kills them.

She was raped at sixteen by her own brother, a haunting memory of incest.  She was raped two years later when she got drunk in a bar, still in despair about the disgust of the first rape, and a kindly middle aged man who helps her then rapes her, too.

In college, she decides to get revenge by making men fall in love with her and then breaking their hearts; making them grovel at her feet and crawl on their knees. Then she meets a man she actually falls in love with, thinks she will marry, and then he does the same to her: after three months, he kicks her out. He has his own revenge issues with women.

Several years later, she crosses paths with this man and invites him to her secluded cottage in the hills near the beach.  It’s a romantic night but she has revenge in her heart and kills him, and drags his body to the ocean.  The next two men she kills in the ocean. Carter was her fourth.

Thus far, the men have been reported missing or deemed suicides, but she wonders if the cops will ever get wise to what she is doing…

Everyone sees her as a quiet if kooky blonde hermit who makes pottery to sell to tourists.  Nearby in a cottage are two lesbians she sometimes has a threesome with.

One day a man is waiting at her door. She fears he might be a cop. He says his car broke down and needs to use a phone. This and that, he spends the night. The sex between them is rough and violent — he can match her moves, smacks her around, draws blood, and they both like it.  Without being too graphic, Silverberg deft handles the scene where Judy muses about biting his willywhacker off as she fellates him:

Abruptly, she brought her teeth into play. She kept her lips over them while she was caressing him, but now she pulled her lips back and let her sharp, white little teeth close in on him. Slowly, she brought her jaws together, a fraction of an inch at at a time. She knew that it must be painful for him. But he didn’t say a word, not even a murmur.

Judy took her mouth away from him. She looked up and saw him studying her with interest.

She said, “I’ve hot very strong jaws.  One good snap — whose the boss then?” (p. 150)

She hears a news item on the radio about a man on the run who murdered his wife and another man, and the description of the man fits her new lover, as well as the make of his car.  He admits he’s on the run. She tells him about her murders. She thinks she has found a kindred soul because she is not the lust demon — he is, the violent sex they had is nothing like she’s ever had, and everything she always secretly wanted.

This is the sort of psychological sexual horror that became popular in the 1980s. Silverberg, like Lawrence Block with his Shaw title, The Sadist, was ahead of the trend curve here.

It’s a good, swift read. Recommended, as most Silverberg Elliotts, Eliots, Beauchamps and Challons are.

Many of the latter books Silverberg wrote for Cornith in 1965-67 tend to be on the kinky, S/M and violent side, perhaps a foreshadow of the type of dark, sexual SF he produced a few years later.

A 1966 book — we are amazed whenever we read a book the same year we were born, thinking this little paperback was out there on the stands when we were just an infant sucking on our  mother’s teat.

Flesh Pawns by Don Elliott aka Robert Silverberg (Sundown Reader #525, 1964)

Like Gutter Road, there’s a sexual blackmail con scheme at the center of this little crime noir softcore.

Charley is grifter making his way from New York to Florida for the winter, to pull some jobs.  In a Delaware roadhouse, he spots waitress Janey and knows she has what he needs: she can look fifteen or twenty-five with her looks, lack of make-up or too much make-up…

He picks Janey up in his smooth way, beds her, invites her to come with him Miami.  She has nothing better to do, so why not.

Charley tells her his con game: she dresses up nice, hangs out in hotel bars, acting like a sweet young lady who likes older men, men with money. She does not charge them, she is not hooking.  The men have a great time with a hot young number. The next day, Charley shows up to the mark’s hotel room and Janey is wearing bobby sox, pony tail and no-make up, looking like jailbait. Charley acts like the appalled older brother whose kid sister was seduced; he then says he will go to the cops unless the men pay up, say $500-1000.

Janey thinks it’s a good grift.  She’s hooked before so she’s no stranger to crime.  They make some money in Miami and all is well for the two crooks, but eventually they meet other people who lead them astray — Janey a more suave guy and future real romance, Charley two teen vixens who lead him to a bigger gutter road.

Not the best of the Don Elliotts, but even these lesser titles are often better reads than 75% of the sleaze published back then and even now.

Gutter Road by Don Elliott aka Robert Silverberg (Sundown Reader 514, 1964)

This one is structurally a little different than Silverberg’s otrher softcore titles, or even his work in general — generally, Silverberg keeps to the point of view of one character, either in the first or third person. Gutter Road is a multi-character multi-POV story that seems like the kind Lawrence Block did — and we might have thought this was a Block if it had Andrew Shaw’s byline, but there are too many tell-tale signs of Silverberg’s typerwriter.

The little novel concerns a variety of mid life and sexual crises. Fred baumann is a CPA who, one night, picks up a young female hitchhiker, Joanne.  They park.  She seduces him.  In the middle of it all, she tells him no and fights him off but his blood is boiling too much. When all is said and gone, Joanne tells Fred she will go to the cops and claim rape if he does not pay her $20,000. He realizes he’s just been had, and under blackmail. A rape charge would ruin his career and cause him to lose his wife and teenage daughter.

He doesn’t have that kind of money so they agree on a $5,000 down payment and $100 a week until the end of the year.  Joanne knows she is getting more than she expected; she usually gets a few grand for each sucker; she has been a stripper and a streetwalker since she was nineteen and blackmailing men is lucrative for her, and keeps her and her hood boyfriend in money. She freely gives him her money and lets him have other women as long as he comes by each night and loves her up a few times.

Meanwhile, Fred Baumann’s wife, having no idea that their savings has just been hijacked, is getting hot and bothered in her middle-years.  She is not getting attention from Fred, so she starts offering herself to delivery men and repairmen and anyone else who shows up at the door.

Their 15-year-old daughter, Karen, wants to be bad, wants to be ravished, but she only dates nice boys who won’t take her when she offers. She masturbates in her bed to common rape fantasies: of hooded men breaking into the house, crawling into her window and taking her by force.  One night, in the wrong neighborhood, she is grabbed by a street gang guy, a knife held to her, and taken to a clubhouse where she is gang raped by a group of boys. They are flabbergasted when she drinks beer and undresses and tells them to do it.  This is her fantasy come true, right? But reality is too much, and although in terror, she falls into lust, the gang bang goes on for hours with men from all over the neighborhood libing up, broken up by the cops who investigate what is going on. The scene pays homage to the intense, surreal gang rape scene in Last Exit to Briooklyn.

And then Fred decides to murder Joanne because he can’t keep paying her,

Another good vintage read from Robert Silverberg.

Stark House Press to Reprint Don Elliott

We’re tickled yellowed paper that Stark House Press will reprint, in Spring of 2011, two of Silverberg’s Don Elliott Nightstand Books: Gang Girl and Sex Bum.

Introduction by Silverberg and Afterword by someone named Michael Hemmingson