Like A Way with All Maidens, this one is about the dream of acting — sort of. A young lady named Susan goes to New York to chase the acting dream, “but, the fact is, she has very little talent and no luck” (p. 13). So she gets into porn — she answers an ad for actors and actresses needed, $100 a day, not knowing it’s for an adult film. Needing money, and naive enough to believe porn can lead to legit and mainstream work, she falls into it. A common story told a million times in the lives of porn actresses, and in sleaze books — but this is Barry N. Malzberg, for Pete’s sake, and no one tells a common tale like Malzberg! Things get meta:
In the script, Susan is playing a young girl who has come to New York to look for a legitimate break in show business but instead has been forced into the making of pornographic films to support herself […] she suffers from a deep sense of shame and seeks to degrade herself. All the characters in the film are seeking degradation. In the course of the role, then, she is to have intercourse three or four times, as well as much petting, and one incident of sado-masochism with a tall man holding a whip. (p. 11)
Susan also came to New York several months ago to look for legitmiate work in show business […] she gas been forced into making pornographic films to support herself. Presently she is living with an unpublished writer named Timothy West who feels he is on the verge of a major breakthrough in style and technique but, at the present time, is an assistant supervisor for the New York City of the Department of Welfare […] “You have no idea how doomed the welfare system in this country is,” he told her. (p. 13)
As we know, Malzberg also worked for the NY Dept. of Welfare, resulting in books like The Day of the Burning and The Social Worker.
This was also reprinted as The Masochist, that edition harder and far more pricey to locate than Everything Happened to Susan.
Everything does indeed happen to Susan, in life and in porn — she does every possible type of porn, even beastiality…
Those Sexy Vintage Sleaze Books 