The Box by Mel Johnson (Barry Malzberg), Oracle Books, 1969

Stylistically, The Box is the same as the other Oracle title,  A Way with All Maidens: no chapters, just one long narrative with a few scene breaks.  Thematically, however — except for being marketed as a “sex book” — this is 180 degrees different than Maidens, yet it is also similar: it is set in the past, the 1900s this time, narrated by William Jenniungs, a solider in some sort of military unit that is in conflict with “the Indians.”  At first we think this might be the calvalry vs. the American Indians, but a few pages further in, we realize the action takes place in India, and this is a British military unit enforcing colonial rule, fighting against rebels who want to oust Her Majesty’s reign.

So this is a historical “sex” novel, with hints of political commentary, such as discussions about British culture vs. Indian culture and worldviews:

The “colonel” is a bombastic leader who, like many Malzbergian men-in-charge, is quite possibly on the brink of insanity.  The narrator is screwing his wife without the colonel’s knowledge; she seems to be cheating on him as revenge for pulling her away from civilized London and forcing her to spend time in the barbaric India.

The sex is plenty and graphic and like Maidens and Southern Comfort, doesn’t ring true to the historical dialect. Does it matter for these kinds of books? In Malzberg’s case, it winds up being funny and you wonder if he meant it that way, as if making fun of the whole form of “historical erotica’ like the many faux Victorians published…

The Box is a rare and pricey book to find, one of the many must have Mel Johnsons for Malzberg fans out there.

Love Doll by Mel Johnson aka Barry N. Malzberg (Softcover Library, 1968)

Love Doll is an early Malzberg 30,000-word novella that Softcover matched up with one of Orrie Hitt’s last published novels, The Sex Pros. Both are about people in the carnival business, old hat for Hitt, something Malzberg never tackled in any other work.

Love Doll is narrated by Danny Heaven, who owns and runs the traveling freakshow of seven-foot tall men, men without arms, and odd women. He hires a knife act most because of the girl, sexy young Emma. He has his eye on her, and she comes to him for help, says she was once married to her partner, got away, but went back, and she’s afraid for her life. Danny vows to protect her, and she rewards him with her body.

The knife guy., Toby, catches them, and says Danny can have her, she’s a whore, and leaves…but he comes back, with violent intent to take Danny out, recruiting disgruntled employees.

Emma’s been a wild one since a young age:

From thirteenth birthday Emma was Lolita […] Emma-Lolita discovered early that her body was a weapon, a tool which she could use to reduce men and boys to confused parodies of themselves. Her virginity did not last to her thirteenth birthday. She lost it in  a stack of hay, sweet and fragrant, to a farmhand named Harry…

Lolita, my own Lolita…

Emma loved it.

By the time she was fourteen, she had taken almost every available man in town but none had left a mark. (pp. 40-41)

An interesting effort for early Malzberg but the text is uneven. It begins in the present tense and then lapses into past tense 1/4th the way through and for the rest of the story.  We’re never quite sure how old Emma is–she’s supposed to be this little Lolita-esque vixen, Danny tells one of carney folk she’s his 15-year-old cousin, but there are references of Emma having been married to Toby for 10 years, so that would make her 24 or 25…

Someone told me — either Malzberg or Malzberg fan Jim Mixx — that a Softcover Library editor re-wrote the ending and that seems to be the case, this doesn’t have a Malzbergian ending but one of those patent sappy romantic endings where all is hell, Danny asks Emma to marry him and she says yes. Danny muses with some irony: “In books, people like us always make it. So we have a chance.” (p. 116)

A Way with All Maidens by Mel Johnson (Barry Malzberg), Oracle Books, 1969

Fellow Malzberg fan Jim Mix sent me a copy of this lost Malzberg/Johnson classic, A Way with All Maidens, issued by the short-lived imprint, Oracle Books (looks like they only put out eight titles, two of them Malzbergs, the other being The Box).

Maidens is, like many Malzberg novels, a darkly humorous romp through insanity and sexuality, and a bit different than your usual Malzberg yarn.  It concerns an acting troupe in England preparing to put on a production of The Tempest, directed by someone name “S—-” who also seems to be the writer.  The play is in manuscript form, inked on good paper.  We don’t realize until 20-30 pages in that the action is supposed to be taking place in the 17th Century, and that “S—-” may very well be the Bard himself, ol’ Shakespeare, 47 years old.  Or is he? And is this really the past?  The language is 20th century colloquial, wth the exception of a few “trollops” and “slatterns” tossed into dialogue. But were words like “asshole” and “fuck” used back then?  Like the Malzbergian Gerrold Watkins’ Southern Comfort, set during the Civil War, neither the narrator nor the characters speak in historical idiom.  So we have to wonder about the validity, and keeping in mind that this is Malzberg, it’s possible the narrator is simply insane:

Pauda? Sorrento? Milan? Or Rome — I think it was Rome. Of course I am not sure of any of these; they may all be mental rather than physical places. (p. 13).

Characteristic of Malzberg’s sex books, this one opens with a sex scene, with an obsessive interest in nipples:

Her breast was enormous in my mouth, the nipples huge and pointed, my teeth chewed down on it, and it was as if, from this angle, I am totally surrounded by her flesh.  (p.5)

Of course, it has to open with a sex scene, for a book like this, for reader appeal, since the cover is plain orange without any art or photo models.  They did this to make production cheaper, not having to pay for art or photography — with a nod towards Olympia’s plain green, pink, and gray covers.  Midwood was doing the same at the time, the late 60s-70s.

Here is a scan of a British pirate edition. Haven’t seen it but heard it was basically a photo copy of the original slapped together in a taped spine.

The narrator is David, who has recently joined the acting troupe, taking on small roles and doing grunt work. He’s lied about his theater experience to get in — he has no experience at all.

Nympho Nurse by Mel Johnson (Barry N. Malzberg, Midwood Books, 1969)

As stated before, Barry N. Malzberg’s Mel Johnson books (from Midwood, Oracle, and Softcover Library) are hard to find.  Since I’ve been curious for a long time about Nympho Nurse, Malzberg fan Jim Mix kindly made a photocopy of the 1/3 Midwood for my eyes.

The title has been used on a dozen or more sex books over the decades, with variations like Intimate Nurse and Registered Nympho.  The problem with Malzberg’s 30K words novella: there’s no nurse in it.

The female lead, Virginia, is a secretary for a Freudian psychotherapist, and nowhere near a nurse, nor a nympho but simply a sexually liberated 23-year-old woman in the 1960s. Some bright editor (or Harry Shorten himself) at Midwood sure was paying attention here.

“She works for a doctor — she must be a nurse!”

Then again: Nympho Secretary doesn’t have tbe same ring.

Insane Secretary, maybe, or Sin Therapy…

Wonder what Malzberg orginally called this…

It is, however, a wonderfully black humor novella, absurd and biting. It begins with nipples and breasts and ends with nipples and breasts, something Malzberg often focuses on in his fiction, even his SF: boobies, bosoms, bazookas, bodacious ta-tas.

He ground her nipples so hard that she felt she was breaking inisde, that some subtle part of her was burning within and was going to come apart. (p. 243)

This opening finds Virginia in bed with Harold, an ad copy writer who is also a patient of Dr. Miller’s, Virginia’s boss.  There’s quite a bit of unprofessional hanky-panky going on: Virginia has slept with several of her boss’ patients, and while he has warmed her of the ethical compromise, he is also fascinated when his patients talk about her.  Even if she doesn’t date them, some male patients are so striken by her sexiness in the reception area that the sessions with Miller focus on the secretary.  Finally, Miller decides he has to let her go for many professional reasons — notwithstanding his own lack of ethics for letting her date patients anyway.

She has been seeing Harold for a while now and so she peeks in on his personal file and Miller’s notes.  One night after sex, she accidentally lets something slip (a true Freudian slip here!) from her mouth that lets Harold know she has seen his confidential session file.  Harold freaks out and leaves.  In the morning, Virginia goes into work early and destroys Harold’s file.

I’m left feeling that this short novel may have been adapted from a one-act play — Malzberg was on a playwrighting fellowship at Cornell only a few years prior to writing this.  Much of the action takes place in two settings: the reception area and her bedroom, perfect for a play.  The dialogue an situations are absurd, at time Beckett-esque or Isben-esque.  Mazberg makes delightful fun of the whacky, faltering nature of psychotherapy, something he has done in his science-fiction or other fiction, now in a “sex novel.”    We realize, in the end, all three of these people are insane and need medical help, and just when things seem to be on the verge of exploding, it ends happily, with Harold and Virginia making up, strolling out as Dr. Miller hides from these crazy people.  Virginia’s last thought are on how she wants to swing her breasts over Harold’s face.

Malzberg uses Midwood’s three-in-one-book format to deliver an absurd message, and perhaps that is the reason why it is called Nympho Nurse — the title in itself in an absurdity.

Instant Sex by Mel Johnson (Barry Malzberg), Midwood Books

I just realized I have been neglecting Barry Malzberg’s sleaze novels as Mel Johnson, Gerrold Watkins, and himself, which half this blog (along with Robert Silverberg’s pen names) is supposed to focus on (and now I have added in March Hastings, Joan Ellis, and Andrew Shaw).

I have been trying to track down Malzberg’s Mel Johnson Midwoods for years with little success, and if I do find them, they are priced outrageously.  I have no idea why these Midwoods — even the doubles and triples Johnson is in — are scarce and priced so high, when other late 1960s Midwoods are not.

A kind Malzberg fan, Jim Mix, contacted me and said he had a couple extra beat up Johnsons and one Watkins and sent them to me, in the interest to advnace my overdue Mazberg monograph, Beyond Science Fiction (let’s say early 2010 from Borgo Press at this point).

One of them was Instant Sex, that has a nifty Paul Rader cover:

Not even Lynn Monroe had this one in his Rader catalog, and he lists it as wanted. When I sent him this scan from Jim, he was surprised he had never seen it — I mean, he’s one of the top authorities and collectors of vintage paperbacks in the country.  Before my telling him, he had no idea Malzberg had written as Mel Johnson, and the Johnsons were not in his catalogues.  This makes the Mel Johnson scarcity more mysterious…the Gerrold Wakins books are hard to find because Olympia only printed 1000-1500 copies and maybe sold half the run.  But Midwood printed in the 25-50,000 unit range…

Does this great cover art depict the storyline inside the pages?  Not really. But when do they ever?

In an email conversation aboutl, Barry Malzberg told me that the novel

was written with real ambition under the working title FIRE.  I was trying, in 9/68, to write the first Vietnam veteran‘s novel, to make a major statement.  I reread it just a few years ago, tried to anyway, thought it was all right.  Better than all right.  I don’t know what was crazier: a) writing a novel of that ambition for Midwood Books’ $900, b) thinking that I had a chance at some “literary” recognition.  Cough cough.  This way to the egress, ladies and germs.

Here is a true or at least represented-as-true story told me by my Midwood editor and good friend Robert Devaney: the novel was delivered, Harry Shorten paid for it, Devaney put it on top of the small pile of delivered manuscripts heading for copyediting.  Harry Shorten came into his office.  “I had a dream,” Harry said, “I had a dream last night.  Here is the dream: it is that I published a novel and it was called INSTANT SEX.  I awoke and thought ‘that is a really good idea, I want to call a novel INSTANT SEX.'”  He pointed to the pile of manuscripts.  “Take that one on the top,” he said.  “Call it INSTANT SEX.”

This goes along the lines of other Harry Shorten tales.  In an interview with Gil Fox (Paul Russo, Kimberly Kemp, Dallas Mayo), Gil Fox  says to Muroe:

Harry Shorten had no knowledge of books whatsoever. He had some money from his cartoons, wanted to start a business, used the money to start Midwood. I don’t think Harry ever read a book in his whole life. He did not recognize intelligent writing in books. He would slap a hot cover on anything. For some reason Harry loved me. He would hit me on the back and call me “his most prolific author.” How Harry operated: one day we came back from lunch and Harry picks the title WHEN LIGHTS ARE LOW out of the air and says “Your next book for Midwood will be WHEN LIGHTS ARE LOW.” That was it, no meaning at all, no story. So, you know, I went home and wrote WHEN LIGHTS ARE LOW.

In another interview, Joan Ellis says:

One time I walked into Harry’s office and he held up a painting of a blonde eating an ice cream cone and he said, “I now own this cover art. Write me a book to go with it.” So I did. (ed. note: the book is TALK OF THE TOWN, Midwood 32-396).

Would Fire have been a better title than Instant Sex?

Malzberg states he wrote this novel in Sept. 1968, and it’s pub. date is 1968 — Midwood must have had a quick turnaround from accpetance-copy-editing-production.

As for the story…

Coleman got into some trouble in Saigon — he was arrested for being with a Vietnamese prostitute and he assaulted a superor officer (tones of “Final War,” Malzberg’s novella written as K.M. O’Donnell).  After some time in the stockade, he returns Stateside despondent and impotent.  The letters from his fiancee were distant, and when he tries to re-connect with her, he knows the marriage is off.

He goes to New York in search of himself, hell, and meaning of his experiences in Vietnam. He wanders into the world of prostitutes, since it was a hooker who ruined his army career.

(I am left wondering if William T. Vollmann [whom I have published two books on, with the recent one out now] read this book, because there are some parts that remind me of Vollmann’s short novel, Whores for Gloria.)

Coleman meets the cliched “whore with a heart of gold” — Cynthia, a skinny girl in Harlem, that he picks up on the street.  He goes limp while they have sex.  She feels bad, like she has not satisfied a custimer, and offers to give him half his money back.

Coleman is an angry Nam Vet.  He goes into a bar and looks for a fight. He wants to go back to jail.  Cynthia has followed him.  When he gets into a brawl and the cops start to take him away, Cynthia comes to his rescue and says she’s his girlfriend and he’s a war hero, blah blah…she takes him back to her apartment and he sleeps in bed with her, and attemepts a half-ass (no pun?) act of anal sex with her.

He wakes up with Cynthia’s pimp, a man named Creature, in his face.  He leaves, although he feels he shouldn’t and Cynthia gives him some looks…he decides to go back, just as Creature is about to stab Cynthia (why do all the charcters have names that start with C?)…Coleman fights Creature and beats Creature up…feeling like the winner, like a man, he takes Cynthia on the floor and, yes, has instant sex. Violence becomes the pure for his impotency.

This book surprised me — it’s a good novel, but the style is different than most Malzberg’s: it’s not in present tense or first person, and Coleman is not as insane as many Malzberg protagonists tend to be.  This also has a “happy” ending.  As a “Vietnam novel,” it does comment on PTSD and what soliders coming back home from an unpopular war have to endure. The sex, as in many Malzbergian fictions, is not “hot” or enticing for the label “one-hand book” but realistic, horrifying, sad, nuerotic.

It’s an early Mazberg, a novel written before he was publishing under his own name, and before his stint at Olympia Press, and was just starting to write as “K.M. O’Donnell” in the science-fiction field.  It reminded me  somewhat of Larry Heinemann’s Paco’s Story.

As for the cover art — that isn’t Coleman and his  skinny teenage Harlen hooker…it could be Coleman pre-Vietnam, with the girl he was to marry…

Some day I will find and read all the Mel Johnsons…next is A Way With All Maidens, from Midwood’s short-lived Oracle Books imprint. Then The Box and The Sadist.  I really want to find Campus Doll and Nynpho Nurse.