Slaves to Sin – S.N. Burton (Gaslight Book #134, 1964)

Previously, I has noted that Robert Silverberg’s Campus Love Club and Lawrence Block’s College for Sinners were extremely similar. I debated on how this happened — did Block pilfer from Silverberg, was there a news story that the two writers based their books on, did the Scott Meredith Agency create the storyline and give it to them both?

Last summer a reader of this blog suggested I check out S.N. Burton and I did, and found Brutal Passions to be an excellent novel.  I picked up two more Burtons — Forced to Sin and Slaves to Sin — and noted on the title page of Forced, that the byline was Ken Kane.  L.S. Publications has several Kane titles under the Bellringer and Gaslight imprints so I picked some of those up.

Glancing through them all, it seemed like there were style differences.  Was Kane Burton?  Were both pen names for an unknown writer?

Today I sat down with Slaves to Sin and as I read the opening, I felt like I had seen it before:

It was a hot September afternoon just before my sophomore year at East Coast Junior College was about to open, and I was lying in the sack in my dormitory room, fourth floor of James Hall, overlooking the noise and clamor of Amsterdam Avenue.  The room was dusty and bare, like a shell waiting for its occupant to climb in. (p. 5)

When I got to the narrator’s name, Jeff Burnside, I thought, Wait a minute…

I picked up the second version of Silverberg’s book, Campus Sex Club by Loren Beauchamp (Midwood F206, 1962), and read the opening:

It was a hot September afternoon before my sophomore year at Metropolitan was about to open, and I was lying in the sack in my dormitory room, fourth floor of Hendricks Hall, overlooking the noise and clamor of Bryant Avenue.  The room was dusty and bare, like a shell waiting for its occupant to climb in.  (p. 5)

In the David Challon Bedside edition (1959), Campus Love Club, it is Columbia Univ. (Note: Silverberg told me he was never paid for this book, as well as a couple of others, so re-sold them to Midwood with various changes.)

Yes, Slaves to Sin is a rip-off, plagarized edition of Silverberg’s book.  Not exactly word-for-word — Burton changes little things here and there, adds in a sentence or two, leaves out some parts from Silverberg, but it is essentially the same damn book.  Burton keeps all the character names, however.

This makes me wonder if Brutal Passions is an original or a stolen wor, and any other Burton title.  I do know Gaslight did originals, such as Orrie Hitt’s Male Lover, which wasn’t that great a book for Hitt.

Yet another curious footnote in the publishing history of vintage sleaze.  The question now is: are there are other books that tell this same story of a campus sex club?

The Genuine Wanton – Jerry M. Goff, Jr. (Merit Books, 1964)

Apparently, this Goff book has “lifted” passages and plotlines from four Richard Prather novels: Kill the Clown, Shell Scott’s Seven Slaughters, Three’s a Shroud, and Dagger of Flesh…

Since I have not read them, I can’t pinpoint what Goff used.  Seems he used a lot from Seven Slaughters for a number of books, since it’s a collection of stories.

The Genuine Wanton is told by Angus Cordi, a syndicate hitman. It’s pretty short, 128 pages of big type, so a 30,000-worder, episodic.  Cordi is hired by gang boss Mancini — he gets $300 a week retainer, always ready for a job, which he will get a $5K bonus, 10K if he’s loaned out to another syndicate family.

His first kill: the ex-mistress of Mancini, whom Cordi has been seeing.  Mancini wishes to test Cordi’s loyalty: will he murder th woman he has feelings for? She knew this would happen, and to help Cordi, she commits suicide in front of him.

Cordi develops an MO: get close to the wife or mistress of each target, romance the woman, and make it hurt the target twice, sometimes killing the woman as well.

Cordi is deeply cruel, strangely cold and hardboiled — much like an Ennis Willie killer perhaps…and how much like Shell Scott?

If I didn’t know what Goff was up to with stealing from Prather, I would say “wow!” to this cold, violent short novel; as is, original or whatnot, it’s still a cool book in the ultra-hardboiled fashion.

So who is the “genuine wanton” in the title, or is this another misleading Merit book?  It may be either Cathy or Susan, two young ladies he escorts to a reefer madness swinger party that later proves to be his downfall.  There’s enough sleaze to make this a sleaze book:

The brunette’s tongue lasted like bourbon and went like a piston in my mouth. I forgot about Cathy and Susan and the marijuana, and concentrated on the naked woman in my arms. (p. 111)

And enough killing to make it crime noir.

Hotel Hustler by Jerry Lane/aka Jerry M. Goff, Jr. (Playtime Books #670, 1964)

The first Jerry Goff book I read, a few months back, was Thrill Crazy, a Merit title, and here I thought: Wow, another cool find. Then I read Wanton Wench! which was better and Tropic of Carla which was an okay men’s adventure style yarn.

A reader of this blog mentioned that Goff had been sued by Richard Prather for plagarizing from a Shell Scott novel, and then bookseller and vintage paperback scholar Lynn Munroe told me the case just wasn’t one book, but a whole lot of them.  In fact, Munroe’s Fall 1997 auction catalogue was for Goff books that were hard to find because the U.S. Court ordered all offending copies destroyed.

Munroe was kind enough to send me a copy of that old catalgue for research’s sake, that gives the whole nitty-gritty.

Basically, it began with Hotel Hustler, the novel I will discuss in this blog entry. Someone told Richard Prather there were plagarized sections from three of Prather’s Shell Scotts: Find This Woman, Strip for Murder, and The Wailing Frail.

Prather read Hotel Hustler, got wide-eyed and angry, and called his lawyer.  Tracking down info wasn’t easy — Playtime Books was an imprint of Neva Books out of Las Vegas — but the address was a mail drop for an outfit actually in Florida (they had learned from the mistakes made by Nightstand and Faber about addresses and the feds); plus Jerry Lane was not a real person, but the pen name of Merit Books/Camerarts author Jerry M. Goff, Jr., a real name.  A ceased and desist letter was sent to Neva and ignored — the novel remained in print and two more Lane books were issued, also with plagarized sections.  Munroe writes:

Prather, who now lives in Arizona and is still writing, told me he never met Jerry Goff. When Prather’s lawyers tracked him down, he was in prison, a three-time convicted felon.  In his sworn deposition, Goff admitted to being such a huge “fan” of Prather’s books that yes, he would on occasion borrow ideas and dialog from Parther’s books. And then, to Prather’s lawyer’s shock and surprise, Goff proceeded to name for them some 30 books he had done so in, most of them published by a company neither Prather [n]or his lawyers had ever heard of, Merit Books of Chicago.  This led to a second, larger lawsuit in The US District Court for Northern Illinois in 1972 […] the Judge in the trial would later say that Prather v. Camerarts Publishing was the largest case of plagarism he had ever heard about. (Lynn Munroe Books List 37, p. 3)

In some cases, Goff only “borrowed” phrases and paragraphs, but, with many of Goff’s books in hand, many reprinted with new titles a year after first publication, as Camerarts was known to do,

Prather and his wife spent hours at home with a box of Goff’s paperbacks, reading them and highlighting familiar passages. To their amazement they found not just phrases but entire paragraphs, entire chapters, entire plotlines, lifted in whole from Prather’s books, with only the character’s names changed.  Prather found one Goff book about a lusty  French female spy named Julie Odlie.  Something about Julie was so familiar to him, but what was it?  Prather had never created such a character.  Finally, as he read on, it hit him — Julie was Shell Scott, and Goff had only changed the character’s sex. (ibid)

In the end, after appeals, both Neva and Camerarts had to pay damages — about $17, 500K for Neva and $40K for Merit Books (plagarism cases have set amounts these days, I think the ceiling s now $120K per cause of action).

I have no information on Goff, other than his demise in the late 1990s.  What was he in prison for?  Did Camerarts, with its mob connections, go after him to pay that $40K back?  Did they, like Neva, know he was lifting from Prather?  Did Goff publish other books later under a different name?

And does this mean the Goff books I liked were really Prather novels I liked?  According to Munroe’s catalogue, Thrill Crazy (reprinted as Lisa) stole from Strip for Murder, Way of a Wanton, and Three’s A Shroud.  Wanton Wench! and Tropic of Carla are not listed — but if not taken from Prather, were they lifting from other books?  Did Goff do any original material at all; were the Prather liftings done when the well was dry?

And does this change my mind about Goff being a nice vintage find?  Well, he is still a find — but in a much different light.  When Munroe was auctioning some Goff/Lane books, they seemed to be rarities because the court ordered all remaining copies destroyed.  Now, however, you can find most of these books in the $5-20 price range, ad I have about 20 of them, which I will get to all eventually.

Hotel Hustler is a short novel, about 35,000 words, about a card shark on the run from both the mob and the feds.  He travels around the world, steals a new identity, then someone inherits an old hotel, the Dorado Oasis, from a long lost uncle on the small West Indies island, Callerie — a fictional place, it seems, where the natives speak Creole and were once ruled by Napoleon, just like Haiti.

He thinks this is the perfect place to hide from those who either want to murder him or put him in federal lock up for tax evasion — fix the hotel up, make it profitable, live his days out on the small island as a small businessman.

Not so easy.  A fellow named Ahogary (allegory?) has been using every means he can to push out and buy up all the small storefrnts, fishing boats, and eateries in center town, to build his own little business and crime empire.  Ahogary wants the hotel — which seems worthless since it seldom has guests — and the land it’s on.  The plot becomes a cat and mouse game between the narrator and Ahogary, who did not count on his competition having street smarts and knowing how to bluff and con.

Toss in some islander native sex and you got an “adult” novel.

While this one is not as good as, say, Wanton Wench!, the writing is smoother more confident — but is this Prather’s doing or Goff’s?  The novel reads like a cross-between wanting to imitate the atmosphere of Casablanca and the intrigue of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not.

I’d give it a C-plus overall, but a B-minus for being a part of vintage paperback history, the impetus for the court system’s biggest copyright infringement case at the time.

Also: Goff as criminal. A real hood, or crook, writing books about hoods and crooks, even if all the prose ain’t his — Goff was no pale weasel writer pretending at tough men’s fiction…in some way he was living it, even as he stole from Shell Scott.

Fires of Youth by Charles Wlliams (James Lincoln Collier), Magnet Books #309, 1960

This has to be the most curious case of fine literature packaged as sleaze in all of vintage sleazecore history.  Back in August 09, I had talked about it some here.  The fuller story is on Lynn Monroe’s website, noting the basic narrative of this short novel’s life:

In 1962, the Hungarian-born, naturalized-British author Arthur Koestler announced the Koestler Prize, “to alleviate the desolation of culture” for inmates of Her Majesty’s prisons. Prizes of 400 pounds were to be awarded for art, music and literature. The British government endorsed the plan, and the panel for the literature prize included well-regarded British authors Henry Green, J.B. Priestley, V.S. Pritchett and Philip Toynbee. A manuscript called YOUNG AND SENSITIVE by a Dartmoor inmate named Don Robson was awarded the first prize. As Koestler’s publisher at Hutchinson & Co., Sir Robert Lusty was “glad to have the first opportunity of considering Mr. Robson’s prize-winning script. As soon as it arrived I read it personally and at once shared the enthusiasm expressed by the panel of judges. At this time I also met with Mr. Robson (who had completed his sentence) and was much impressed that a not altogether articulate young man should have been able to write so sincere and moving a story.”

Robson had plagarized, while in prison, an obscure American paperback from an obscure sleaze company magnet, Fires of Youth by Charles Williams, aka James Lincoln Collier, who was unable to sell the sex-filled manuscript anywhere else.

A year after Young and Sensitive was published, and Robson was hailed as a great new British talent in contemporary literature, a reader happened to pick the book up and found it curious that it was quite similar to the cheap American paperback he’d read…

Did Lawrence Block Plagarize Robert Silverberg in 1960?

I sat down to enjoy one of Lawrence Block’s Andrew Shaw softcore titles from Nightstand, College for Sinners (1960)—as most of the Shaws are enjoyable—and was surprised, perhaps disappointed to discover that the little novel is a direct rip off of one of Robert Silverberg’s titles for Bedstand books, Campus Love Club by David Challon (1959), reprinted in 1962 by Midwood as Campus Sex Club by Loren Beauchamp.

Both books are set in a thinly disguised upper Manhattan institute, Metropolitan College in Silverberg’s novel, unnamed in Block’s, but obviously Columbia University.  Both are about a sexually awkward young man who gets the chance to join an exclusive sex club of undergraduates, called The Libertines(the book was reprinted in 1973 by Greenleaf’s Reed Nightstand as The Libertines).

The Shaw book is not an exact word-for-word replica of the Silverberg Challon book—College for Sinners is told in the third person while Campus Love Club is told in the first, the former a bit more humorous in the narration than the later.  In both books, the protagonists, eager to lose their virginity, employ the services of a Harlem streetwalker; in Silverberg’s, the prostitute does not speak any English and in Block’s, the woman talks in street slang, calling her john “baby” every other sentence.  However, both protagonists are so nervous they are incapable of an erection, thus they do not lose their virginity. Later, both young men in each book take out a campus tramp, a girl who never says no, and are deflowered in that manner.

Note the peculiar similarities when membership of both clubs is explained

“Membership is limited to fifteen—five sophs, five juniors, and five seniors. Each September the juniors and entitled to sponsor five new men for membership…Membership is limited to undergraduates, and you can’t remain a member for more than three years” (Campus Love Club, p. 68-70).

“We have twelve members, no more, no less.,  Four each from the sophomore, junior, and senior classes. Two men and two women.  Each year four members graduate and four new sophomores are invited to join the society.” (College for Sinners, p. 64)

While the group in College has six men and six women, the group of fifteen men in Campus has a sister group of women comprised of fifteen from Chelsey College, an all-girl’s school that is connected to Metropolitan (like one of New England’s Seven Sisters, Vassar or Smith — the sister college for Columbia is Barnard).

Both sex clubs have an apartment in Greenwich Village for orgies—dues are $20 a month in Campus, $50 a year in College.  Sexual arrangements are the same: no female member may deny sex for a male member, and vice versa. No one spends a night alone.

Both books have similar consequences and wrap-ups. Not exact, mind you — in Campus, the NYPD raids the group’s orgy house after the kidnap and drug a girl and forced her into sex acts, and when a guy comes to rescue her, a fight breaks out…in College, the protagonist finds true love and becomes disgusted with the immoral ways of his collegiate colleagues, so sends an anonymous letter to the Chief of Police,  outlining what happens, what night they can be found, and who these people are.

In Silverberg’s, there is tragedy at the end, the narrator’s life ruined as he goes on without a college degree, the other members disgraced and one committing suicuide.  This is usual for Silverberg whose work — sleaze, SF, or fantasy — has a dark bent.  Campus ends on a more happy note as the protagonist has found love.

But these books are too damn similar to not take note.

So what happened here?

I asked Silverberg if anyone knew he was David Challon back then and he said no – in fact, seems only the past 10-15 years that many of Silverberg’s pen names in sleaze have come to light (there is no mention in a 1978 bibliography, which only lists a handful of Don Elliott books).

Did Lawrence Block pick up the Challon novel and like it so much that he did his version – seemingly plagiarized – and figured no one would ever notice?

No one ever has, until now.

Did he see the Challon manuscript while at Scott Meredith in 1959 and think, Wow, what a story…

Did he forget reading it and wrote this one as the concept lingered in the back of his mind?  The books are only a year apart. One might say, well, maybe there was an item in the news about such a club at Columbia or NYU, or a rumor going around — that’s reasonable, but the fact that both protagonists try to lose their virginity the same way, and botjh have erectile challenges while with a hooker, and the rules of the sex clubs are quite similar, are evidence that this is not a coincidence or shared idea in the creative either.

Read both for yourself, if you wish, and you be the judge.

But what the hell, eh…does it matter?

No, it doesn’t. I don’t wat it to seem like I am out to say, “Ha, I caught you in a youthful folly, Mr. Block!”  My interest is academic.

This will be a curious footnote in the history of paperback publishing,

Fires of Youth by Charles Williams/James Collier

I just found out about this curious case…in 1960, short-lived Magnet Books published The Fires of Youth by Charles Williams, relegated to obscurity…and then an incarcerated man in the UK plagarized it as Young and Sensitive, winning a major literary award and hailed by the mainstream literati as a masterpiece first novel…

More can read the whole story here.

Proof that some of these cheap sleazecore books were not thrash all the time, and gems were published in the guise of porn…

I have ordered the book and will discuss it more down the line.