Rude books you thumbed through as a kid

[tim]

Which I've just discovered was actually written by Arthur Koestler.

The Encyclopœdia of Sexual Knowledge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The thing I remember most was the chapter on perversion and an anecdodte about an ageing retired general whose route to sexual climax involved chewing the socks of private soldiers he'd picked up and invited home.

 

[Sweet FA]

My dad had no quality control at all and he read a lot - we had tons of books on shelves, in boxes or just lying around. He also never censored what me or my brother read. I'd go from Swallows and Amazons to The Fog.

This is one that still sticks in my head; this cover too. Captain Blood by Michael Blodgett (I kid you not). Incest, bestiality, rape, murder; very fucked up. Whilst just trying to google it, I've discovered that Blodgett was in Russ Meyer's Valley of the Dolls and was also a screenwriter (Turner and Hooch would you believe). He also wrote two other novels, one of which, Hero and the Terror, became a Chuck Norris film which scores 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Review:
Those who knew Michael Blodgett tend to describe him as a brilliant, highly charismatic man who was prettier than most women yet had some very real demons. How those demons manifested themselves I don’t know, but his fiction provides some indicators, in particular his debut novel CAPTAIN BLOOD, with its good-looking, near-superhumanly strong and impossibly virtuous Los Angeles dwelling protagonist who’s also a violent sociopath who wears bikini briefs, bangs his own sister and perpetrates a bloody vigilante killing spree. Further depravities are provided by flashbacks that see our “hero” getting jerked off by his father and witnessing the gruesome slaughter of several black men by Southern rednecks. Just how close Captain Blood was to Michael Blodgett I can’t say, but the character’s violently contradictory nature appears to fit with that of his creator.

CAPTAIN BLOOD was completed in 1977 but not published until two years later, having reportedly inspired a lot of controversy in the interim. To shock publishers in the 1970s, when “fuck books” were prevalent and minutely described sex and violence were constants in mainstream fiction, was no small feat!

Furthermore, the novel was revised no less than twice, for the 1982 Harmony Books trade paperback and 1985 Bantam Books mass market edition. The version to read, however, is the initial 1979 Stone Hill hardcover, in which all of Blodgett’s minutely described gore, perversion and general ugliness are presented intact. The prose is disarmingly rational throughout, making all the outrageousness seem thoroughly convincing, and even (to borrow a blurb from the back cover) like reasonable conduct. Yet the book’s real fascination is in the way it stubbornly refuses to pin itself down to any single category yet somehow congeals into a satisfying whole, from the unassuming opening, with Captain Blood helping an old lady with a busted iron, to the ultra-bloody final showdown that closes things out on a very dark note indeed.

 

[Casually Red]

have you never thought of using the spoiler code so i don't have people crowding round my desk asking what i'm looking at?

That wouldn't happen if you didn't pull a Les Dawson face every time you saw a fanny

 

[toblerone3]

 

[May Kasahara]

At home: Fear of Flying and Anais Nin (both belonging to my mum, who also never censored what I read AFAIK).

At school: I found a copy of Maia, by Richard Adams, in the school library. It looked like a jolly fantasy romp. It is, but with lots and lots and lots of sex of all kinds throughout. I read it quite a few times, just to make sure

 

[Pickman's model]

That wouldn't happen if you didn't pull a Les Dawson face every time you saw a fanny

no, that's the face i pull every time i see a twat

 

[purves grundy]

I had a collection of very saucy National Geographics

 

[Pickman's model]

I had a collection of very saucy National Geographics

'the spider that lives underwater' looks worth a read

 

[campanula]

The entire Richard Allen catalogue (Skinhead, Suedehead et al) and some dire shite left my one of my uncles - Harold Robbins, 'The Carpetbaggers...and looking up 'coitus' and 'intercourse' in the dictionary.

 

[Dieselpunk2000]

The whole series of Crabs had lots of vivid sex stuff in them. My mates' stepdad had the whole collection and some of them found their way into school....

 

[Pickman's model]

gay talese, 'thy neighbour's wife': during his preparation for the book the author shagged his neighbour's wife for several months apparently

 

[Idris2002]

gay talese, 'thy neighbour's wife': during his preparation for the book the author shagged his neighbour's wife for several months apparently

I assume that coitus was regularly interruptus so that Talese could make notes?

 

[Sirena]

I read 'Last Exit To Brooklyn' when I was still fairly young (because it had become a cause celebre) and that was a bit of an eye-opener. Brutal and sexual but it was a well-written book.

Last Exit to Brooklyn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[spanglechick]

I've just remembered, I read a lot of Tom Sharpe aged around fourteen. Blott on the Landscape, Porterhouse Blue and such. Really explicit depictions of quite bizarre sex, but not remotely titilating.

 

[Idris2002]

I've just remembered, I read a lot of Tom Sharpe aged around fourteen. Blott on the Landscape, Porterhouse Blue and such. Really explicit depictions of quite bizarre sex, but not remotely titilating.

Sharpe wrote some funny books. . . but he definitely had issues.

 

[Sea Star]

I've just remembered, I read a lot of Tom Sharpe aged around fourteen. Blott on the Landscape, Porterhouse Blue and such. Really explicit depictions of quite bizarre sex, but not remotely titilating.

ha ha! Yeah, me too Ludicrous stuff!

 

[Sea Star]

I read 'Last Exit To Brooklyn' when I was still fairly young (because it had become a cause celebre) and that was a bit of an eye-opener. Brutal and sexual but it was a well-written book.

Last Exit to Brooklyn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I read it when I was 20 and it traumatised me

 

[Celyn]

Sharpe wrote some funny books. . . but he definitely had issues.

Yes. My recent findings of freebie e-books led me to read"Porterhouse Blue" again, with the same feeling of "oh, man, just what age are you, to think that condoms are intrinsically funny?" that I had whenever I first read it.

(Well, OK, they can be funny, but hardly the height of wit. He seems to turn into a 13 year old when there's anything to do with sex.)

 

[bimble]

When I was 8 I went to stay with my granny for a summer holiday. She had a book on the bottom shelf of the living room called Everything You Always wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask.
Think it was something from the 50s a bit like masters & johnson but with a bit of humour in it. Way over my head anyway and not sexy at all.
Can't remember much now apart from that I hid it under my mattress and read it secretly at night, returning it to its place on shelf in the morning just in case anyone noticed it was missing, all in a twisted shameful worry like I was doing something really bad. Wish I'd told her about this furtive curiosity she'd have laughed.

 

[Idris2002]

Yes. My recent findings of freebie e-books led me to read"Porterhouse Blue" again, with the same feeling of "oh, man, just what age are you, to think that condoms are intrinsically funny?" that I had whenever I first read it.

(Well, OK, they can be funny, but hardly the height of wit. He seems to turn into a 13 year old when there's anything to do with sex.)

His first two books, about Sath Efrica, are actually proper novels, but in his subsequent work the search for the cheap gag was everything.

 

[campanula]

Actually, Pickmans (apropos of nothing much) I recall an Aleister Crowley doing the rounds - I vividly recall the yellow cover with those pen and ink Beardsley type illustrations. Mostly, I remember something or someone referred to as 'the Great Whore of Babylon' - might have been Leah something...all very vague apart from the Great Whore bit which evidently made a massive impression.