Strange Sisters, Indeed
Male Lesbian Writers
Everyone loves lesbians,
right? But if you think they only became hip after the courageous
efforts of Howard Stern, Ellen DeGeneres and Aerosmith videos,
boy, are you in for a shock! The fifties and sixties were the
Golden Era of Lesbloitation, that shining time of great sensitivity
in the fifties and sixties, when the paperback racks strewn across
this great land of ours offered up the sapphic delights and queer
pleasures of such classics as "Orgy of the Dolls," "Women
in Prison" and "Lesbian Gym."
It was a small, but popular, and even lucrative market. For
every heart-felt coming-of-age tale by an-honest-to-God real!
live! lesbian, there was a quickie knockoff pandering to that
most obstinate of male fantasies. More than one non-lesbian writer
cashed in on the prose that dare not speak its name, including
more than a few private eye writers, including:
.
- Michael Avallone, creator
of Ed Noon, wrote Women In Prison
(1961).
.
- Donald Westlake, the man
responsible for P.I.s Tim Smith and Mitch Tobin,
as well as professional thief Parker and criminal mastermind
Dortmunder, wrote Young and Innocent
(1964) under the pseudonym of Edwin Wood.
.
- Lawrence Block, best
known for his hardboiled Matt Scudder series, not to mention
Keller, Tanner, Bernie Rhodenbar and others,
penned Reform School Girls
as Andrew Shaw in 1962. He was also one of several writers
who worked under the Beacon house pseudonym of Sheldon Lord,
the writer of such lesbloitation classics as The
Sisterhood (1963).
Strange sisters, indeed!
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