Dirty Books

 

    If you follow me on Bluesky (and lord know that you should – @antonjpierce.bsky.social), you’ve undoubtedly seen me posting a series of covers from Greenleaf and Beeline books from the 60s and 70s. 

    I think I first ran across them in the late 80s, when a couple of them were thrown into an order that Ms. Pierce and I placed with Adam & Eve. My exposure to written erotica had primarily been Penthouse Forum and some sexier aspects of Robert Heinlein (the man could NOT write a sex scene) and Philip Jose Farmer (on the other hand, PJF could bring the heat). 

    I don’t know that I ran across them again until I discovered the sadly now-defunct website asstr.org. Back in the dark ages of the Interwebs, the Usenet group alt.sex.stories was one of the best places to find textual erotica online. Most of them were later gathered on to the website asstr.org (Alt Sex Stories Text Repository). But it had much more than just Usenet stories. 

    There was Kristen’s Archives, a link to mcstories.com (a still-active website of mind control stories) and a bunch more. And there was an FTP site (remember FTP?) that had .txt copies of a bunch of Beeline books, which I luckily downloaded before the website died. 

    There are strict rules for publishing on Medium and Amazon and even Literotica these days. No sex for anyone under 18. No sex between close blood relatives (giving rise to the massive fauxcest genre). Many sites shy away from non-consensual sex. And absolutely no crazy shit like bestiality or rape. (This is not a complaint.) 

    The Beeline and Greenleaf novels did NOT adhere to these strictures. After a number of Supreme Court decisions around obscenity in the early-mid 60s, the doors were flung open wide. And pretty much anything went. 

    I’ve found sources (which I have no intention of revealing) for a bunch of the books – text files at least. And while I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for stuff that is way out there, I’d say a good 50% of them contain elements that make them too ick for my tastes. (Way) underage sex, racist crap, rape – if you can imagine it, there’s probably a story out there. 

    And many of them are just bad. Badly written, repetitive, not worth the paper they were originally written on. But... 

    I’ve seen references that state that Greenleaf Publishing was suggested to William Hamling by Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison as a way for struggling writers to make some extra cash. Silverberg was later quoted as saying that those books paid for his house. 

    So some of the writing is pretty damn good. And the covers... well, the covers for some of the series were just wonderful in their uniquely weird way. I have read that Robert Bonfils was the art director and he did a ton of covers, along with Harold McCauley and Darrel Millsap and Tomas Cannizzaro, among others.  

    I find them fascinating. I’m a huge fan of Robert McGinnis, who did amazing covers for spy novels and incredible movie posters around this same time, like Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Casino Royale (the original one). Bonfils artwork in particular often feels like a hastily sketched copy of a McGinnis. 

    If you think that the hotwife stories that dominate Amazon and Medium today are somewhat new, think again. There are tons of 60s and 70s vintage hotwife stories out there, and swapping (I know, not the same thing) was king. There were great titles like The Wife Pool (artwork by Bonfils) and Swap Center (cover by Darrel Millsaps). Company Wife was another Bonfils cover. 

     

    If you’re interested in reading them, well, good luck. A quick look at eBay shows a number of Curt Aldrich books in at $85 and up. But if, like me, you’re mostly fascinated by the covers, hie thee to the Greenleaf Classics website/gallery, which is an awesome source of cover art (that’s not where I’ve gotten mine, but I’ll likely head there when I’ve exhausted my stash). 

Too many of the erotica covers these days (including my own) are pretty repetitive and undifferentiated. While I’m not posting the most lurid covers I’ve seen (as I warned a friend last week – if there’s a German shepherd on the cover, DO NOT READ IT), I find these fascinating and I hope you do too.