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Ep 6 Sixties Sleaze Paperbacks, Orie Hitt, and Special Guests

 


This week we cover a type of paperback that was forgotten until the mid-nineties when dealers began to promote and sell "sleaze" paperbacks. They were (generally) soft-core novels with middle or lower-class protagonists whose lives are complicated by sex, status, and the desire for money. Sex has always sold books, but with censorship laws loosening in the late fifties and sixties, publishers began to sell novels whose primary appeal was sex and the infinite varieties of arousal.

We discuss the history of this unique paperback genre, how the books were written, distributed and the people who read them (primarily men). The era (excuse the pun) "peaked" in the 1960s when new readers and marketplaces emerges (the adult bookstore). Even established authors like Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison wrote (using pseudonyms) these "sleazy novels). And despite the fact that society looked down on these types of books, a lot of money was made creating and distributing these books. 


In the second half of the show, we profile one of the most prodigious authors of sleaze fiction (250 novels in 10 years), Orie Hitt. While most collectors of sleaze paperbacks look for bizarre and colorful cover art, Orie Hitt's novels are actually quite readable even though he borrowed plots and wrote them in a hot heat over two or three weeks. 

We chose his novel, Wild Lovers, to discuss with Cody Goodfellow and Kim Vodicka, both writers, and lovers of the strange and erotic. It's backwoods sleaze (a sub-sub-genre of sleaze) that takes place in the backwoods of New York and the dialogue is priceless. Cody and Kim perform a scene from the novel in a separate recording made just for these show notes (see below). 

GUESTS

CODY GOODFELLOW has written eight novels and five collections of short stories and edits the hyperpulp zine Forbidden Futures. His writing has been favored with three Wonderland Book Awards for excellence in Bizarro fiction. His comics work has appeared in Mystery Meat, Dark Horse’s Creepy and Slow Death Zero. As an actor, he has appeared in numerous TV shows, videos by Anthrax and Beck and a Days Inn commercial. He “lives” in San Diego, California.

KIM VODICKA is the author of four full-length poetry collections—most recently, The Elvis Machine (CLASH Books, 2020) and Dear Ted (Really Serious Literature, 2022). She also writes erotica and her short story, A Dirty Story as You Like It, was published in 2021 as part of the Pocket Erotica Series by New Urge Editions. Originally from South Louisiana, she lives in Memphis, Tennessee with her beloved cat, Lula.


The diminutive Orie Hitt next to a favorite car

LINKS
READING

Special Reading of a Scene from Orie Hitt's Wild Lovers by Kim Vodicka and Cody Goodfellow. Click the link below to listen. Thanks to you both for doing this!

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