Same, Same, Different
To understand Victor as a writer I began reading his books in alphabetical order. I had read a couple of his early pulps like AC-DC Lover and the C.A.M.P. series, but many were his gothic romance and gothic terror books such as Bishop’s Place, Blood Moon, Blood Ruby, Bloodstone, etc. Recently, I made the switch and, in no particular order, started reading his early pulps.
I recently read three books: Wine of the Heart, 2nd edition (the first edition is Bronze and the Wine), Born to Be Gay, and The Gay Trap. They were all published in 1966 (he wrote approximately 18 of the 53 gay pulps that were published that year). Each one is different but I began to notice overlapping themes and straight up copying of text. Of course, I noticed this in the C.A.M.P. series, but that is true for most series.
Victor and other pulp writers were churning out books at a record pace, often completing a book in a matter of days. So, it’s not surprising that they used similar stories and sometimes copied text directly from other books. Sometimes the editor adds pieces. Victor talks about this in his autobiography, Spine Intact, Some Creases, when writing about the C.A.M.P. series:
“I wrote the first couple or three books before I left for that extended trip to Europe. I was gone by the time the editors discovered that the books were simply too short. To bring them up to the necessary length they ‘borrowed’ material from one book to another.
Color Him Gay includes twenty some pages lifted almost verbatim from The Man from C.A.M.P., and The Man from C.A.M.P. itself, which was the shortest of the manuscripts, was printed with extensive additions written by the editors. Much of this additional material is heterosexual in nature – not surprising, since the editor, Earl Kemp, was straight. Thus in one lengthy scene agent Ted Summers dallies with a woman he has met in a bar.
What I do find odd, however, in rereading it, is that later in the same book, another scene added by the editor (perhaps a different editor?) argues for a sort of homosexual exclusivity and against bisexuality. ‘We have no room in the organization for ambi-sextrous types,’ a faux Jackie tells Rich. I’m not altogether sure what an ambi-sextrous type is, to be honest, but you would have thought a heterosexual editor would have been a bit more tolerant of his differently sextrous brothers. Be that as it may, the sextrous of whatever type is undeniably tepid compared to today’s novels.) (page 112)
As I started reading Born to be Gay, I knew I had read a similar story but couldn’t remember which one. After hours of wracking my brain, I remembered Wine of the Heart. Both books start out very similarly. Both have a teacher/student relationship, nude swimming in a creek, and violence, but they are from different points of view.
Born to be Gay is an interesting story. The main character is a young student, Terry Cabot. He is one of those characters that you think about when the story has ended. I also thought about his teacher, Bruce Tucker. I wanted to know what happened to them after the book ended. Even after reading AC-DC Lover, parts of the book were hard for me to read. There were a couple violent parts but, there were other parts that really drew me into the story and made me empathize with the characters. It explores the budding relationship between Terry and his schoolmate, Jack. By today’s standards, it could be considered a tragic love story. Overall, it was a good story with a few violent parts.
Like Born to be Gay, Wine of the Heart starts out at a school. I do not have a copy of Bronze and the Wine so I am unable to compare/contrast to see if there are any differences between the editions. The name change is unfortunate. The titles are based on the ancient Greek quote “Bronze is the mirror of the form; wine is the heart.” The quote is explained on page 46 of Wine of the Heart. I don’t know why Victor changed the title, but I like the original better.
This story was a rather forgettable one for me. The main character is a teacher at a Junior College, Glen Sanford. Jerry is his student. I started out liking Glen but as the story progressed, he became less likable and made one bad decision after the other and poor Jerry was lifted out of one mess and dragged into another. You can’t help but to feel sorry Jerry!.
And then we have The Gay Trap. This is the book I’ve read most recently. Pages 17 – 33 are almost, word for word, exactly like the beginning of Born to be Gay. Even many of the names are the same. It must have been that situation where the book was short and Victor or the publisher needed a “filler” because the scene was completely unnecessary and added nothing to the story.
Of these three books The Gay Trap is my favorite. It’s an interesting story about the main character, Ron, and his journey into becoming a hustler. It’s a well written story and you really feel for Ron. The story took many dark turns, but (spoiler) ended on a beautiful note. The ending gave me So Soft, So Sweet, So Queer vibes.
I try to imagine what Victor was like in 1966; a young 20-something kid from Eaton, Ohio, living in L.A., sitting at his typewriter. I’ve heard stories from him and my family about him as a person, but not much about him as a writer. What amazes me about Victor’s writing is that he had so many stories in his head and just how incredible he was to write (and have published) so many books. Hell, it takes me a week just to write a simple blog!
Even though you can see overlapping themes and copied text, each of the books written in 1966 is different. While each book follows a basic formula, each one is unique and entertaining in its own right. Just look at the C.A.M.P. series: That Man from C.A.M.P., Color Him Gay, Watercress Files, and The Son Goes Down were all published in 1966! While they are all the same, they are different.
So there you have it…my 2 cents about three Victor books from 1966. If you are interested in reading any of these books you can purchase them from our friends at Hommi Publishing for as little as $0.75! You can also purchase Wine of the Heart from Wildside Press for $14.99.
…stay tuned for upcoming blogs as we celebrate 60 years of C.A.M.P.
Born to Be Gay, J.X. Williams, Greenleaf Sundown Reader SR597, 1966. Cover art by Darrel Millsap. Tagline “FEAR DROVE HIM INTO THE THIRD-SEX SHADOW WORLD”
Bronze and the Wine J.X. Williams, Greenleaf LB1172, 1966. Cover art by Robert Bonfils. (AKA Wine of the Heart, Victor Jay, Wildside Press, 2012) Tagline “HE LEARNED THAT LOVE HAS MANY MEANINGS”
The Gay Trap, Don Holliday, Greenleaf SR602, 1966. Cover art by Darel Millsap. Tagline “HOLLYWOOD WAS A ONE-WAY RIDE INTO…”
