Billy Farout – Man, It Must Be Heaven (1972)

June 24, 2023September 5, 2023 Justin Tate

Gay sex in the afterlife meets John Lennon utopia in this fantastical pulp novel. Murder, vengeful ghosts and tongue-in-cheek religious commentary are thrown in for good measure. As a literary artifact it offers a delightfully campy lens into the fantasies and fears of queer existence during the early 1970s.

The novel opens with Reggie Poppov waking up in the “Gay Wing of Purgatory.” He’s disoriented and wearing a big poofy wedding dress. Leaning over him is a “half nude angel” whose rippling physique makes him “more handsome” than Michelangelo’s David. The angel asks what happened to him. Reggie gradually recalls that he had dressed in wedding drag so he could legally marry his boyfriend, Bob. While posing for pictures on the Golden Gate Bridge, however, Bob pushed him over the edge so he could inherit Reggie’s family fortune.

Ed Kroch – Bring in the Clowns (1990)

February 21, 2023February 21, 2023 Justin Tate

There’s a lot of ball juggling in this book, if you catch my drift. The “plot” consists almost entirely of bedroom scenes. There are, however, fleeting moments of macabre clown imagery to jazz up the D-grade erotica.

The opening image is red, green and blue strobes from car headlights passing the stained-glass window of a Victorian mansion. Mark, a clown accountant, has set up a compound in the mansion for his wildly successful troupe, Bring in the Clowns. Their financial success proves there’s a special synergy among the clowns. As we soon discover, it likely has to do with their limitless dedication to customer service. The juxtaposition of jolly clowns living in a creaky old mansion is really quite sublime.

William J. Lambert, III – Adonis Trilogy (1969-1970)

November 1, 2021January 3, 2022 Justin Tate

It doesn’t get any more 1969 than Adonis. This novel is as trippy as an extended foot and more surreal than Salvador Dali’s wet dreams. Though billed as “adult only” gay entertainment, much of the sex oozes with a slime of horror and supernatural mystery. You don’t know whether to be repulsed, turned on or terrified. Perhaps it’s the combination of all three which make it so unique.

Back in the day Adonis was popular enough to warrant two sequels. Today it’s an extremely rare find that might cost three figures for a tattered used copy.

California Scene, one of the more literary-minded gay presses, reviewed the novel in their May 1971 issue. They described it as “quite an exciting detective story” and praised Lambert’s “great skill in handling” a “number of good ideas.” In the same breath, however, there was concern that the “extremely involved” plot was peopled with “too many characters” and consequently difficult to follow.