Pulp fiction holds a unique place in lesbian literature and in the hearts of many lesbian readers. This month we feature three books that represent the genre, from Ann Bannon’s classic Odd Girl Out to Mabel Maney’s The Case of the Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend and Monica Nolan’s new release, Lois Lenz, Lesbian Secretary.
Lois Lenz, Lesbian Secretary by Monica Nolan (Kensington Books)
Like any good pulp novel, Monica Nolan’s very funny Lois Lenz, Lesbian Secretary begins with two women making out in a shower. Of course, Lois Lenz and her best friend, Faye Collins, are only practicing kissing so that they can perfect the art with their boyfriends.
The two popular seniors at Walnut Grove High have their lives all worked out: They’re getting ready for the prom and graduation; in the fall they’ll attend Northridge Junior College for Girls; and after that they’ll get married and settle down in neighboring houses. Everything is going as planned when the school’s career counselor recommends Lois for an opening in the secretarial pool at the advertisement firm Sather & Stirling in Bay City.
Faye does her best to seduce Lois into staying in Walnut Grove so that the two can get married and live next door to each other where they’ll have “long afternoons when their husbands would be away at work, and they would have leisure to – Faye left the promise unspoken but it was in her eyes.” Even Lois’ mom is against the idea – why, the big city is filled with reefer, communists and white slavers!
Nonetheless, Lois decides it’s finally time to see the world outside her suburban town. A few weeks later, she arrives at the Magdalena Arms boarding house where she meets a new group of women who have more in common with her than she first appreciates. Things get interesting on Lois’ first day at work, when she skips the secretarial pool and jumps straight up the corporate ladder to work with Mrs. Pierson, a woman executive known around the office as “the Hyena.”
Lois is fantastically naïve and the perfect lens to observe the 1950s. Despite her own inclinations, she does not immediately notice that she’s surrounded by a slew of lesbians, both at home and the office. She only briefly wonders why she’s landed this position of enormous responsibility at the ad firm, and after she’s hired, she unknowingly engages in S/M role play with her boss.
But Lois doesn’t stay naïve forever. By the end, as she finally wakes up and takes stock of her surroundings, she is instrumental in solving a mystery at Sather & Stirling that involves a missing girl, blackmail, a gun, and foul play in the file room. Nolan, also the author of The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories, captures the true essence and camp of lesbian pulp in this hilarious new addition to the genre.
The Case of the Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend by Mabel Maney (Cleis Press)
Mabel Maney’s Nancy Clue series, which parodies the Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames mysteries, begins with The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse. In that first book, Maney introduces the sharp sleuth Nancy Clue to the naïve nurse Cherry Aimless, and the two fall in love while trying to save a group of nuns kidnapped by priests.
The Case of the Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend, the second in the series, is even more entertaining and engaging. The book begins with Nancy and Cherry driving cross-country with their gang: Midge Fontaine, a handsome butch and the only voice of reason; Velma Pierce, Midge’s stylish glamour girl; and Lauren, the baby dyke with a mysterious past.
They’re on their way to River Depths, Ill., so that Nancy can confess to the murder of her father, prominent lawyer Carson Clue. (He isn’t as above-the-board as he seems.) The family’s housekeeper, Hannah, has falsely confessed to the crime (“I told that man time and time again to stay out of my kitchen while I was baking!”) in order to protect Nancy.
The road trip is interrupted at every bend and turn, but the blown tires, car accidents and faulty mechanics are the least of the gang’s problems. Even more portentous are the mysterious couple who shows up at every roadside stop, a stranger who makes several attempts to mug them, and reporters from the Wyoming Buffalo Bulletin who might blow their disguise.
Nancy is certain that all she’ll have to do to exonerate herself of is reveal her father’s true identity; her evidence is in letters she has stored at home. To keep organized, she writes a list of things she’ll have to do once they arrive in River Depths: “1. Get Father’s letters from secret hiding place; 2. Confess to killing father; 3. Pick up Hannah from prison.”
When the gang – especially Midge – declares their hesitancy about the plan, Nancy maintains her characteristic confidence: “I probably won’t really need the evidence, since the Chief will believe me based on my fine reputation alone, immediately free Hannah, and declare the shooting a case of justifiable homicide.”
The question, of course, is whether Nancy can trust the Chief, her longtime friend and colleague, and if she’ll actually find the letters once they arrive in River Depths.
The Case of the Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend weaves a complicated mystery. It is at once a campy representation of 1950s culture and a compelling examination of class, race and gender.
Maney is also known for her attention to detail, and The Case of the Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend is no exception. Solving the mystery is as important as the clothes they wear during the investigation: “the attractive girl, clad in a simple powder blue summer skirt and crisp white blouse with a Peter Pan collar that gave her a charmingly innocent air.”
And the detectives don’t keep their girlish figures by skipping supper: “yummy liver loaf sandwich, creamed spinach, and an extra side of gravy.” Of course, when they do skip supper, it’s for more important things like a stiff drink: “Who else would have thought of having a cocktail but Nancy? Golly, she was so sophisticated, she always knew the right thing to do!”
If you’re interested in reading the entire series, finish off with the hilarious A Ghost in the Closet, in which the girls join forces with the Hardly Boys.
Odd Girl Out by Ann Bannon (Cleis Press)
When an editor at Gold Medal Books in the 1950s read the first draft of Odd Girl Out, he told Ann Bannon to “put this manuscript on a diet, and tell the story of the two girls.” And so the pulp classic, the first in the Beebo Brinker Chronicles, became the story of sorority sisters Laura Landon and Beth Cullison.
Both women are deeply isolated — Laura is recovering from her parents’ shameful divorce; Beth is an orphan on a “long, anxious search for love” — and they form an immediate bond as roommates in the Alpha Beta house. Shortly after the two find comfort in each other’s arms, however, their romance is disrupted by the ingenuous Charlie Ayers.
Though in the past Beth has had a difficult time bonding with men, she finally feels the spark with Charlie after she and Laura become intimate. She wonders, “How had a simple girl like Laura been able to spring her emotions free of their trap?” She later realizes, “It took a woman, it took Laura, to teach me how to feel.”
When Laura learns of Beth’s affection for Charlie, she becomes a desperate “predator” determined to do whatever is necessary to keep her love. As it turns out, she doesn’t have to do much. When Charlie accidentally gets an Alpha Beta sister kicked out of school, Beth returns to her initial distrust of men: “It makes me sick, the whole damn business — authority — stupid, stuffy, blind authority — men, deans, school, everything,” she says after the incident. “I want to get out of here.”
Laura, of course, couldn’t be happier and quickly makes plans for the two to drop out of school and move to New York City. True to lesbian pulp at the time, however, the romance between the girls has to dissolve somehow, and the story narrowly escapes a happy ending.
Despite the book’s facile characters and plot, one of its many achievements includes Laura’s acceptance of her sexuality. In the beginning, she is in complete denial: “She thought that homosexual women were great strong creatures in slacks with brush cuts and deep voices; unhappy things, standouts in a crowd.” Eventually, when she does face reality, she maintains her pride: “I know what I am, and I can be honest with myself now. I’ll live my life as honestly as I can, without ruining it.”
The Odd Girl Out was published before all the movements — civil rights, women’s, gay — when homosexuality was considered a disorder, and an illegal one at that. Though it was the second best-selling paperback in 1957, it managed to escape censorship like many pulp novels at the time because, as Bannon explains in the introduction to the Cleis Press edition, “there was no public dialog about [lesbian pulp novels] in the media, either on their literary merits or their content, and that benign neglect provided a much-needed veil behind which we writers could work in peace.”
The Beebo Brinker Chronicles were later celebrated in books like Jaye Zimet’s Strange Sisters: The Art of Lesbian Pulp Fiction, 1949-1969, and included in Arno Press’ Homosexuality: Lesbian and Gay Men in Society, History and Literature. For many readers, this recognition is belated and perhaps even superfluous. The novels held a profound place in their lives, if not their bookshelves, and allowed them to feel a little less alone.
For readers now, it is an interesting look back on our history — and, thankfully, a very different time and place.
