Everyone has a pulp freak writer they secretly adore. I'm a fan of Michael Perkins. I met him at Bennington and found him to be an interesting hunchbacked man who lives in upstate New York and has never owned a car or published much since the 70's. He's by trade, a writer of one-fisted wank stories like you read in Penthouse and Hustler. His biggest commercial success was a novelization of "DeepThroat" which he never saw a cent from because the Mafia owned the rights.
Anyways, he managed to tap out a few Bataille-like erotica books like "Evil Companions" and "Dark Matter" during the 60's which depict the insane, ecstatic, death worship, dominance struggle that we all secretly know sex to be. They've been reprinted by "Blue Moon Books"--probably not an austere name in the publishing industry, but they're pretty hot, smart and disturbing things.
I was dredging the backwaters of the internet to find evidence of his existence and found this one link to some of his writings. When I met him at Bennington, he told me that the absolute last taboo in our culture was the sight of fat people making love. An interesting observation from a guy who has spent decades thinking about sex.
Book synopses I culled from Amazon
"Dark Star explores an underground sexual realm ranging from San Francisco's pagan play parties to Los Angeles's world of extreme porn video. In this tale of radical sexual relationships spinning passionately out of control, adult video star China Crosley uses an admiring stalker to help her escape a bondage and discipline marriage to porno entrepreneur Jack Blue."
"Harris, a small-time hood from New York, seeks refuge from his past in Mexico. There he falls in love with a mysterious prostitute who has a twin sister involved in ancient Aztec blood rites. Clare, a Los Angeles call girl, has escaped her own past with her friend Roxy, a young movie star with a taste for the perverse."
"Nicholas Wilde is a 50-year-old painter shunned by the art elite for his unflinching depictions of the female form. Rose Selavy is the 24-year-old muse who refuses to let him own her. When they meet, their passions burn red hot. But when Rose leaves Nicholas, he is left impotent. No woman can arouse him like his passionate muse."
I dunno, maybe he is a hack. I kind of dig him.
P.S. There's undoubtedly a boatload of seminal masterworks lost in the intellectual ghettoes of "genre" fiction--harlequin romances, space operas, and cowboy adventures.
Anyone who knows of any genre fictions that transcend into interesting (hrumpf!) literature should let me know, as I am very interested in such things. Don't say Harlan Ellison, Jim Thompson, or Philip K. Dick, as I already know those guys are pretty much amazing. Man, Harlan Ellison--there's a guy I haven't read in awhile.
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