 |
www.hopedance.org
|
| <back | home Adventures in the Smut Trade by Anne R. Allen A decade after I quit full time work to write novels, all I had to show for my fiction addiction was five unpublished manuscripts, evaporating savings, and growing stacks of rejections. (Two words of advice for aspiring writers: DAY JOB. Keep it.) I thought my worries were finally over when a UK publishing company offered me a contract for my comic novel, Food of Love with a cash advance and an invitation to stay in England for six months—rent-free—while editing and promoting my work. They’d recently moved from the industrial city of Leeds to a two-hundred-year-old factory building in rural Lincolnshire, and most of the editorial staff lived on premises. I could join them, in exchange for some editing work. I’d be staying a few hundred yards from where George Elliot wrote The Mill On The Floss—an English major’s wet dream. The Shadowline Building was every bit as romantic as I’d pictured it. Charming, hobbity young men greeted me with warm beer, cold meat pies and galleys to proof. It seemed such a marvelous adventure that I tried not to mind that my digs consisted of a grimy futon and an ancient metal desk, hidden behind stacked book pallets in an unheated warehouse, half a block from the nearest loo. But as I toured the print shop and warehouses, I made an unpleasant discovery: mainstream publishing was an embryonic venture here. The real business was…porn. Not vanilla, couples-fantasy stuff, but stories of hardcore, S/M whips-and-chains violence against women. The owners explained they had purchased the company because the “erotica” back list generated cash flow while they established mainstream lines. Meanwhile, impressive literary authors were coming aboard. I wouldn’t be working on smut. I’d be attacking the “slush pile” that had accumulated since they’d opened submissions to mainstream fiction. I met the shop workers: sturdy, no-nonsense, working-class Englishwomen who welcomed me with tea and gossip. They didn’t care that they were printing “pervy books.” They had families to feed, and the decaying town’s remaining textile factory had recently closed. The product was only words, they pointed out, and it was about consenting adults. The covers—mostly black and white photos of women in thong underwear—were standard Victoria’s Secret stuff. I told myself I’d be standing up for freedom of speech. It all seemed fairly benign and silly as I listened to fifty-something grannies taking book orders from the “pervs” over the phone. “Yes, ducks, it’s got a bum on the cover. All our covers have bums. Nice bums.” We collapsed in giggles when a huge order came in for the title Stocks and Bonds—from a major City bank. My book launched to good reviews. I did a signing tour, saw sights, wrote, and learned a lot about publishing. What’s more, they contracted to publish another of my titles the following year. But by my second visit, things had changed. Internet porn, especially from amateur S/M clubs, had taken a major cut of their market. Checks bounced. The name authors walked. Several workers quit when an abrasive, chain-smoking artist arrived to design smuttier covers and a new line of hard-core graphic novels. The artist was too busy to design the cover of my second book during my six month stay. But I had a contract, so I went back a third year, hoping they’d be over the rough patch and back to their literary dreams. Instead I arrived to a nightmare. My editor made me wait an hour in the snow before he picked me up at the train, greeting me with a hostile, sexist joke. Grisly scenes from the “graphic novels” hung on the walls. New “artwork” was everywhere—garishly colored images of what the two remaining women called “torture victim Barbie.” Half the staff had gone. One of the partners disappeared with half the funds. My favorite hobbit, a Jane-Austen-loving techie who hated “filthy books” was now editing them—and wallowing in literal filth. His formerly organized flat stank with unwashed laundry and piles of crusty dishes. He hadn’t bathed in months. My warehouse had been demolished to build a parking lot. I had to sleep in the abandoned cafeteria and skedaddle when “models” arrived for photo sessions. New workers had looted my stored things. I left after three months, sick with a mysterious, never-diagnosed disease. My second novel finally appeared last September, with a stripper on the cover. Nobody bothered to notify me. I got a card from the one remaining woman employee last Christmas. The mainstream lines are no more. The missing partner is presumed dead—a suicide. I’m finally healing. But pornography doesn’t seem silly and harmless to me any more. I’ve learned that no matter how you rationalize it, cruelty and violence will, in the end, do violence to your own soul. Anne R. Allen is the author of the novels The Best Revenge and Food of Love (available from amazon.co.uk) and writes the IN Her Own Write column for the writerss e-zine Inkwell Newswatch. She’s been living in England for most of the last three years, but she’s happy to be back in Los Osos. <back | top^ |