In my collecting travels and endeavors, I sometimes snap up small pamphlets called “readers.” A close cousin to the Tijuana Bible, they were essentially dirty short stories, often accompainied by photographs of prostitutes going at it. I don’t routinely buy readers everytime I see them — they’ve become common enough, thanks to the aggregating nature of eBay and I own dozens of them alread — but when a good deal entices me, I’ll buy them.
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Readers, like their more famous dirty comics kin, were produced by the same publishers who produced erotic book and playing cards. Cheap to produce and carrying a big profit margin, they were distributed to newsstands, cigar shops, used bookstores, bars and burlesques houses. First appearing in the 1920s and 1930s, they saw a good thirty-year run before falling away in the face of legal pornography.
I’m always attracted to any clandestine erotica — and these babies certainly had underground existence — but I’m attracted to readers for more than just their clandestine nature. First, known curiosa book publishers printed them, namely Samuel Roth, who fought repeated obscenity charges during his publishing life, and I. R. and Jack Brussel, noted book row jack-of-all-trades, the latter of whom later reprinted the famed three-volume Bibliography of Prohibits Book by Prisaus Fraxi (really Henry S. Ashbee) in 1962. I’ve also appreciated how, when all else tried to keep people ignorant about sex, these readers at least contributed something to an American’s erotic awareness.
And, of course, pamphlets in general were often a vehicle of street democracy and sometimes subversive as well.
But what I like best about readers are their subversion “thrown the authorities off the track” sense of humor. Their cousin, the Tijuana Bible, were never actually printed in Mexico. The label was a ruse, a complete fabrication, meant to mislead the authorities. The same for readers, except they were far more tongue-in-cheek about it. I mean really: Humpville Illinois? Gimme a break.
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Shaftsbury Ave, London? Sure. Whatever. But the 20 shillings suggest it could’ve been European in origin, perhaps aimed at lonely G.I.s.
The Havana locale may have been legit. The exorbitant $5.00 price tag indicates that it was produce late in the readers’ existence. And the mob was well known for supplying all kinds of forbidden entertainment in Cuba in the years before the rise of Castro. However, it’s just as likely that Havana, Cuba was nothing more than code. ”Havana” was once short-hand for anything-goes sex. (See Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, believe it or not. Cleavon Little says as much to Madeline Kahn.)
You know, maybe that’s another reason I like these little readers. Maybe it’s because they make the cogs and wheels of my mind turn. I guess it’s true — the best sex *is* between the ears!
