The Sparks That Smoldered to Flame: Odd Girl Out and Beebo Brinker
- by Ann Bannon
Reviewed by William Dean
(01/08/03)
I am a fortunate man. My interests and career in media have allowed me to touch base, however briefly, with some legends. Books, too, often allow general readers some of these highlighted experiences. And fortunately, wise publishers sometimes bring legends back to life. Such is the case with the novels of Ann Bannon, who chronicled the struggles, the challenges, and the environment of being a lesbian in the late 1950s and early 1960s in America. Now, just past the cusp of the 21st Century, it may be difficult for readers to understand how it was back in the day. The United States of America was drenched in a culture which promoted Jell-O-molds, Good Housekeeping, men in gray flannel suits, and the Eisenhower morality. Gays and lesbians were swept under the public consciousness. Anyone who did not conform to the conservative consumerist attitude joyfully was suspect. And if not prosecuted, they were at least persecuted, and made to feel anti-social.
Twenty-two year old Ann Bannon helped open up a view on what was then called "the twilight world." As she strolled and explored the curling streets and hang-outs of Greenwich Village, as she watched the woman-with-woman couples also strolling along, Ann realized that this was a world she identified with, a world waiting to be written about openly, even proudly.
Her first books, now republished by Cleis Press, are truly legends. Odd Girl Out was the best-selling paperback in 1957: an epoch ago in terms of lesbian fiction. Beebo Brinker, also available from Cleis, became a sort of dog-eared, well-thumbed "guidebook" for women who loved other women, many of whom were inspired to finally "take the plunge", to head off to Greenwich Village in search of their own fulfillment.
While many of the original lesbian pulp novels of that distant time were written by men, using female pen names and more obviously published for tawdry sexual titillation, Bannon's novels evoke a bittersweet sense of desire, a genuine depiction of just how difficult it always is to find satisfying love, even more so when society itself finds such searches shameful and even illegal. The characters she writes of are trying to overcome doubts and insecurity, powerful obstacles within themselves and out in society.
She thought of the kiss she stole in the night and her breath left her, first with delight and then with shame. And then she crept back to her thought and it was once again pure pleasure. She put her hand against her lips as if to preserve the kiss. Or prevent it? And then she thought of the way Beth had kissed her in the morning, so suddenly, so quickly, and she thought she couldn't have done anything so very wicked after all.
-- from Odd Girl Out
These books stand today for many things. The originals are now collected by university libraries, referred to by scholars and historians, lauded by critics. Some few readers, without perspective, may look upon them as relics or even quaint bits of literary erotica read for a laugh at "how things used to be." But that would be to demean their importance and to gloss over their emotional impact.
Across our 21st century globe, in certain cities and nations, the conditions of Beebo Brinker's world are still very much in existence. Lesbians are declared illegal, are shunned, disgraced, considered abnormal. Legislation before the United Nations and other world-governing organizations call for an end to such discrimination, as well they should.
And even in places where lesbianism is open, certainly the same trials and challenges to finding love and sharing desires are experienced. In Odd Girl Out and Beebo Brinker, you will find much more than you expect, especially if you come looking for the "Sex...sleaze...depravity, and twisted passions..." claimed by the blurbs which once graced their "pulp" book covers.
Beebo gave a swift tug on Venus's arm and brought her tumbling down on the bed, laughing. That laugh sprang the switch in Beebo. She stopped it with her mouth pressed on Venus's. And at last Venus submitted, all the twisting and teasing melting out of her. She let herself be kissed all over.
Beebo looked at her, stripped of all the tinseled make-believe and the wisecracks; her lips parted and her eyes shut and her fine dark hair spilling pins over the pillow, coming down almost deliberately to work its witchery. Beebo kissed handfuls of it.
She fell asleep a long time later, still murmuring to Venus, still holding her possessively close, still wondering what she had done -- or would have to do -- to deserve it.
--From Beebo Brinker
Read an interview with Ann Bannon in this issue
©2002 by William Dean
Reader
Comments
William Dean is a longtime media professional and producer. He
writes erotica under the pen name Count of Shadows, and has published extensively
online. His work is included in two erotica anthologies, Tears on
Black Roses, and Desires. He also writes the monthly column Into the
Erotik for the Erotica Readers Association.
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