Nailing down the Westlake sleaze catalog, part III:
The Monarch books By Trent
Unlike a chunk of the books in the previous posts in
this series, the authorship of the books written by Donald Westlake and
published by Monarch Books were never much in question. The “E” in Donald E.
Westlake stands for “Edwin,” so it didn’t take a master sleuth to figure out
Donald Edwin Westlake. In fact, DEW had four of these five listed in his
official (but not thorough) bibliography at his official site, the only sleaze
titles to appear there prior to his son Paul taking up the task of filling in
the blanks after DEW’s passing.
I’ll gyp this bit from this brief history and
detailed bibliography of Monarch Books written by Kenneth R. Johnson with
assistance from Bruce Black. Those of you familiar with the broad outline of
Westlake’s life and career will not be shocked by the appearance of the Scott
Meredith Literary Agency:
Monarch Books is one of a handful of publishers whose
histories cannot be fully written without discussing the involvement of the
Scott Meredith Literary Agency. Most literary agents simply market whatever
material their authors write, shopping it around from one market to another in
the hope that it will eventually sell. The Meredith Agency was notoriously
proactive in identifying markets that needed material and assigning the work to
their clients. It may be to the Agency’s discredit that much of such packaging
involved soft- and hard-core porn. It appears that much of the material they
supplied to Monarch Books was written to order from Charles Heckelmann’s
requests. Much of this “packaged” material was pseudonymous, in what has
occasionally been described as a “black box” operation, i.e., the publishers
rarely knew who the authors were and the authors rarely saw the finished
product. The result of this process is that the actual authorship of these
books is rarely given in the copyright registrations, and the actual authorship
of some titles has been slow to be revealed.
By my reckoning, at least 30 of Monarch’s authors
were Meredith Agency clients, and their identified output accounts for about a
quarter of the books published. The roster of Meredith clients included:
William Ard, Lawrence Block, Marion Zimmer Bradley, I. G. Edmonds, Stuart Friedman,
William Johnston, John Jakes, Jack Pearl, Thomas P. Ramirez, Mack Reynolds,
Robert Silverberg, Tedd Thomey, and Donald E. Westlake. It might be significant
that Monarch editor Charles Heckelmann was also a client of the Scott Meredith
Literary Agency.
According to that article, Monarch published 521
books, 207 of which were sleaze. Here is Westlake’s .96% of total output, and
2.4% of sleaze.
Young and Innocent, by
Edwin West (1961)
Pictured above. This one has been reprinted by our
friends at Blackbird Books. (More pics)
Campus Doll, by Edwin
West (1961)
This one takes place at Clifton College, which was
Lawrence Block’s fictionalized version of Antioch College, a setting Block used
for Campus Tramp and several other sleaze novels. (Apparently, Campus Tramp
became a bit of a cult hit amongst Antioch alum of a certain generation.)
Brother and Sister, by
Edwin West (1961)
This one is incredibly rare, probably because most
people were too embarrassed to buy it and those who did were too embarrassed to
keep it or sell it. (More pics)
Strange Affair, by Edwin
West (1962)
Same cover as Brother and Sister, only with lesbians.
(More pics)
Campus Lovers, by Edwin
West (1963)
This is the one title omitted from the Westlake
bibliography mentioned at the top of this piece. According to Lynn Munroe,
“[i]t includes a couple of in-jokes. For example, one character is reading a
mystery about a private eye named Tim, surely a reference to Killing Time.”
(More pics)
And thus ended Westlake’s history with Monarch Books.
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