1960s Gay Pulp Fiction: The Misplaced Heritage

Guerilla Literature: The Many Worlds of Victor J. Banis

– 190 – Guerilla Literature The Many Worlds of Victor J. Banis Randall Ivey On any list of classic gay pulp authors, Victor J. Banis will find his name at or very near the top. Using a variety of pseudonyms, among them Don Holliday, J. X. Williams (both house names used otherwise for heterosexual books), Victor Jay, and Jay Vickery, and only twice his own name, Banis published nearly sixty pulps between 1964 and 1970, books with both gay and non-gay content. The novels cover a wide stretch of fictional genres, including the historical novel, the science fiction–horror tale, and the detective story. What is more, through such a prodigious output, one that continues to this day, Banis was able to maintain a high level of writing quality, far surpassing most in the pulp field, to the point of being able to lay claim to a place in “legitimate” gay literature. From the beginning he demonstrated his skill at depicting a variety of characters and places and developing vital themes. While accepting the requirement for spicy sex scenes, which often resulted in contrived plots, Banis used the pulp genre as a means to explore serious issues for pre-Stonewall gay men (and women), among them personal and sexual identity and the need for community building at a time when isolation was more the norm than the exception for gay men coming to terms with themselves. Guerilla Literature – 191 Banis can legitimately claim to be one of the “guerillas” of the field. His novels move well past the gay pulp formula of fake moralizing and teasing sex scenes to serious explorations of gay male identity and community. Lack of critical attention to gay pulps in general has concealed how writers such as Banis were mining and extending traditional gay tropes. But recognition of Banis’s specific importance may have been hampered by his very achievements. His use of multiple noms de plume and his investigation of so many fictional genres have perhaps obscured the fact that a single writer was responsible for so much work, helping to deny Banis his place in any discussion of serious gay writing—a place he most certainly deserves if for no other reason than his role in breaking down censorship barriers. This oversight has been further abetted by overly identifying Banis with one of his creations, the widely popular Jackie Holmes, the largerthan -life Man from C.A.M.P. Banis actually began his storied career in 1964 with a largely heterosexual pulp novel (sprinkled with lesbian content) published by Brandon House under the pseudonym Victor Jay: The Affairs of Gloria, a book virtually impossible to get hold of nowadays and one sorely in need of reprinting for its historical importance alone. It netted him not only notoriety but legal trouble as well. A subsequent obscenity trial involving the novel established Banis as a true hero of the First Amendment.1 His role in it also indirectly helped convince another publishing house, Greenleaf Classics, to open a market for gay pulp novels.2 Banis’s second novel, The Why Not, published by Greenleaf Classics in 1966 under his own name, was concerned entirely with contemporary gay life. Though a pulp novel, it should not be lumped into the same category as such works as Mister Sister and Showbiz Suckers. True, the famous front cover by Darryl Milsap leaves no doubt to whom the book was being marketed. It shows a pair of anonymous male legs, garbed in white trousers , angled in a fashion that suggests overt femininity, thus adhering to one of the traditional stereotypes about gay men. Behind the poser is a group of other men at a bar. But the old adage is more than true in this case: one cannot judge The Why Not by its cover. The novel’s ultimate intent is 192 – Randall Ivey neither titillation nor escapism. Though it remains extremely readable, it is not even written in the normal linear style of almost all gay pulps. If any gay pulp can lay claim to the mantle of “experimental novel,” The Why Not is it. The novel is a series of seemingly disparate scenes featuring a variety of characters who frequent the Why Not, a typical neighborhood bar of the period in Los Angeles, and it is set during a twenty-four-hour period in the lives of the denizens of the bar. Externally the Why Not...