Pulp Fiction for a New Age

I just got back from a fabulous four-day weekend with some dear college friends.  The weather at the lake was absolutely perfect!  And after several hours of peddling the paddle boat across the chain of lakes and back, I’m feeling very fit.

One of the fun outings on our trip is a visit to an old psychiatric hospital turned condo, restaurant, and shopping galleria (think BBC’s Bedlam and you’ll get the idea.)  Anyway, while perusing a used book store there, I ran across a section of books marked Pulp Fiction.  All of it was circa 1960, and the stories ranged from westerns to hard-boiled detective novels to bodice rippers (yup…real old-fashioned bodice rippers.)

My find was a book called The Disconnected by Kay Martin.  It was written in 1964 and originally priced at $.75 (I paid double for it.)  What drew my attention was the spicy writeup on the back of the book.  Wondering what passed for a trashy novel back in 1964 (the year I was born), I bought the book and began reading.

Surprise, surprise…it was so good!  Sure, there was plenty of bed hopping and allusions to all kinds of sex, but the references were muted (thank goodness.)  What stood out to me were the well-written characters and their plunge into despair.  Think of Judith Krantz’s Ordinary People.

The Disconnected is a book about wealthy Californians whose outside lives are perfect, but who are a mess on the inside.  It’s also very revealing about the attitudes of the people of that era.  (Did you know that homosexuals were required by law to register with the state?  Not doing so resulted in fines and jail time…)

Anyway, reading the book was a pleasant surprise.  Although it did tend to eclipse my fun in the sun.  I can never put down a good book.  Can you?