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Pulp Librarian Profile picture
@PulpLibrarian
Aug 8, 2021 • 12 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
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Today in pulp... the mysterious JX Williams!
JX Williams was an alias used by many writers who knocked out cheesy sex pulp for Greenleaf publishing. At least 20% of each novel had to be sex scenes with the other 80% titillation, voyeurism or padding.
As a result Greenleaf plots were somewhat thin affairs: sexy sensationalism was more important than character arcs or the niceties of the three act drama.
William Lawrence Hamling set up Greenleaf publishing in 1950, initially specializing in science fiction magazines. By 1959 the company had moved into paperbacks.
By the early 1960s sex was selling better than sci-fi and a number of writers were quietly supplying novels for both scenes. Robert Silverberg Harlan Ellison and Donald E Westlake all provides pseudonymous sex novels for Greenleaf.
And no form of desire was off limits for Greenleaf. What mattered was what sold. Ed Wood Jr was able to pen Parisian Passions for the imprint, though it was never a best seller.
Pulp sex publishers in the early 1960s were, in their own way, blazing a trail for the permissive society. Any sex was good sex and if it felt good then do it!.

It couldn't last...
The US Government prosecuted Greenleaf on many occasions under the obscenity laws of the time.

For a while Hamling's luck held...
But in 1971 Hamling was imprisoned for publishing - of all things - a fully illustrated version of the Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography.

No prizes for guessing what the illustrations were like...
Appeals against the sentence went in for many years, but Uncle Sam wasn't going to let up. It all ended in 1976 with Hamling on parole but banned from working in the obscene book trade.
By the mid 1970s the obscenity laws had changed, hard core magazines were on the news-stands and cheesy sex novels were on the way out. Turns out the permissive society wasn't that interested in reading.
But let's give a cheer for Greenleaf and the mysterious JX Williams. They fought the law and the law won: but what a fight they put up!

More torrid takes of publishing another time...

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More from @PulpLibrarian

Pulp Librarian Profile picture
Feb 9
In the 1970s a fascinating engineering battle took place between America and Japan for control of the future. The prize was the world we live in now. And one of the key battles took place on your wrist.

This is the story of the digital watch... Image
'Digital' is a magical marketing word. Like 'laser' or 'turbo' it suggests progress, mastery and the future. People like those ideas. They like them enough to spend a lot of money on products that have them, especially if they can be a first adopter. Image
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Feb 5
Today in pulp... let's look back at a Shōjo manga artist whose work celebrated friendships between women: Jun'ichi Nakahara. Image
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Feb 2
Today in pulp I try to decipher 1980s Japanese street style, with the help of Olive: The Magazine for Romantic Girls!

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Feb 1
In February 1974 something profound and inexplicable happened to author Philip K Dick that changed his life forever. Was it an illness, a psychotic reaction, or something truly mystical?

Today in pulp I look back at the exegesis of Philip K Dick... Image
Philip K Dick was both prolific and influential. In his youth he came to the conclusion that, in a certain sense, the world is not entirely real and there is no way to confirm whether it is truly there. Image
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Jan 29
What with you being so busy and everythign you may not have visited your local library in a while.

So come with me on a virtual library tour, courtesy of stock photography, to see what we do for a living... Image
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On and on it goes... Image
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Jan 29
Today in pulp I look at the original white stripes: the world of dazzle camoflague! Image
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