The Ladder – Pulp & Pep https://monicanolan.com/pulppep An exploration of lesbian pulps and 1950s teen romance Fri, 29 May 2020 03:56:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.0.3 120614702 Desperate Housewives https://monicanolan.com/pulppep/2013/02/28/desperate-housewives/ Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:00:10 +0000 http://monicanolan.jayuen.com/pulppep/?p=324 One Touch of Ecstasy, by Gwynne Wimberly, Frederick Fell, Inc. 1959.

Best line: “There’s a reason we teach you correct posture. If your pelvis isn’t tilted forward, the organs in the area are affected unfavorably.”

The Plot: Poor Louise, married and with an eighteen-year-old daughter has never had an orgasm. Ever since that date-rape in college she’s been all twisted up inside, and marriage hasn’t helped–she’s mired in suburban misery. “The hollandaise had been spectacular” but that can’t disguise the fact that her life is one “cruelly civilized evening of superficiality and loneliness” after another. Now hubby Warren is chasing after her best friend, while daughter Betty is enamored … Read more

]]> 324 Unionizing Lesbians! https://monicanolan.com/pulppep/2012/10/12/unionizing-lesbians/ Fri, 12 Oct 2012 15:30:47 +0000 http://monicanolan.jayuen.com/pulppep/?p=257 Ah the joys of research. Mystery author Sara Gran was once asked at a reading “how much research should a writer do?” Her answer: you can never do enough, basically research until you run out of steam or time. This is the opposite of the usual pragmatic advice that writers should do the bare minimum of research necessary to make their fiction convincing. I was delighted to hear someone else validate what has always been my preferred approach.

For me, writing lesbian pulp parodies is really an excuse to read old Teen magazines, Girl Scout Handbooks, Sears Catalogs, and of course The Ladder, the newsletter of the Daughters of … Read more

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