Memoirs Of A Not Altogether Shy Pornographer: Selected and Introduced by Jonathan Lethem

(Paperback)

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In this funny and telling portrait of the artist as a young pornographer, Bernard Wolfe chronicles his own unlikely entrance into the world of letters. The year was 1936, and Depression laden America had no great need for a Yale Phi Bete whose primary talent was for words. After working variously as a secretary-bodyguard for Leon Trotsky in Mexico, a cataloger of the Irving Fisher papers, and a hopelessly inept drill-grinder, Wolfe landed his first professional writing job: turning out piecework porn at $2.00 a page for an Oklahoma millionaire. He credited his pornographic efforts with teaching him to write to specified lengths while facing deadlines: "I acquired the work discipline of a professional writer, capable of a solid daily output."

Author Bio

Bernard Wolfe (1915-1985), dramatist, television writer, and novelist graduated from Yale in 1935 and after service in WWII worked briefly as secretary and bodyguard to Leon Trotsky during the revolutionary's exile in Mexico (he was off-duty at the time Trotsky got plugged) before settling in New York to become a writer. Among his many books are the novels Limbo, The Late Risers, In Deep, The Great Prince Died, The Magic of Singing, Logan's Gone and Lies; the short story collection Move Up, Dress Up, Drink Up, Burn Up and the influential jazz memoir Really the Blues with Mezz Mezzrow. Jonathan Lethem is the author of seven novels including Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, which was named Novel of the Year by Esquire and won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Salon Book Award, as well as the Macallan Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger. He has also written two short story collections, a novella and a collection of essays, edited The Vintage Book of Amnesia, guest-edited The Year's Best Music Writing 2002, and was the founding fiction editor of Fence magazine. His writings have appeared in the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, McSweeney's and many other periodicals. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.