1950s Pulp Erotica Saved Me From Pandemic Stress

When I travel, I like to go to used bookstores. I end up lugging dozens of used books back home, to Canada. A few years ago, I was on a trip to Boston. In one respectable book shop, I found myself looking at a rotating display rack of erotic paperbacks from the 1950s. The books were displayed near the cash and sealed inside transparent plastic bags, partly to preserve the book, and partly to make them more tantalizing. By modern standards, the covers were sexy, but not shocking. The books were also cheaply priced. I bought two. Coincidentally, both of the books I purchased were by the same author: March Hastings.

I took the books home and stuck them in one of my piles of books-I-would-hopefully-some-day-read. (These piles are all over my house.) I soon forgot about the books entirely.

In early 2020, I was slowly working my way through a modern translation of Don Quixote, and trying to read the complete works of Plato. (Yeah, yeah, I’m pretentious as hell.) Then COVID hit. I had to start working from home. Everyone started wearing masks. Restaurants did take-out only. Life got weird.

A new, low-level stress pervaded my world. My brain stopped working and I couldn’t read. I wasn’t fully illiterate — it just felt like my attention was always half focused on something else, somewhere else. Words refused to enter…