Re James Fulford’s blog post: Freudianism, Shell Scott, And The ’60s—Normal People Always Knew Freudian Theory Was Nonsense

From: A Chicago Reader [Email him]

Good grief, I had no idea that sort of stuff was in the Shell Scott paperbacks. I read every sort of cheesy stuff, including Edward S. Aarons’ Assignment Series and even a couple of Man From Uncles by Michael Avallone,  but dismissed Scott largely because of the sexpot covers. 

There was, somewhere, however, a description of author Richard S. Prather’s method: that he might turn out 100,000 words for a typical 50,000-word paperback and then condense like the devil. I’ve forgotten where I read that.

Anyway, thanks for publishing this.

Frederick Crews did a great job on Freud over a number of years (see FREUD—The Making of an Illusion) as well as ridiculing the recovered-memory cult.

James Fulford writes: I know what the writer means about the covers. When I wrote in the blog that I read these books ”probably at an inappropriately early age” I was thinking of my Grade 6 teacher’s reaction when he asked me what I was reading and I showed him this.

But my point was that genre fiction writers like Prather weren’t part of the liberal consensus that controls literary fiction and the New York publishing industry, and such writers could have normal opinions about things like Freudianism and crime.