# Scandalous books **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 17, 2005, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102 "2005-12-17T21:49:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Eutychus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Eutychus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eutychus)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2005, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102/21 "2005-12-18T22:03:16Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > Elinor Glyn’s _Three Weeks_ (1907) and Michael Arlen’s _The Green Hat_ (1924) were the scandals of the year when they came out. It always amused me when Clarabelle Cow is seen reading “Three Weeks” in [an old Mickey Mouse cartoon](http://disneyshorts.toonzone.net/years/1930/shindig.html). ---
**Author:** ![UntouchedTakeaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/d78d45/32.png) [@UntouchedTakeaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UntouchedTakeaway)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2005, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102/22 "2005-12-18T22:04:38Z")
> [@Otto](#): > > So I was just re-reading _Peyton Place_ and I thought a list/discussion of books that generated a scandal might be interesting. Off the top of my head, besides PP, there’s: > > _Valley of the Dolls_, Jackie Susann’s magnum opus; > Joyce’s _Ulysses_, subject of a famous obscenity trial; > _The Well of Lonliness_, by Radclyffe Hall; > Salman Rushdie’s _The Satanic Verses_, more for the fatwa declared against him than the book itself; > _American Psycho_ by Bret Easton Ellis; > Kitty Kelley’s biographies of Frank Sinatra and Nancy Reagan; > _Fortunate Son_ by J.H. Hatfield, an early GWB biography that was suppressed for a while. The author later turned up dead in a motel room. > > What else? Forever Amber, by Kathleen Winsor. Filthy thing when it was published; now you find it in the “literature” section at Barnes & Noble 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2005, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102/23 "2005-12-18T22:29:35Z")
> [@Veuve\_ClicquotNJ](#): > > Forever Amber, by Kathleen Winsor. See Post #10. If y’all know the backstories or just anything juicy about the scandal, fee free to post it. ---
**Author:** ![Scott\_Plaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Scott\_Plaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scott_Plaid)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2005, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102/24 "2005-12-18T22:34:05Z")
> [@SkipMagic](#): > > Do post-publication scandals count? If so, I’d vote for Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden. \ I **loved** that book! ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2005, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102/25 "2005-12-18T22:34:53Z")
_The Scarlet Letter_ by Nathaniel Hawthorne _Heather Has Two Mommies_ ---
**Author:** ![adhemar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@adhemar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhemar)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2005, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102/26 "2005-12-18T22:36:31Z")
> [@Otto](#): > > See Post #10. > > If y’all know the backstories or just anything juicy about the scandal, fee free to post it. I know my grandmother read it and wouldn’t allow my mother to read it when she was a teenager in the late 40’s. It has an unmarried woman have in sex although not explicitly and she has a child out of wedlock. I’m telling you it was the rlaxing that did her in. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2005, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102/27 "2005-12-18T22:40:22Z")
_Tropic of Cancer_ and _Tropic of Capricorn_ by Henry Miller. (Hell, damn near _everything_ Miller wrote.) _Naked Lunch_ by William S. Burroughs. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2005, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102/28 "2005-12-18T23:33:52Z")
> [@ITR champion](#): > > I’m glad someone mentioned this one. _Jurgen_ led to a huge show trial in New York on “obscenity charges” (i.e. promoting atheism). It made Cabell hugely famous in his day, yet for some reason he sank into obscurity shortly after he died. Even literary types don’t seem to know who he is these days. But Cabell really is one of the great American authors. Witty, succinct and he hits you with real messages when you least expect it. And that is, of course, the cream of the jest. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![SkipMagic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skipmagic/32/20706_2.png) [@SkipMagic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SkipMagic)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2005, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102/29 "2005-12-19T00:17:32Z")
> [@Scott Plaid](#): > > I **loved** that book! It’s a pretty good book with a nice love story between two girls. The author behind it, though, came as a surprise to me. I had read her stuff before, back when I was in elementary school, but she was better known to me as the author of Prisoner of Vampires and a few compendiums of witches, vampires and other spookies. But, yeah, good book. ---
**Author:** ![HazelNutCoffee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@HazelNutCoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HazelNutCoffee)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2005, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102/30 "2005-12-19T07:05:36Z")
_Histoire d’O_ by Pauline Reage probably caused quite a stir when it was published. ---
**Author:** ![UntouchedTakeaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/d78d45/32.png) [@UntouchedTakeaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UntouchedTakeaway)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2005, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102/31 "2005-12-19T11:18:28Z")
> [@Otto](#): > > See Post #10. > > If y’all know the backstories or just anything juicy about the scandal, fee free to post it. Basic information I’ve read is that Kathleen Winsor was the very young bride of a war hero. She wrote the book after helping him research a college paper & became enamored of Restoration (or whatever era that was - it’s early) England. She wrote the damn thing out longhand, if I recall & only had that copy, which she blithely shipped off to a publisher. Thing was published while hubby was overseas & became an instant hot ticket. She & hubby ended up divorcing and she married several (3? 4?) more times - including a marriage to serial husband Artie Shaw. She wrote several more books, including “Star Money”, which is more or less a Roman a clef about her experience with the “Amber” phenom. She died very recently. VCNJ~ ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2005, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102/32 "2005-12-19T11:34:44Z")
_Primary Colors_ by Joe Klein _Nine and a Half Weeks_ by Elizabeth McNeill _The Bride Stripped Bare_ by Nikki Gemmell ---
**Author:** ![norinew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb9ed0/32.png) [@norinew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/norinew)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2005, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102/33 "2005-12-19T12:28:05Z")
_Forever_, by Judy Blume. I was a junior in High School when this one started attracting attention. Most of the outrage was that, in the book, two teenagers have sex, and _nothing bad happens as a result_. I had a very cool english teacher that year, and she said the book was being banned by the school library, but she owned several copies if any of us were interested in borrowing one. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Tevildo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Tevildo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tevildo)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2005, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102/34 "2005-12-19T13:07:55Z")
_No Orchids For Miss Blandish_, James Hadley Chase. _Last Exit To Brooklyn_, Hubert Selby. This, rather than “Lady Chatterly’s Lover”, was the final nail in the coffin of censorship of literature in the UK. ---
**Author:** ![UntouchedTakeaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/d78d45/32.png) [@UntouchedTakeaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UntouchedTakeaway)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2005, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102/35 "2005-12-19T14:35:20Z")
> [@Tevildo](#): > > _No Orchids For Miss Blandish_, James Hadley Chase. > _Last Exit To Brooklyn_, Hubert Selby. This, rather than “Lady Chatterly’s Lover”, was the final nail in the coffin of censorship of literature in the UK. I recently read “No Orchids…” and it’s icky sequel “Flesh of the Orchid”. I had to take a bath. Not inherently pornographic or anything…just…icky. VCNJ~ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scandalous-books/336102.md?page=1)