Paperback Jack
Paperback Jack is a love letter to the paperback publishing industry that blossomed in all its tawdry glory after World War II. Jacob Heppleman comes home from the war with a grimmer and grittier knowledge of violence than he had when he wrote short stories for the pulp magazines. He finds that the magazines are dying, to be replaced by the new pocket-sized paperback books that sell in drugstores for a quarter, and his name has been changed to Jack Holly—according to his Jewish agent, Heppleman is too Jewish for the times.
As Jack Holly, he writes a book called The Fence and, seeking verisimilitude, scrapes an acquaintance with an actual fence. The book makes money, and Jacob is threatened when it is sold to Hollywood and the fence wants a cut.
Ironically, a worse danger comes from his own government when he is subpoenaed to testify before a Congressional committee investigating the paperback industry. This is the era in which the House Un-American Activities Committee has set its sights on everything from Communists to comic books and the “degenerate” influence of lurid paperback novels with even more lurid covers. They pry into the politics of those testifying before the committee but also into their personal and sexual lives, at a time when to be homosexual, or even thought to be, is to be shunned. The cover artist of The Fence is also caught in their net, accused of leading young men astray.
Written in the (almost) unvarnished vernacular of the late Forties and early Fifties, Paperback Jack is both an affectionate portrait of the book and movie business and a cautionary tale for our times about the dangers of censorship, literary and otherwise. Thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking.
