Showing posts with label William Hegner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label William Hegner. Show all posts

Thursday, March 31, 2022

The Creator


The Creator, by William Hegner
June, 1978  Pocket Books

As far as I’m aware, this was the last novel William Hegner published for over twenty years, not returning to the publishing world until 1999’s Razzle Dazzle, which he co-wrote with the actress Stella Stevens.* (And in fact I’m not even sure if this was the same William Hegner.) In my review of The Worshipped And The Damned a commenter named Tex posted an obituary of Hegner from the Sandusky Register, but the link’s no longer valid and not even available on the Wayback Machine. I’m assuming this is Sandusky, Ohio, and some Google searching reveals that a “William (Bill) Hegner” was the sports editor of the Sandusky Register in 1947. Again, no idea if it’s even the same guy; according to Hawk’s Authors’ Pseudonyms, William Hegner was born in 1928, so that’s pretty young for an editor. I can’t recall what else that obituary said, nor even what year Hegner died…it’s curious so little is known about him, with zero in the way of biographical info online; per the cover blurbs of his Pocket Books paperbacks, William Hegner’s novels sold in the “millions,” so he certainly had readers in the day. 

Hegner was also prolific: he published 16 novels in the ‘70s, almost all of them Pocket Books paperback originals. The sole non-Pocket paperback he published that decade was Rainbowland, first published in hardcover in 1977 and then in softcover by Playboy Books. The Creator capped off this productive decade, and would turn out to be Hegner’s last book (perhaps; see the asterisked footnote below). Pocket Books gives no indication of this, again blurbing those “millions” of novels sold; the cover art and layout follows the previous year’s The Bigamist. In fact for a long time I kept confusing these two books due to the similar covers. (All the kids at school would make fun of me!) But what I’m trying to say is that the decision to no longer write must have been Hegner’s, for Pocket was clearly still trying to promote him as a major seller. 

Maybe Hegner was just burned out with writing sleaze, as I theorized before. But if so, the curious thing would be that The Creator also follows The Bigamist in that it’s an actual story, with a plot that develops over the book’s 262 pages. In other words, it isn’t just a random snapshot of depraved sleaze, a la earlier Hegner novels The Ski Lodgers or Stars Cast No Shadows. While there is a good bit of sexual tomfoolery in The Creator, Hegner’s focus is more on telling his tale and bringing his characters to life. To a certain extent, at least. I mean the novel’s basically a roman a clef, obviously based on the relationship between Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker, with the titular “creator” being a silver-haired shyster who calls himself “Dr. Jack Jordan” and the Elvis analog being a hillbilly singer named Orville Tanner. 

As usual with a Hegner novel, I had a hard time figuring out what year this was set in. The opening features the character who will ultimately call himself Dr. Jack Jordan instead posing as a hellfire and damnation-type preacher named Reverend Carter Simpson. He drives a bus around the Appalachians, preaching to poor country folk, and we’re informed he has a fake religious college certificate hanging in his bus that’s dated 1944. So at first I thought we had a period piece, but later we’ll learn that this guy is 53 years old. Also later in the book we’ll learn via an offhand comment that the United States was founded “one hundred and ninety years ago.” So unless my math fails me, this would put us sometime in the 1960s…the mid to late ‘60s in particular, given random mentions of “acid rock.” Otherwise there are no topical references to the ‘60s, and unlike most roman a clefs Hegner doesn’t even mention any real-world celebrities or real-world events to add verisimilitude to the tale. So The Creator is of a piece with other Hegner novels in that it takes place in a cultural vacuum. 

The opening seems to come from a different novel; in it a preacher named Reverend Carter Simpson, of the Church of Hell, Fire, and Damnation, drives around Appalachia preaching to the yokels. He’s got long white hair and it’s all a crock to him, of course, but one night in some tiny town in West Virginia he comes upon Lurleen Raven, a mega-hotstuff babe who reminds the reverend of the brunette beauty in the Lil’ Abner comic strip(!). Immediately “Reverend Simpson” sees a new angle: he takes Lurleen into his entourage and quickly gets a gander of her nude body. With the naïve but not innocent beauty fully on board, Simpson drops his preacher schtick, sells off his church, changes his name to “Dr. Jack Jordan,” and becomes the manager of Lurleen Raven – the hottest thing to hit the burlesque circuit in many a year. As Dr. Jack later thinks of it, a “segue from gospels to G-strings.” 

Now a real curious thing occurred to me as I read this. There was an episode of The Simpsons many years ago that also spoofed the Elvis Presley-Colonel Tom Parker relationship; in it, Homer Simpson acted as the Colonel Tom analog, and he became the talent manager for a hotstuff hillbilly gal named Lurleen Lumpkin, turning her into a country music sensation. And let’s not forget, Dr. Jack Jordan goes by the name “Reverend Carter Simpson” in the first quarter of The Creator. The episode, titled “Colonel Homer,” aired in 1992 (ie the show’s third season), and is credited to Simpsons creator Matt Groening. Surely all this is a total coincidence. And yet, the plot of The Creator features Dr. Jack Jordan, the novel’s Colonel Tom Parker analog, becoming the talent manager for a hillbilly country music sensation. Now in the novel the singing sensation is a man, but still; there’s a “Simpson” and a “Lurleen” in this Elvis Presley roman a clef, so what are the odds? 

Dr. Jack and Lurleen travel around, with Lurleen headlined as “Heavenly Angel;” part of her schtick is that Dr. Jack has used hyrdogen peroxide to dye her pubic hair, so that it’s as platinum as the hair on her head. But the clubs become more tawdry and the bookings fewer, and soon enough Dr. Jack has tired of this latest angle. Also, he and Lurleen grow to hate one another, traveling around the country by bus and sharing rooms. Curiously our author leaves their few sexual dalliances off-page; in fact, Dr. Jack is more attracted to money than he is to women. Even though this section of the novel ultimately has nothing to do with what comes later, Hegner still displays his gift for memorable repartee: one of my favorites in this regard is when Lurleen is spotlighted in an “industry” publication on strip clubs, and Dr. Jack tells her that the magazine is “respected in the field.” To which Lurleen responds, “Yeah, but the whole damn field’s disrespected.” 

Destiny intervenes when the two decide to stop in the little town of Covington, Kentucky one night, pulling in to a cheap diner. There Dr. Jack witnesses a young hillbilly boy with an “outdated pompadour” putting on a show with his guitar, singing country music stuff, and Dr. Jack is riveted. He decides on the spot that the young man, Orville Tanner, will be his new client; to seal the deal, he arranges for Lurleen to spend the night with him. Which leads to another off-page sex scene! As I say, Hegner must’ve really decided to reign in on the sleaze in his later novels; compare to The Ski Lodgers, where the entire plot was the explicit sex scenes. But speaking of Lurleen, Dr. Jack now considers her an obstacle, and goes about trying to get rid of her; ultimately he sells her contract to a mobster who wants to feature “Heavenly Angel” in porn flicks. 

So with Lurleen out of the way, Hegner moves into the main plot, and belatedly I realized The Creator was actually a rock novel, even if hillbilly Orville Tanner isn’t a rocker. Hegner does mention “acid rock” at times, in particular a new group called The Questions and Answers, which has a weird act where they sing off each other. But Hegner certainly is no expert in this field. For one, he has musicians wielding “electronic guitars,” rather than plain old electric ones. This delivered a humorous mental image. Even more curious is Dr. Jack’s decision that Orville’s music will be a “fusion of jazz and Country-Western.” He ropes in a famous New York producer, one who takes the job precisely because such a thing’s never been done before, and likely for a reason. We’ll have occasional scenes in the studio, as well as a few concerts, but Hegner doesn’t much bring the music to life. Instead, the focus of the novel is on Orville Tanner’s insatiable drive for women, plus his sort-of gay relationship with Skip, Orville’s best friend since childhood and basically his soul mate. 

There’s a lot of stuff with Skip, from the two good ol’ boys drinking beer and shooting the breeze (when Dr. Jack discovers Orville, he and Skip are truck drivers, living out of their rig) to their frequent interractions with the hookers Dr. Jack hires for them. Dr. Jack is your classic control freak, and one of his concerns is that some floozie will take advantage of his prized client, even by the standard gambit of getting knocked up by him. So Orville is only allowed to screw the endless stable of professionals Dr. Jack supplies for him; this entails a meeting with a high-class “modeling” agency that has a brochure of the women available. But again Hegner doesn’t do much to dwell on these scenes, even though they occur frequently. But the craziest thing is that there’s actually a sleazier novel within The Creator, but Hegner ignores it: we get a random cutover to Lurleen, “acting” in her first porno flick, and it calls to mind books like Mafia: Operation Porno and Memoirs Of An Ex-Porno Queen. This is all we get, though, but man it would’ve been fun if Hegner had written a novel soley focused on Lurleen’s descent into mob-financed skin flicks. 

Actually the most explicit sequence is the strangest. Late in the novel, apropos of nothing, Orville and Skip decide to have a jack-off competition. Really! They set up markers in their hotel room, stand with their backs to the wall, and set off upon themselves, to see who can shoot the farthest – with the curious bit that the other guy takes over before climax. In other words, Skip strokes himself up good and proper, and then before the, uh, happy ending, Orville takes hold of Skip’s dick and gives it the last few strokes. So yeah, pretty weird. After this the two good ol’ boys get in a wrestling match during a rehearsal in the studio, much to the dismay and shock of the professional musicians and producer and etc. And yet they’re not truly gay, we’re to understand…at any rate, it’s not something Hegner really puts the spotlight on. He just leaves it as a subtext that the two are clearly in love with each other. 

Regardless, late in the novel Dr. Jack’s worst nightmare comes to life: Orville goes back to Kentucky to visit his beloved mama (another element lifted from the real-life Elvis story) and she sets him up with a local hotstuff chick. One who happens to be sixteen years old. And Orville knocks her up. This sets off a spiral which causes Dr. Jack to question his future – that, and the increasing threat of a lawsuit from his former client Lurleen, who has hired lawyers around the country to set in upon Dr. Jack. Lurleen has become a “sexual cripple” due to that hydrogen peroxide treatment Dr. Jack introduced to her genital area, and she’s out for revenge. However at this point she’s completely disappeared from the narrative; the last we see of her is a random bit, midway through the novel, where Orville and Skip duck into a dingy New York nightclub and “Heavenly Angel” is the featured dancer. Hegner leaves Lurleen in the background of the narrative, only occasionally referring to her descent, with the unstated implication that she is just a poor victim of Dr. Jack, her life destroyed by the con man. 

Overall though I really did enjoy The Creator. One grating thing about it though is that nearly all of the dialog is written in a Southern dialect, life for example “heah” instead of “here” and etc. Literally almost every single character talks like this – Dr. Jack, Lurleen, Orville, Skip, Orville’s mother, etc. This renders long sections of the novel almost indecipherable, as if we were reading a redneck Irvine Welsh. This alone prevents The Creator from being a trashy classic along the lines of Hegner’s earlier The Worshipped And The Damned. Otherwise there’s nothing here to indicate that Hegner was burned out; indeed, stuff like The Ski Lodgers gave the impression that he was burned out with writing “filth.” If that one had been Hegner’s last novel for a few decades, I’d understand it. But it’s curious that what turned out to be William Hegner’s last novel for a few decades was one of his stronger ones. If anything The Creator indicates that Hegner had more novels in him. 

*But then perhaps Hegner did publish one more novel before 1999’s Razzle Dazzle. Above I mentioned Hawk’s Authors’ Pseudonyms. Hegner actually has an entry in it: according to Pat Hawk, William Hegner published a novel titled Nicole under the pseudonym “Morgan Saint Michel.” Hawk gives no further info, so it took a bit of digging for me to figure this out. “Nicole” was a series of erotic paperbacks published by Jove Books in the early ‘80s: Nicole Around The World, Nicole In Flight, Nicole In Captivity, etc. The books were actually credited to “Morgan St. Michel,” ie “Saint” was not spelled out as it is in Hawk’s listing. All of the books featured photo covers of a woman in lingerie, and the series must have had scarce printings given the few, overpriced copies online. From my research, someone named Coleman Stokes served as “Morgan St. Michel” for most of the novels, but Pat Hawk certainly knows more about pseudonyms than I do; thus, I must conclude that Hawk is correct and William Hegner wrote the first novel in the series, simply titled Nicole and published by Jove in 1982. But I have no plans to confirm this by acquiring the book and actually reading it – copies of Nicole are around a hundred bucks.

Monday, September 6, 2021

The Bigamist


The Bigamist, by William Hegner
October, 1977  Pocket Books

With sales “over 1,000,000,” William Hegner turns out another paperback potboiler, one which memorably features a disco-era lothario on the (uncredited) cover. Another notable element is that Hegner this time actually writes a novel, or at least what passes for one with him; there’s no real beginning, middle, or end, but at least it isn’t just a sequence of sleazy sex scenes, a la The Ski Lodgers or Stars Cast No Shadows

Indeed, the sexual material in The Bigamist is less explicit than Hegner’s previous books. But unfortunately we don’t here have a trashy masterpiece like The Worshipped And The Damned. Instead, this one’s more of a slow-moving character study, with the caveat that the character being studied is your typical self-involved Hegnerian antihero. Barry Solon is aligned with past Hegner protagonists in that he’s a narcissistic egotist involved with the entertainment industry; he’s the creator and writer of the successful soap opera Love And Let Love. However the title of the book is a bit misleading; while Barry does indeed come to have two wives during the course of the novel, the reason why is inexplicably not much dwelt upon, and this aspect of his life is kept hidden from other characters. 

The novel opens with Barry in a rather cushy setup; he lives in a Manhattan apartment Monday through Friday, furiously pounding out a daily quota of pages for the soap. Friday evenings he drives to Cape May on the coast, where he lives with his wife of twelve years, Merry, as well as their two young daughters. The two lives do not meet: his soap opera colleagues suspect “Merry” doesn’t exist and is merely an excuse Barry uses to avoid going to parties on the weekend, and the locals in Cape May suspect that Merry’s husband is just a myth. With this sort of a setup it’s only expected that Barry will stray from time to time, and we see him in action with a busty actress early in the book, an act for which Barry later chastizes himself. 

One thing I’ve learned from Hegner is not to expect to learn much about the world in which the novel is set. So don’t go into The Bigamist thinking you’ll get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of soap opera production in the 1970s. The actual amount of stuff we get in this regard is a few meetings Barry attends with the producer and director, and a half-page appearance by the soap’s lead actress. Otherwise the novel, like most every other Hegner offering, occurs in a vacuum, one solely populated by the protagonist’s ego. It’s as if nothing else can exist outside of Barry and his viewpoints; in this regard he has the vibe of a modern Twitter addict, stranded within his own bubble. We also don’t get an idea of when the novel occurs; it seems to me that most of the Hegner novels I’ve read have been set in eras earlier than the publication date, and that’s possible here, with a brief mention that Love And Let Love got its start in “the earliest days of television.” But then later on hippies are mentioned, so as usual it’s hard to say, and probably just another example of the “vacuum effect” of Hegner’s self-involved characters. 

But it’s too bad we don’t learn more about the soap Barry writes, as it sounds wild as hell, with plots about “voyeurism, exhibitionism, and masturbation,” not to mention a subplot in which the main female character engages in a brief bisexual fling! It’s through one of these subplots that Barry runs afoul of a notoriously bitchy TV critic, who takes umbrage at a storyline involving homosexuality. As Barry’s producer notes, the critic himself is likely gay, thus got offended; the show’s director, Rotterman, gets first-hand indication of this when he’s at a Manhattan bar one night and spots the critic, Matrix (presumably a relative of John Matrix), surrounded by a couple male clingers-on. Rotterman, progressively drunk, finds himself annoyed with the open display of gayness: “If [Rotterman] was a political liberal, then he was a social conservative.” I thought this line was very interesting, as it reminded me of the findings of a recent survey

Rotterman has a drunken run-in with Matrix, who ends up slapping the director, and this leads to Matrix having a long-boil hatred for Love And Let Love as well as anyone involved with it. But folks William Hegner is not one for paying off on plot points; believe it or not, but Barry and Matrix never meet, and for the most part Matrix will come and go in the narrative via his increasingly-bitchy appraisals of any soap opera Barry’s involved with. At any rate, Barry finds his tenure on the show coming to an end due to behind-the-scenes politics; the top sponsor suspects “the well might run dry” and requests that a new writer be brought to keep the show moving while Barry’s on vacation. This will lead to what is really the only running conflict in the novel. 

Oh and Barry doesn’t go on vacation with his wife Merry, either. Surely the most abused character in the novel, Merry is a loving wife who misses her husband and treats him with kid gloves when he’s home. But despite this he treats her like dirt; there’s a part where she has a painting on exhibit and is very excited to go to the gallery opening with Barry, but he’s a total prick – he refuses to talk to anyone, immediately goes to the bar, and promptly leaves when someone has the audacity to approach him. And this happens quite early in the book, meaning that it’s pretty hard for the reader to drum up much enthusiasm for this particular protagonist. But anyway, Barry first goes to Key West, where he engages a pair of hookers; Hegner actually leaves this off-page, which is hard to believe from the guy who wrote The Ski Lodgers. Maybe he was trying for self-restraint this time, sort of like how Clive Barker pointedly reigned in on the description in Cabal after the description-dense Weave World

Barry returns to New York to find the show’s been “augmented” with a new writer, a young grad student named Martin Lombard who has studied melodrama writing and such. He also turns out to be the nephew of the main sponsor. Barry can see the writing on the wall, so takes off for yet another solo vacation, this time to Cape Cod. Here he meets a young local named Eden Summers, who also happens to be a painter like his wife Merry, but is more of a hippie type. The two hit it off quickly, but again Hegner leaves the boinkery details vague. Then, without any warning, Hegner jumps forward six years, and Barry and Eden are now married and have two children, and meanwhile Barry’s still married to Merry, his daughters with her now in their teens. 

What possessed Barry to marry Eden? To have kids with her? Hegner is not interested in answering these questions. Nor is Barry himself; the latest set of kids is just as immaterial to him as the previous set, with the only difference being that Eden often badgers Barry for never being around them. But our cad of a “hero” trades off between wives; he sticks to the usual Monday to Friday work week in New York, then will head to either Cape at whim: Cape Cod for Eden or Cape May for Merry. And when he does go to either home, he usually encloses himself in his study and works on the “GAN,” aka the Great American Novel he has spent years writing. Ultimately even this is little explored; the book is published, at novel’s end, but all we learn about it is that it’s very long “family saga.” 

Also, Barry’s now involved with a new soap opera, this one another of his own creation, but one that runs in a late-night slot so is free to be even more daring than his previous one had been. However Hegner is even more vague about this show than he was about Love And Let Love, and indeed as the novel progresses Hegner basically rewrites the first half of the novel: once again the show’s top sponsor turns out to be the same as the one on the previous soap, and once again Martin Lombard is brought in as a new writer by request of the sponsor! All a carbon copy of the scenario we read in the first half of the book. 

In fact, Hegner’s so disinterested in his own book that he goofs; as mentioned, early in the book Barry takes off from Merry’s art exhibit because some local guy dares to talk to him. Later in the novel, Martin Lombard mentions that he’s happened to meet this guy, Barry’s neighbor at the Cape. Barry, concerned that someone’s about to discover his double life, recalls meeting this neighbor “last winter.” But folks the scene in question occurred six years earlier, not “last winter;” Hegner has apparently forgotten the flash-forward he placed in the middle of the novel. But anyway the supposed threat here is that Martin Lombard, who suddenly is presented as a skirt-chasing drunkard, might be on Barry’s trail, deducing that he has two wives. But the threat really is only “supposed,” because Barry Solon is such a prick that you couldn’t care less if he is uncovered. 

Actually, Hegner is so disinterested in the novel that he gives it one of the most half-assed endings I’ve ever encountered. Skip this paragraph if you don’t want to know what happens. Okay, so as mentioned Hegner establishes the possibility that Lombard might know Barry’s secret. Barry shuttles around between the Capes, disregarding Lombard’s assertation – gleaned from studying Barry’s scripts – that Barry has a split personality. The last we see of Barry he’s heading back into New York, his thoughts focused on how to get out of this mess. And folks, next chapter opens…and Barry’s dead!! The rest of the novel is told in backstory, with Barry having collapsed on a Manhattan street and dying immediately of a “massive brain hemorrhage.” Hegner leaves all of the juicy stuff off-page…I mean it’s discovered post-mortem about Barry’s dual lives, but there’s no part where the wives meet, or the kids meet, or anything! We just learn that both families are at the funeral, with Merry crushed and Eden disinterested. Oh and meanwhile Barry’s GAN is maligned as “formless and immature,” but turns out to be a huge hit when it’s finally published – with a TV series to be adapted from it and written by Martin Lombard. 

And with this The Bigamist comes to a close. While it was nice to see Hegner write an actual novel for once, the problem I had was that the novel kind of sucked. Even Hegner’s talent for bitchy dialog was mostly absent; too much of the novel was filtered through Barry’s impressions. Anyway Hegner only published one more PBO after this one, The Creator, after which he stopped publishing for twenty years, to return with 1999’s Razzle Dazzle.

Thursday, March 11, 2021

Stars Cast No Shadows


Stars Cast No Shadows, by William Hegner
November, 1974  Pocket Books

Apparently I read this William Hegner novel seven years ago, at least judging from the last paragraph of my review of The Lovelorners, but it looks like even then I couldn’t remember much about Stars Cast No Shadows. I decided to “re-read” it again, but honestly it was like reading the novel for the first time, as it’s clear this book made zero impression on me. I’m happy to say it did on this reading; I can attest, though, that I got one thing correct in my previous mini-review: the book is more a series of inter-connected short stories than it is an actual novel, with a flurry of characters for the reader to keep track of. 

As usual with a Hegner book, the focus is on Hollywood, and Stars Cast No Shadows has an interesting take: a prep school for the children of stars. But rather than tell a regular sort of novel, it is instead arranged into a series of twenty-six short chapters, one for each letter of the alphabet, each of them focused on a different character (“A is for Amy,” “C is for Christy,” etc). The “main” character in the novel is Dean Jesse Wellman, who when the book opens is about to retire after 42 years of being the Dean at Hollywood Prep. We’re informed that the Dean has written “dirty limericks” about many of his students over the years and kept robust scrapbooks on them, but curiously we only see one limerick in the course of the novel – and also, the novel is not arranged like a scrapbook, with the Dean’s first-hand recollections of this or that student. Instead, each chapter is told like your typical Hegner novel, in third-person, focusing mostly on memorable one-liners (with a special gift for sleazy repartee) and brazen sex acts. 

Indeed, Stars Cast No Shadows is like an even more surreal take on Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon; here the various stars think of nothing but sex, men and women alike booze-guzzling, pill-popping sex maniacs. This of course makes the novel seem all the more wild in our #metoo era. Another thing that only occurred to me late in the game is that the vast majority of sex scenes in the novel concern teenagers, though given that they’re all the sons and daughters of megastars they are so jaded and blasé that they come off like adults. At any rate this would be another indication of a novel that could’ve only been published in the ‘70s. What makes it all the more interesting is that the age of the kids is rarely mentioned. 

Well anyway, the setup here is that Dean Wellman is about to retire and he looks back fondly on his 42 years with the school, which as you’ve probably guessed by now is an exclusive preparatory in Hollywood for the children of stars. As usual with Hegner the novel for the most part seems to occur in an earlier age; the chapters can jump all over the place, from material in the ‘30s and ‘40s to as late as the early ‘70s, which apparently is when the main storyline takes place. But also as usual with Hegner there are zero topical details; a mention of “rock bands” and “Woodstock” is really all we have to even let us know when the latter-day sequences are exactly occuring. Otherwise the novel is incredibly bland so far as scene-setting or period flavor go; Hegner is so locked into the sexual personae (to quote Camille Paglia – and I’ve been waiting years to write “to quote Camille Paglia”) of his characters that little else matters. 

Dean Wellman is the main character, but he doesn’t much feature in the interconnected chapters, other than a minor appearance here and there. The book is framed as his recollections on his past 42 years, but as mentioned it’s not told in first-person; each chapter will open with some new character and the sexual adventures he or she gets into during their time at Hollywood Prep Academy. Of these students, probably the main character is Amy Winters, who opens the tale with “A is for Amy.” But already we get an idea that Stars Cast No Shadows will jump all over the chronological map; Amy, when she comes to HPA as a student, is a “hubba-hubba girl” whose own parents are actors, and we learn that she too will eventually gain superstardom due to her acting and singing talents. But we also eventually learn she is “class of ’39.” 

Amy Winters will come and go in the novel, mostly appearing later in life as the parent of three hell-raising daughters of her own; the youngest, Bella Donna, also coming close to appropriating the “main character” status. But the problem with this book is that characters and subplots will emerge, seem to build toward something, and then drop. I mean, you all know I’m a sucker for a vintage rock novel. Well, it develops that two of the male characters become “teen idols” who front rock bands (though Hegner’s knowledge of rock music seems incredibly vague), and toward the end of the book we learn of plans for a “TV Woodstock” which will feature a “Battle of the Rockers.” But this subplot is never brought up again. Same goes for other characters and subplots, and in fact Amy Winters is the only character who has a complete story arc other than Dean Wellman. 

Given this, there’s no plot per se, other than the Dean’s upcoming retirement; another late subplot has him choosing his successor and transferring duties to him, but even this is overshadowed by the wanton escapades of the students, new and old. As the novel progresses, the majority of the stories seem to take place in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s, with some of the earlier students, like Amy Winters, now adults. As ever with Hegner all this stuff is roman a clef territory, with these oversexed and overdrugged stars paper-thin caricatures of real-life celebrities. Amy Winters is more than likely Judy Garland, with the same sort of career trajectory, and Bella Donna would be Liza Minnelli. There’s also comediane Lilli Havoc and her husband, Ramon Cortez, blatantly obvious stand-ins for Lucy and Ricky, even down to their beloved TV series and ensuing production company. I mean, if you’ve ever wanted to read a novel where a Lucille Ball stand-in gives a blowjob to Ricky while he’s on the phone, complete with Ricky shooting his “essence” on Lucy’s cheeks, then this would be the novel for you. 

In fact it gets to be humorous – and possibly intentionally so – that all these stars think about is sex. That and how to advance their careers. Ramon Cortez is the most level-headed of the lot, gifted with a ruthless business acumen…but still given to openly grabbing his crotch during meetings. True to the trash fiction template, every chapter revolves around sex, either among the older generation or the younger generation. As mentioned though it’s the teens who get the most of the narrative as the novel progresses, particularly Bella Donna, who swoops in on new guys who enroll in the school and has sex with them within the hour. The intentional humor is especially pronounced when the celebrity parents start to worry about the sex lives of their kids; not that they’re having sex, but that they aren’t having sex. Two sequences of inverted parental concern stand out in particular. 

In one, Davy Lord, a famous comic, pushes his son Greg into rock stardom as singer for the group Greg Lord and the Hereafters. Lord Senior gets a home studio and relentlessly pushes his kid, Murry Wilson style, for number one hits. But as mentioned Hegner has no concept of rock, or at least doesn’t seem to – he tells us absolutely nothing about the sound of the music (nor about any of the movies or TV shows the other stars are in, for that matter). Davy also expects his son to be a ladykiller, thus gets Greg a limo with a bar in back – Davy even telling his kid he could “go at two broads at once” on the big comfy mattress back there. But Greg, we learn, is so shy he prefers to sit in his room and pleasure himself…something a sickened Davy discovers while secretly monitoring his kid on hidden cameras. Later Davy will be even more sickened to learn that Greg has taken to driving around that limo…while other kids have sex in the back! “He’s a good boy,” the private detective who has discovered this informs Davy, confused why Davy Lord is acting so horrified. “The kid’s a fuckin’ chaffeur!” The disappointed father says. 

Even more outrageous is another sequence in which Frannie Moon, another comediane (and also a former HPA student), hosts a party for her dopesmoking teenaged daughter, Maggie, and her druggie friends. Frannie is infamous in the movie colony for picking things up with her…well, you can guess. So after the kids have been smoking joints and whatnot, Frannie’s on the fringes, hoping to be invited to join in. When she is invited, she of course shows off her nether-region talents to the delight of the teens…then an orgy ensues, with Frannie ultimately getting double-teamed. The orgy rolls into the following morning, and when the kids get up and wearily head home, Frannie reflects how not a single one of them was checked on by their parents. She congratulates herself that at least she knows where her daughter was last night! “The family that lays together, stays together,” she later tells her current stud. 

This alone is almost enough to make Stars Cast No Shadows a classic, but the problem is the reader is robbed of the full dramatic impact with the too-short chapters and the dropped subplots. Also, some of the characters are easily confused, mostly because they’re presented as ciphers with no emotional makeup other than the most basic drives for sex and power. But there’s one kid named Jaguar Stoddard, whose dad is an agent or somesuch and thus not a star, so Jag’s not able to enroll in HPA, so he instead acts as resident drug dealer. He’s easily confused with a kid named Owen who is the son of a star and does enroll in HPA; the two are hellraisers and become friends, but the characters are too similar. Owen is nicknamed Bullet, by the way, due to the bullet he wears on a necklace; the bullet his superstar old man used to kill himself. Bullet even starts up a biker club, and there follows another of those “couldn’t be published today” bits where Pamela Grass, another of Amy Winters’s daughters, tries to join the all-male gang; Bullet makes her wear a strap-on dildo so she’s truly “one of the guys”…and then he and the others gang-bang her after a trip to Mexico. Indeed, all thirteen of the bikers “enter her anal passage” during the festivities. 

So as you can tell, Hegner pulls no punches in his tale. It should be mentioned though that, as ever, the actual boinkery is seldom described, other than one or two lines of graphic depiction. Hegner’s talent is witty repartee, which comes off like an X-rated take on classic Hollywood dialog. Like notorious felatrix Maggie Moon’s comment on her ex-husband: “I never want to look his cock in the face again!” Or when Amy Winters, in the opening chapter in which she herself is just a teen, informs Dean Wellman that she missed class for the past couple weeks because she was having an abortion. The Dean’s response: “That is an adequate excuse.” As for the actual hanky-pankery, Hegner’s descriptions usually go for more of a sleazebag literary approach, a la “She knelt before him and fed the soft cylinder of flesh into her mouth.” 

The novel seems to be building toward something: Ramon and Lilli start their production company and sign on the progeny of their movie-world friends for future plans, but nothing comes of it. Like as mentioned the TV Woodstock, which would feature Davy Lord’s kid as well as Ramon and Lilli’s own teen idol son, Dudley. But all this is dropped. Hegner delivers an epilogue which does the heavy lifting of informing us of what happens to the various characters, many of whom are in store for sad fates. There’s also a curious circular approach to the narrative, as the tale ends with the Dean’s last day on the job, yet we’re informed in the epilogue that he’ll be back within the year, given the outright failure of his successor (who, much to the Dean’s horror, starts hanging around with the party scene that exists on the fringes of Hollywood). 

So I’m not sure why Stars Cast No Shadows made such little impression on me when I first read it a few years ago. I really enjoyed it this time, to the extent that I wished there’d been more to it – more of a storyline, more content to the characters, and especially more description of the various time periods and productions the characters worked on. But don’t get me wrong, as it’s certainly a fun novel, and if you enjoy Hollywood-style repartee, especially of a venomous nature, you’ll find a lot of gems in the book.

Monday, June 8, 2015

The Lovelorners


The Lovelorners, by William Hegner
August, 1976  Pocket Books

William Hegner scores again with another short novel that packs in a healthy dose of sleaze and sin. Not as outrageous as The Ski Lodgers or as good as The Worshipped And The Damned, The Lovelorners is still a very entertaining and ribald tale told in a very unusual form, mostly due to Hegner’s thorough skewering of “Dear Abby.”

At 188 pages of big print, The Lovelorners is about the length of the average volume of The Penetrator. It even has more white space, as cagey Hegner breaks up his text into a sort of epistolary format; not exactly like Dracula or anything, but more so via “chapters” that alternate between the editorials of its two sibling protagonists, who begin a circulation war with one another. Penelope Sutter, or “Dear Penny” as she’s known to her legions of fans, has recently come under fire courtesy none other than her busty, promiscuous sister, Lydia, whose “Letters to Lydia” column speaks to the “now generation.”

Like most other Hegner novels, The Lovelorners doesn’t take place during the year it was published; we’re informed at the outset that the year is 1968, though there’s nothing in the novel that would’ve been out of place in 1976. That is to say, there’s no attempt on Hegner’s part to capture the psychedelic or free love era, and in fact a later setting would make more sense, given the increasingly raunchy tone of Penny and Lydia’s editorials. Actually, I never really did get a full understanding why Hegner even set the novel in 1968. (For that matter, the TV show Kung Fu is mentioned at one point, and that didn’t even premiere until 1972.)

The Lovelorners is a classic case of a roman a clef; I was never a reader of “Dear Abby” but was aware of it. It was only after reading this novel and checking Wikipedia that I learned that the real-world Abby, Pauline Friedman, experienced a similar struggle with her own sister, Eppie Lederer, who challenged “Dear Abby” with the “Ask Ann Landers” column. Hegner has taken this real-life sibling rivalry as played out in the “lovelorner” columns and put his own unique spin on it – which it to say he has capably trashed it up.

One of the last novels Hegner published, The Lovelorners is almost as pessimistic about the trash fiction genre as his later The Ski Loders. It isn’t as over-the-top in the sleaze department, though be sure there’s a lot of that, mostly because Lydia specializes in answering sex-related questions, and soon Penny is pushed by her publisher to do likewise. As mentioned the novel is written in a sort of editorial format where the two female protagonists alternate chapters, telling us about the most recent events in their lives for a few pages before getting to the nitty-gritty of answering letters.

Hegner shines here, as some of the puns he comes up with would do the real Dear Abby proud. Just as in that real-life column these readers send in personal questions with goofy signatures, like for example the lady who says she doesn’t understand what “sixty-nine” refers to and signs herself as “Math Flunker.” In fact I was very impressed with Hegner’s ability to come up with so many letters from so many fictional readers; after a while I felt like I was reading a real column, such was the variety of questions posed and the pinache with which Penny and Lydia answered them.

Parallel to the questions and answers, Hegner skillfully builds a plot, even if it is a little threadbare. But then, even this little bit is impressive, given that each character only editorializes for a few pages before getting to the questions. In other words, it’s not like Hegner has given himself lots of pages to slowly build up and play out a meaty plot. Rather, it’s pretty simple: Lydia’s column has become so popular that it threatens to usurp Penny as the queen of the lovelorners – or, as Penny arrogantly insists on referring to herself, a counselor in human affairs.

“Arrogance” aptly sums up Penny Sutter, who goes on and on about her vast intelligence. Gradually though the reader can see the dent in her armor: she is not nearly as busty or sexy as her kid sister, Lydia, and has always been jealous of her. As the novel goes on Penny becomes more honest in her editorials, even wishing at one point that she could’ve given up a small portion of her intellect in exchange for boobs like her sister’s. Not that this stops Penny from spending most of the novel writing condescendingly about her readers, her editor, her assistants, and even her husband, Harry, who himself is trying to get in on the sex game by writing a novel.

Lydia on the other hand is “earthy,” as she refers to herself (but to Penny she’s “gauche”). Going on about how book smarts were never her thing, but how writing comes easily and naturally to her, Lydia is more focused on her own life than worrying about Penny – other, that is, than the circulation war she challenges her to in the opening pages. But Lydia is just as arrogant and self-obsessed as her sister, constantly complaining about how hard it is to answer pathetic questions from pathetic readers. As mentioned the questions she receives are a little more sex-focused than Penny’s, but this changes as the narrative continues.

Penny we learn has been encouraged by her editor, the Hearst-like William Cymbal of the Cymbal Syndicate, to get more “raunchy” in her letters. So then as the novel goes on, Penny’s columns start to get a little more like Lydia’s, only with more reserve – and a lot more complaint, as Penny constantly complains that she’s being demeaned by all of this. In the meantime she has real-life issues, like her husband’s novel, which he titles The Great American Whorehouse, hoping to cash in on Penny’s name with a publisher. She also soon finds out that her old office has been converted into a workroom boudoir, in which Cymbal and Penny’s assistant entertain each other.

Penny meanwhile gets increasingly raunchy in her editorials, such as a bizarre part where she’s giving herself a breast exam (both sisters write their editorials in present tense) and then begins fondling herself, all of it building into a full-on masturbation sequence. (Are we supposed to believe this would’ve been printed in a newspaper??) Speaking of masturbation, Lydia’s editorials steal the show, especially given a part early on where her live-in boyfriend, Sylvan, masturbates in her face while she’s writing! (A scene which contains the greatest single line of all time: “My suave, sophisticated, compassionate lover has just jacked off in my face!”)

Hegner confuses, possibly intentionally, with Sylvan also attempting to write a sex novel, though Lydia doesn’t know what it’s about. Like Penny though she constantly bemoans her lover’s “vain” attempts at trying to write and harbors a lot of resentment and jealousy over it, especially when it turns out that he’s pretty good. I guess this is just another of Hegner’s ways of showing how similar the two sisters are, despite their vowed hatred for one another; they’re both with guys who want to be writers, themselves. Not to mention the occasional vague reference to lesbian “explorations” the sisters performed upon each another in childhood…

It all culminates at the Presstige Awards, in which both Penny and Lydia are up for the Silver Scoop. Hegner per the norm doesn’t really play this up; in fact when we finally get to the awards he cuts away to the aftermath between chapters, where we learn that the sisters were co-winners, and Penny stormed out of the ceremony in a huff. We further learn that Lydia has officially become the new Penny, in a way, with the last chapter being a “Dear Penny” column in which Penny states she’s taking a “temporary” break; Lydia, meanwhile, has been awarded the larger circulation and is more popular and famous than ever.

As Dean Koontz opined in Writing Popular Fiction, the “Big Sexy” (aka trash fiction) genre is dangerous because a writer may soon reach burnout. It would appear that Hegner had reached it by the time of this novel, as both Penny and Lydia constantly gripe about dealing with and writing about nothing but sex all of the time. There is no joy in what they do, and it’s clear they’re only doing it to further inflate their own egos and to keep themselves in the limelight. There is an increasing frustration and cynicism to the text, similar but not as to the fore as in The Ski Lodgers.

But Hegner’s writing is still strong as ever, particularly when it comes to the puns, the dialog, and the caustic, arrogant tone of his female protagonists. Again though he rarely writes any character or situation descriptions, leaving it all to dialog. And there’s no sex, even though there’s a lot of talk about it; the closest we get is late in the novel where Lydia gets drunk and has a one-night stand, but she doesn’t even remember it. Anyway, while I wasn’t blown away by The Lovelorners, I did get a fair bit of enjoyment out of it – the fact that it was so short and breezily written also helped.

BONUS MINI-REVIEW: Last year I read another Hegner novel, Stars Cast No Shadows (Pocket Books, 1974), but never got around to reviewing it – mostly because, once I’d finished it, I couldn’t remember a single thing about it! The “novel” was more like a bunch of somewhat-related short stories, about a prep school for the children of movie stars. It was okay, but nothing great, and while sleazy at times it wasn’t as outrageous as the other Hegner novels I’ve reviewed here. Mostly it was just forgettable.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

The Ski Lodgers


The Ski Lodgers, by William Hegner
December, 1976  Pocket Books

Despite the unassuming title and cover hyperbole (“Hegner sales now over 1,000,000!”), The Ski Lodgers is one of the most lurid and outrageous trash novels I’ve ever read, William Hegner in the scant course of 175 pages graphically detailing everything from incest to bestiality, not to mention a whole bunch of regular sex. And he doesn’t even waste your time with a plot!

The novel details the sex-filled life of Stefan Zodiac, a 44 year-old ski instructor from Budapest (mistakenly listed as Austria on the back cover) who for the past several years has worked as the “skimeister” for the Inn of the Swallows resort in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. But Zodiac, who claims to have won the Silver medal in the Olympics, is more interested in bedding the gorgeous women who flock to the Inn. And the women are eager to bed with him, given his fame as a first-class stud, rushing up with him to his private lodge above the Inn.

Unlike The Worshipped And The Damned, Hegner this time out doesn’t bother with writing a regular sort of novel, with plot development or anything; instead he delivers what’s for the most part a novella, serving up elliptical chapters titled after each sign of the Zodiac, documenting in explicit detail Stefan Zodiac’s numerous affairs. Each of his conquests represents a Zodiac sign, though Hegner doesn’t do much with this theme, other than for example having Stefan say something like “You are the sign of the Ram,” to an Aries girl who’s blowing him, to which she’ll respond, “I’d like you to ram me.”

Zodiac has stayed here at the Inn for many years, hired long ago by Hattie Kroger, 60 year-old owner of the place. The only other recurring characters in the novel are Sidney “Balloon” Ballard, the Inn’s obese comic and the closest thing Zodiac has to a friend, and Eddie Banner, the Inn’s crafty PR man. But these characters ultimately have nothing to do with anything, and the “plot” moreso just concerns Zodiac’s steady stream of easy conquests, with him bedding everything from actresses to bisexual tennis pros to animal trainers to even a congresswoman.

It would be a waste of time to document all of them, as each woman is only in the book long enough to get introduced, exchange a few lines of dialog with Zodiac, and then go up to his private lodge to have sex with him. I imagine sex must’ve been easily come by in the liberated ‘70s, but The Ski Lodgers takes it to extremes – in some cases the women are propositioning Zodiac mere seconds after meeting him. The hardest he has to work for any of them is Jacqueline Monde, a journalist from Quebec who happens to write a piece on the Inn midway through the novel; Zodiac has her flown into the resort so he can meet her and, of course, screw her. And of course, she’s more than eager.

But just to list a few of them, first there’s Dina Lawrence, notable if for nothing else than being Zodiac’s first conquest in the book; Christina Rowe, a famous actress who speaks suspiciously like Katherine Hepburn (her memorable moment involves poking fun at Zodiac’s “I’m A Swallower” pins, which beyond having the double meaning for “The Inn of the Swallows” he awards to those women who, uh, live up to them – and Christina promptly earns one of her own); Belinda Drake, Zodiac’s “Libra” conquest who shares the same birthday as my wife (September 29th – Zodiac asks each woman the specific day and month they were born); and Nancy Frazier, the aforementioned congresswoman, who despite being here on a political junket is quick to run up with Zodiac to his lodge.

Special mention must be made of three of Zodiac’s conquests, for here in these sections we learn that bestselling fiction of the 1970s was a hell of a lot more outrageous than it is today. First there’s Bobbie Lee and Martha, a pair of tennis pros who go everywhere together. Zodiac of course ends up with them, screwing Bobbie Lee in his lodge, only for Martha to walk in on them…and pout that she wasn’t invited. This leads to a three-way during which Zodiac learns that the girls, of course, are lesbians (actually bisexuals, I guess)…and my friends, they get off on taking a piss on each other. Then they have Zodiac piss on them! Then they piss on Zodiac! Then they piss in each other’s mouths!!

Next up we get even more outrageous with the arrival of Jill Gibson, 15 year-old star of the TV show “Pepper Peabody;” she comes here with her mother, Kim, herself an actress. Zodiac and Kim hook up posthaste…and Kim promptly pimps out her daughter, informing Zodiac that the child is far more advanced sexually than her years would imply. There follows an unsettling sequence in which young Jill comes to Zodiac’s lodge and engages in all sorts of XXX-rated shenanigans while pretending to be even younger than she already is…a sequence that gets even more outrageous with the arrival of Jill’s mother, who promptly inserts herself into the scene! Now follows yet another three-way, this time with a mother and her teen daughter not only screwing Zodiac but each other, with Hegner delivering one of the grossest lines ever, as a nude Kim squats over her daughter and tells her, “Kiss where you came from.” 

But Hegner isn’t done yet. Shortly after this we have the arrival of Erica Glass, a very attractive young woman who works as an animal trainer. She comes to the Inn of the Swallows with a menagerie of animals for some event PR man Eddie Banner dreams up, and when she makes her inevitable trip up to Zodiac’s lodge she brings along her favorite of the animals, a chimp. While Zodiac’s banging her Erica casually informs Zodiac to take a look at the chimp: it’s masturbating as it watches them. Blithely informing Zodiac that the chimp is very interested in human sex, Erica disengages herself from him and splays herself out for the chimp – who promptly begins screwing her as a stunned Zodiac watches on. Later Erica informs Zodiac that she’s had sex with all kinds of animals, including snakes…!

Something occurred to me as I read The Ski Lodgers. With its increasingly outrageous sex scenes and increasingly-disassociated protagonist, I realized that a “second level” reading of the novel could easily have Hegner himself as Stefan Zodiac, with Zodiac’s increasing boredom and apathy a mirror of Hegner’s own boredom and apathy with trash fiction – the front of the book lists thirteen other novels by Hegner, all published in just a few short years. And just as Zodiac barrels through his women, so too does Hegner barrel through the sex scenes, their increasingly outrageous nature not only another sign of Hegner’s boredom but also perhaps his disgust with both himself and his readers – “You people want sex scenes? Well, that’s what you’ll get.”

Giving more credence to this is that Hegner doesn’t even seem to be sure when The Ski Lodgers takes place. It was published in late 1976 and seems to occur around this time, with talk of women’s liberation and mentions of Raquel Welch, and with characters who are, obviously, very liberated in their sex lives, with lots of dopesmoking going along with the rampant casual sex. Yet early in the book, immediately after informing us that Zodiac is 44, Hegner writes that Zodiac took part in the Olympics shortly before World War II, and it was the destruction of many of these official records in Budapest during the war that allowed him to lie about being a Silver medalist. This then would imply the novel occurs in the 1950s or early 1960s. So did Hegner just make a mistake or what?

To be sure, despite the focus on lurid sex and extreme imagery, Hegner is still a good writer – he has a definite penchant for doling out one-liners, like he’s the Shane Black of trash fiction. And as displayed in The Worshipped And The Damned he also has a gift for creating memorably-catty female characters, each of whom give as good as they get (in more ways than one).

Whether my thoughts on Hegner’s disgust with the genre and his readers is correct or not, it appears that after this he only published three more novels, with nothing published altogether between 1979 and 1999, when he returned to co-write Razzle Dazzle…with actress Stella Stevens!

Monday, February 24, 2014

The Worshipped And The Damned


The Worshipped And The Damned, by William Hegner
February, 1975  Pocket Books

William Hegner, an unjustly obscure trash fiction master, published several novels in the 1970s, many of them paperback originals for Pocket Books. The Worshipped And The Damned is one of his later Pocket releases, after which he moved over to Playboy Books and then dropped off the map. I think I read an obituary for him somewhere online a few years ago, but I can’t find it now, so I’m not sure if he’s still alive or not. 

But if this novel is anything to go by, all of Hegner’s work bears looking into. In fact, The Worshipped And The Damned is everything I wanted Jacqueline Susann's novels to be – trashy, intentionally campy, and filled with memorably catty female characters who specialize in put-downs and one-liners. (And that cover photo’s awesome!!) Had this novel been turned into a film, it would justly be regaled today. Split into what amounts to three novellas, Damned tells the sordid tale of a fallen actress who “inherits a fortune” when her alcoholic husband leaves behind a manuscript that Hollywood options for film treatment.

Margo Chase is that fallen actress, last famous in the very early 1960s, but in the several years since having spiralled into a booze-filled lethargy. Living in New Jersey under a lazy pseudonym with her uninhibited daughter, Vicki, Margo spends her days at the local bar, where she drinks from opening to closing. Margo is a great character, so cynical and spiteful that each line of dialog Hegner gives her is priceless in its acidity. Lana Turner circa 1975 in all but name, Margo Chase was once a superstar, but now her old films are mostly watched for their (unintentional) humor value.

Somehow Hegner’s able to get a little heart into the novel, amid all of the cynicism and acidic wit. Margo meets Frank, another boozehound, and after a few nights together they end up getting married, Margo’s sixth wedding. Plus Frank’s dying of cirhossis, and only has a few months to live. Margo urges Frank to pursue his long-suppressed desire to write, so he spends his final months of life at the typewriter. When he dies he leaves behind a mansucript titled “The Mall Walkers,” the story of a pair of lonely drunkard souls who find love in the last days of their lives.

Margo moves right on, calling up old Hollywood contacts and insisting they read the manuscript. Meanwhile her daughter gets knocked up, moves in, and Margo herself hooks up with an unknown actor named Larry who is decades younger than herself. Pretty soon the guy is sleeping with both mother and daughter, and we see that Vicki is just as catty as her mom. The melodrama culminates in a pitch-perfect scene in which Margo storms in on Larry and Vicki as they’re together in bed, holds a gun on them, and delivers a death threat which turns out to be a line from one of her old films. And Larry, scanning his brain for the response he knows from seeing that film so many times in reruns, delivers the return dialog, and Margo collapses!

So destroyed by booze that she can no longer separate fantasy from reality, Margo is sent to a rehabilitation clinic and thus, unfortunately, shuffled out of the narrative. Now the second novella begins, this one documenting yet another enjoyably-bitchy actress: Jessica Rivers, a once-famous and “handsome” actress from decades before more known for her intelligence than her beauty (so maybe Katherine Hepburn?). Like Margo, Jessica also has a precocious (and recently knocked up) daughter, Jill, who turns out to be just as quick-tongued as Vicki. But whereas Margo is a wreck, Jessica has moved on from acting (her last picture 7 years ago) and into the world of business; after the death of her third husband, a multimillionaire, Jessica has taken his place as an executive in the company.

Jessica doesn’t have the quick wit Margo is graced with, but she’s just as calculating and cruel. In fact, she’s even more cruel than Margo, as during the course of her own novella Jessica initiates the takeover of her old film studio, Storm Studios, so that she can fire its famously-outspoken head Lionel Storm; she starts ordering her male secretary, Michael, to have sex with her in the office; she shows no interest in the fact that her daughter Jill has had a child, and when she finds out the father is black she nearly disowns her; she has Michael send Jill and “Rastus” (aka Jill’s awesomely-named black boyfriend, Rod Bastion) to Chicago and further has Michael see to it that the baby is put up for adoption, even if it’s against Jill’s wishes.

As if all that wasn’t enough, Jessica also proves herself a capable trash antiheroine, doling out putdowns with aplomb. The only thing connecting her to the Margo half of the novel is the fact that Margo also worked for Storm Studios back in the day, and Jessica too is friends of sorts with Art Land, the boozing, once-famous director who has declared his desire to film “The Mall Walkers;” he intimates in the Margo section that he has Margo in mind for the lead, and in the Jessica section he intimates that he has Jessica in mind fo the lead. But reading the subtext you can see that Art Land doesn’t have anything in the works and his own star has long since faded.

Like the previous section, though, Jessica’s storyline doesn’t feature any big setpieces or action, relegated mostly to Jessica and Michael screwing in her office, in between some pretty great dialog exchanges. In fact, Hegner rarely focuses on the surroundings or the topical details of the groovy era, instead giving all the attention to either the moods of his characters or their catty dialog. But you barely notice the lack of descriptive details when it’s so darkly comedic; let alone Jessica’s reaction to Rod Bastion, but even later stuff, like another black character, this one a “religious rescuer” who Jessica hires (at Rod’s recommendation) to deprogram Jill after she’s run off to join a religious cult.

The plot developed in the Margo section, that of the “Mall Walkers” filming, is for the most part dropped throughout the Jessica Rivers section, not appearing again until the third and final novella that makes up The Worshipped And The Damned. The protagonist this time is Leigh Brackett, basically Shirley Temple-Black: a child star of the ‘40s who, after retiring from showbiz in her 20s, moved into the political realm. Now she’s running for Congress in New Jersey, but more importantly she’s trying to come to grips with her confused sexuality.

We are informed that Leigh could previously only get off via her own hand, but when she discovers that her 29 year-old daughter (the one child Leigh has had after three broken marriages) Dawn is a lesbian, Leigh is first shocked, but then intrigued. Dawn we learn is in love with her attractive and young nanny, Billie West, having carried on an affair with her for the past 14 years. This is the part that intrigues Leigh, as she herself is attracted to Billie. Things quickly become lurid with Billie, who herself is attracted to Leigh, engaging her in an affair…and then promptly arranging a three-way, with herself, Leigh, and Dawn!

Unfortunately though the majority of Leigh’s story is tepid. Like Margo and Jessica she is gifted with a barbed tongue and holds her own against anyone. But the political storyline doesn’t hold much interest for me, and is mostly composed of the fallout that ensues after Leigh lets slip in a televised interview that she’s familiar with the, uh, sexual nature of other women. Despite some 11th-hour assistance from Scatter Thompson, a political wizard, Leigh still loses the election, and meanwhile she’s kicked out Dawn, who has gone and run off with Billie West, Leigh unable to accept the fact that she’s had sex with both another woman and her own daughter.

The main storyline finally returns thanks, once again, to Lionel Storm, who calls Leigh to tell her he has her in mind for the “Mall Walkers” film. Here we finally learn the plot, that it’s about three former actresses who spend their later years in New Jersey, congregating at a local mall. And of course, the film is to star our three heroines (Margo having recuperated in the year since the opening novella), though Hegner telescopes the actual filming, instead focusing more on the internal squabbling, with Jessica taking over Storm Studios and producing the film, but soon being ousted due to plotting among her fellow execs, who succeed in having Lionel Storm returned to the fold.

In truth, this “climax” of the tale plays out very quickly, and isn’t very satisfying. But then, Hegner’s more focused on the trash, and as mentioned he excels in it. After Jessica and Leigh meet one day before filming, sparks soon begin to fly…and wouldn’t you know it, they’re soon sleeping together! A-and then Lionel Storm, who is overseeing the film and noticing how “close” the two ladies appear to be, insists that Margo Chase move in with them (Jessica and Leigh now living together, to make the filming of the production “easier”)…and after plying her with a few drinks, Jessica and Leigh succeed in involving Margo in a three-way!

The image of Lana Turner, Katherine Hepburn, and Shirley Temple-Black engaged in hot lesbian action thus instilled in his reader’s imagination, Hegner rightly suspects his goals have been achieved and brings the novel to a swift close. In short order we learn that the film is a huge critical and box office success, that none of the women reach any sort of resolution with their temperamental daughters, and that while Leigh and Jessica continue on with their romance Margo feels it’s just not for her, and in the quickest wrap-up in history she gives Lionel Storm a call and tells him to come live with her. The end.

The Worshipped And The Damned runs to 253 pages, and it’s got fairly big print. Hegner’s writing is economical, doling out the sex scenes and catty dialog with aplomb. The guy truly understood what made for great trash, and it’s a shame he’s so forgotten. But I’ve picked up several of his books, and look forward to reading more.

In the meantime, here are a few excerpts to give you a glimmer of Hegner’s trash mastery:

Her body cradled and rocked him in a gentle rhythm, evoking more nostalgia for childhood in both of them than the sensuality they sought to achieve. 

“You satisfied?” she asked when the weight of him began burdening her. 

“I haven’t come, if that’s what you mean.” 

She fought back the temptation to question his virility. “I remember when men came at the sight of me,” she said. -- Pg. 34

“Are you mad enough to make love to me now?” 

She opened her legs into a wet yawn. 

“Was he there earlier?” 

“What difference does it make?” 

His penis was now a red bolt jutting from his body. 

“Only a bitch would do it in her own mother’s bed,” he said. 

“Then I’m a bitch. Fuck me.” -- Pg. 104

“Don’t go down on me,” she warned. “I want the meat this time.” -- Pg. 144

In the privacy of her inner office, she lifted her leg and released a low, whining fart. 

There was something deliciously crass and nose-thumbing and antisocial about the act – almost erotic. To extend and complete the latter sensation, she buzzed for Michael to enter its aftermath. 

“You’re sadistic,” he said. There was no necessity for elaboration. -- Pg. 154

Moments after that, all three of them were tangled in a writhing croissant on the thick carpeting, their hands and mouths hungrily seeking one another. For Billie West, it was the ultimate achievement – her vulva under gentle assault from the daughter, her own tongue burrowing deeply into the rich valley of the mother. The culmination of her long-nurtured ambition, so closely bordering fantasy it had often seemed beyond the realm of realization, made her entire body tremble as she neared the first of multiple climaxes. Her spasms of orgasm set off a chain reaction in her partners as well. Together, in what seemed almost an algebraic sequence, each in turn attained similar plateaus of ecstasy. 

They lay together in a speechless heap for long moments, only their labored breathing audible in the candlelit quiet. It was Leigh who finally broke the silence. 

“God,” she said, “if this ever gets out, I’m finished.” -- Pg. 183