By Robin L. McLaughlin (Seattle, Wa.)
“As the punctuation in my review title indicates, I’m sure there’s some question as to whether erotic pulp fiction can qualify as excellent fiction. The novel Threesome, written by Lawrence Block and published in 1970 under the pen name Jill Emerson, helps to answer that question in the positive.
“I became interested in pulp fiction, more specifically, pulp fiction with lesbian content, a couple years ago. I’ve been aware since the 1980s that there was a lesbian pulp era in the 1950s-1960s, but I’d never really bothered to learn anything about it or read any of the books until relatively recently. As I was educating myself on the web, Jill Emerson’s name came up plenty, though not always positively. There’s that whole exploitation thing to deal with from the viewpoint of a lesbian and a feminist.
“But we all have our literary weaknesses and guilty pleasures, and lesbian pulp has become one of mine, even if only in small, occasional doses. So when the Block/Emerson novels went on sale for 99 cents this last November I snagged several to add to my pulp collection on my Kindle. (As an aside, I had already read two Block crime novels prior to this, so was already sold on his writing talent.)
“I just now got around to reading one and chose Threesome as my first. (Though this is bisexual polyamorous pulp, rather than lesbian pulp.) There’s no denying that the intention of this sort of novel was to shock and titillate, to appeal to the prurient side of the reading masses. And there’s no denying that Threesome delivers on that promise. But to dismiss the novel as merely a piece of salacious pulp would be to miss the forest for the trees.
“Threesome has an unusual structure in that the chapters rotate between the three characters, and all are supposedly chapters that each character contributes to a manuscript for what they initially intend to be an erotic bestseller. These fictional book chapters even include asides, notes to the others, and comments on word and grammar usage. Yet far from being distracting, these add to the humor. The structure not only works, but it works very well as the story is revealed in layers from the past and present.
“I count twenty-five passages that I underlined on my Kindle while reading. Some because they were laugh-out-loud funny, some because of clever wording, and some because they were insightful. Yes, I said insightful, and I meant it. It feels really odd (embarrassing?) to admit that one of my most highlighted books on my Kindle is an erotic pulp novel, but there you are. The funny is what surprised me the most. Threesome is downright hilarious, not because of the subject matter, but because of how witty Block is. His writing style is wonderful.
“I guess I’ll finish with a comment on my 5 star rating. Most of us who review using the entire scale, not just 1 and 5 stars, have a personal system for what each rating means. On my personal scale 5 stars means the book was excellent, or possibly extraordinary, *for what it is*. I don’t read a Sue Grafton mystery and only give it 3 or 4 stars because it in no way attains the lofty literary heights of To Kill a Mockingbird. So with that in mind, I simply had no choice but to assign 5 stars to Threesome in order to be true to my rating scale.”
