Lust Weekend

Lawrence Block on Lust Weekend: "LUST WEEKEND was written in 1962 and published that same year by Nightstand Books. The title's an obvious play on THE LOST WEEKEND, Charles Jackson's groundbreaking novel of alcoholism. The book was a sensation, as was the film adaptation starring Ray Milland. "The people at Nightstand generally changed the titles on my manuscripts. But LUST WEEKEND made the cut, and I'm sure I came up with the title first and wrote the book to fit. 'Lust' was a favorite word at Nightstand, where they wanted to excite the readers withoutd alarming the censors. (Lust and slut were favorites. I gave one book the can'tmiss title LUST SLUT- but they changed it. Go figure."A confession: in the ordinary course of things, I don't read these early titles before reissuing them in the Collection of Classic Erotica. Like most writers, I find it difficult to look back at my earliest work. But in this case I had absolutely no recollection of the book, although a glance at the very first page made it clear that it was unquestionably my work. I was pretty sure it all took place in the course of a single turbulent weekend, that much was implicit in the title, and again the first page confirmed my suspicion."But I read on, because I have to admit I liked the writing. Really, what's not to like?Between the hours of four and five Friday afternoon, Jordan Flagg sat behind a free-form desk and jotted notes and numbers on sheets of yellow manila paper. The desk was Scandinavian, and in recent years the Scandinavians had developed a penchant for taking a perfectly ordinary garden-variety sort of thing like a desk and designing it in the approximate inglorious shape of a kidney. Jordan Flagg's desk looked like a kidney. The wood was well-polished walnut that glowed like plastic, and the whole desk itself was so determinedly graceful that it looked as though it were capable of dancing. Jordan Flagg liked the desk. Flagg liked things to be modern. Although he never found time to go to a museum or to browse in galleries, he was an ardent fan of modern art. He read only recently published books, went only to first-run movies, and pretty much stuck to tastes and pursuits which, if not actually futuristic, were at least determinedly up-to-date. The kidney-shaped desk reflected this. So did the Bigelow on the floor, the title on the door, the close-cropped crewcut on his head, the heavy horn-rimmed glasses, the natural-shoulder suit, the ultra-slim attaché case, the architect-designed contemporary home in Fairfield County, the clean hands with their manicured nails, the nerve on his forehead with its slight tendency to twitch, and so on, and so on, and so on. Jordan Flagg was modern. Period."I read on, and the narrative moved from one character to another, and before I knew it hooker named Lily Merriman was quoting a parody of Longfellow's poem about the village blacksmith: Under the spreading chestnut treeThe village idiot satAmusing himself by abusing himselfAnd catching the drops in his hat."Now I didn't make that up, nor do I remember who did, but I suspect it's almost as venerable as the original. But, to my utter astonishment, that's not how it reads in Nightstand's edition, where it goes like so: Under the spreading chestnut treeThe village idiot satAmusing himself by abusing himselfAnd singing a quarter-tone flat."I can but guess that a Nightstand editor worried that any reference to ejaculation would rouse a censor from his long sleep. But what a creative solution! It rhymes, it scans, and if it doesn't make a great deal of sense, well, it comes close enough."I wonder who made the substitution, leaving it to me to discover his work 60 years later. Nightstand was the creature of Bill Hamling, who had grown up in science fiction; at one time or another his staff included such SF types as Earl Kemp, Algis Budrys, and Harlan Ellison."You know what? I bet it was Harlan."