[Publib] Modern Lit

[Backwage at aol.com]

Today's New York Times contains a story which reveals the existence of  
Stalags, mildly pornographic pulp fiction based on POW themes which  emerged in the 
1960s in, of all places, Israel.
 
"It was one of Israel's dirty little secrets. In the early 1960s, as  
Israelis were being exposed for the first time to the shocking testimonies of  
Holocaust survivors at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a series of pornographic  pocket 
books called Stalags, based on Nazi themes, became best sellers  throughout 
the land.  Read under the table by a generation of pubescent  Israelis, often 
the children of survivors, the Stalags were named for the World  War II 
prisoner-of-war camps in which they were set. The books told perverse  tales of 
captured American or British pilots being abused by sadistic female SS  officers 
outfitted with whips and boots. The plot usually ended with the male  
protagonists taking revenge, by raping and killing their tormentors."
 
See:  _http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/world/middleeast/06stalags.html_ 
(http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/world/middleeast/06stalags.html) 
 
I remember, back in the Seventies when I was stationed in Japan, finding  
many pulp releases and graphic-novels devoted to rather vile, violent sex  
themes, which initially shocked me, emanating as they did from the midst of that  
staid, polite and outwardly puritanical Japanese society.  I'd see  blue-suited 
businessmen riding the morning train reading pulps with themes  devoted to the 
"revenge rape" theme or similar pastimes.  I was very young  then and had a 
lot to learn.  And back home, people were worried that R.  Crumb's comix would 
pollute the minds of the young.  
 
I don't suppose that either the "rape theme" books nor the Stalags  of 
Israeli origin ever found homes on public library shelves.  For that  matter, I 
didn't see any of Crumb's stuff at my local library back then--though  it's there 
now, revered like Breugel or Hogarth, and for the same reason.   Time has a 
way of cleansing these things--that, and society moves on to newer  outrages.  
 
M. McGrorty, very fond of Little Nemo



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