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December 25,

Holiday Greeting

However you celebrate or observe, I want to wish you, the loyal and hedonist reader of Pursed Lips, a happy holiday season. I'm going to be away over the weekend, visiting family, but you never know; I might blog from afar. That special spanking entry I've been meaning to organize and post, though, will have to wait until I return home. Enjoy yourselves!

posted by debrahyde at 12-25-2003 04:17:04PM
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December 23,

Is everything polarized these days?

Evidently those hasty marketeers known as spammers are now couching my "need" for a bigger penis in political language. This, despite the fact I inherently LACK A PENIS:

Traditional, liberal or newschool? Depends on how you were raised. Are we getting political here? Hell, no! This is just to describe your sex life. If you are traditional, delete this mail now. Please. If you're liberal, you get yourself some pills after you've realized that hanging a two-pounds stone from your cock doesn't make it longer. If you're newschool, you happily dabble with things others don't even know about. Traditionals have already deleted this mail. Ahem. Liberals - click here for the VP-RX, the best penis enlargement ever invented. If you're liberal heart rebels, no worry, it's money back guarantee.

The perv in me wants to point out to these hacks that some of us hang two-pound weights from our cocks for reasons other than length. We do it because it feels good. No, I don't hang weights from my strap-on, but I've been known to pleasure my loved one with preponderous hanger-on'ers.

Our preoccupations are legion, aren't they? Well, the whole thing's a hoot and, besides, it's not like we weren't forewarned. But with ornaments gleaming from the tree and presents yet to trim, it's difficult to be too serious about anything today.

posted by debrahyde at 12-23-2003 05:57:37PM
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December 19,

That Prick!

A story to relay: After the discovering that the list price for the hardcover edition of The Book of the Prick was an astounding $85.00, I decided to do a little scouting about, amateur erotobibliophile that I am. No surprise, but there's several modern European language editions of "La Cazzaria" about, but at least two English-language editions previously existed. One came from the notable porn pirate, Collector's Publication, translated by one Samuel Putnam:

VIGNALE, Antonio.] – Dialogue on Diddling. La Cazzaria. Sir Hotspur Dunderpate of the Maidenhead Academy. (Arsiccio Intronato). Translated out of the Sixteenth Century Italian [by Samuel Putnam]. City of Industry, California: Collector’s Publications [Marvin Miller], 1968. 8vo. pp. 160+[xxxii] of catalogue. Printed wrappers. An Introduction by Paul Lacroix, translated from a French edition of this work published in 1863, precedes the text.

Who, i want to know, is this campy Sir Hotspur Dunderpate? Where did he come from? I see no mention of him in the current Moulton edition and the whole "Dialogue on Diddling/Sir Hotspur Dunderpate of the Maidenhead Academy" context smacks of Victorian invention. Was the language added as an insult to its Italian origins (it does sound patronizing, if you ask me) or was it added to make some esoteric underground edition more attractive to various social classes? I've dug out both my favorite bibliographic sources -- the three- volume Indices by Pisanus Fraxi (Sir Henry Ashbee) and Alfred Rose's Register of Erotic Books -- but these sources are rather difficult to work with, so I have no quick and easy answers to my questions, other than evidence that these additions appear to have occurred after the Liseux 1882 edition. Of course, it could've been a Collector's Publication invention.

Incidently, I looked through the handful of Collector's Publications books in my possession, hoping to find sample cover art in their back-end, mail orders pages, but no luck. Nothing there for me to reproduce for you.

During the same time Collector's Publications printed its edition, Brandon House was also producing a more pedestrian edition (i.e., without all the Dunderpate-ing):

VIGNALE, (Antonio). – [La Cazzaria.] The Love Academy. Translated by Rudolph Schleifer [Hilary E. Holt]. Introduction by Albert Lowy, Ph.D. [Hilary E. Holt]. North Hollywood: Brandon House [Milton Luros], 1968. 8vo. pp. 144. Series no. 3038. Wrappers. First edition of this translation.

Note that each edition has different translations and separate introductions by different authors. Interesting - and worth tracking down. (Note: bibliographic information courtesy of Mr. Patrick J. Kearney's Scissors and Paste Bibliographies. Kearney authored the 1982 A History of Erotic Literature, incidentally.)

By comparison, half of the current Rutledge edition is given to Moulton's documentation and explanation of where La Cazzaria came from and the socio-political history of the times in which it was written, a decidedly academic structure of presentation that I also saw in the recently as-momumental translation of Ling Mengchu's Two Slaps by Lenny Hu (In the Inner Quarters, Arsenal Pulp Press). The historical and literary evaluations in each book do not make for easy reading, but they are illuminating.

Finally, the current $85.00 Rutledge edition is holding its value in the book collecting world. I managed to get a copy at half-price from my favorite big city bookstore but, lo and behold, it arrived without a dustjacket. (To me, that's a tacit endorsement that the book will remain a collectible.) However, most funny to me is that under the printed shipping label was a handwritten Debra, which made me chuckle. Have they come to know me as "that Connecticut lady who always orders sex/erotic stuff?" Or at the very least, I was the only Debra placing a single order for a book about pricks that day.

Either way, it works for me!

posted by debrahyde at 12-19-2003 02:55:42PM
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