GC-209 The Why Not
The Why Not
Wildside Press
Victor J. Banis
$1.95
FOREWORD
The Why Not was written in 1965 and first published in 1966—not an auspicious time for gay fiction. In 1963, in what was a cause célèbre for advocates of freedom of speech, Fresno publishers Sanford Aday and Wallace de Ortega Maxey were convicted of distributing obscene material and sentenced to 25 years in prison. The books for which they were convicted were tepid compared to the writings of, say, Mickey Spillane. It was their homosexual content, and that alone, that rendered them obscene—and that sent these publishers to prison; and sent a chill throughout the publishing word. At that moment, no one wanted to publish homosexual material.
Well, what did I know? I had already been through a lengthy trial of my own for conspiring to distribute obscene material—four months in a Sioux City, Iowa courtroom for a book, The Affairs of Gloria, that had one “damn” in it and one “go to hell.” It did, however, significantly have some— again, tepid—lesbian scenes.
In for a penny, in for a pound. I wanted to write a gay novel, and write it I did, and it was my great good fortune that it reached the hands of Earl Kemp at Greenleaf Classics, who would be my chief editor for the next several years. Years later, Earl would say of The Why Not:
There were many thousand of paperback novels published under my direction (in the 60s,) and ninety-nine percent of them all started out as original manuscripts. There was a point in time when we were almost inundated with unsolicited submissions by wannabe writers, the proverbial “slush pile.” We also had a very good First Reader named Bill. It was his job to wade through all those novice manuscripts looking for passable material. His word was the first absolute final word in the whole editorial department.
From those approximate 4,000 paperback titles that we published I can remember around four manuscripts only of truly significant worth, both as literature and as a viable portrayal of our liberated times. These are manuscripts that almost from the minute they arrived at the office began making ripples of excitement that flowed instantaneously from editor to editor…
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