“Great dirty book” is now best-seller

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32536, 20 February 1971, Page 6

“Great dirty book” is now best-seller

s (By

RODERICK KENNEDY

How do you write a kinky sex novel without knowing very much about kinky sex? In a rash moment Joyce Elbert promised her publisher the most erotic and humorous book ever.

But the minute she sat down to a typewriter she knew she just had not the experience to deliver the goods. "What I did was ask my friends to tell me all about their most kinky affairs. Then I just used my imagination to tie the whole lot together.” The result was an erratic, erotic 350 pages called "The Crazy Ladies’ r which has sold over two. million copies since it came out in America, making Miss Elbert the hottest literary property since Harold Robbins. "I’m just flabbergasted by its success. I wrote it in a much more light-hearted vein than any of my other books. I just don’t know what to attribute its success to.”

Miss Elbert was in London to launch the British edition of her novel, disappointingly 50 pages shorter than the original.

"I don’t know why they cut it. I guess England is no longer as permissive as the United States. The roles have been reversed in the last couple of years. America has now got to the point where you can print or film anything you want”' Miss Elbert seemed upset when I quoted an American critic’s description of “The Crazy Ladies” as "the first really dirty book.” “No, let’s get the quote right. What he said was, ‘the first really great dirty book.’ Meaning dirty without being pornographic; not sleazy and not boring. What he was trying to say was that there is a lot of sex in the book, but sex written about in an unusual and humorous way.” Miss Elbert was looking a lot less than her 41 years in a long black dress and tall, shiny black boots. Her eyes are a piercing blue, but not what you would call sexy. “All the men I meet expect me to be sexy just because I’ve written a sexy book, and they get mad at me when they find out I’m not “First they try to figure out which girl in the book I am, and they usually conclude that I’m Simone, who is the kinkiest. They’re very disappointed when I explain

that I’m not any of the girls in particular, but a kind of combination of all four.”

She admits there is quite a strong element of autobiography, in the book, and also an element of' reality which, she says, certainly prevents it from falling into the caegory of pornography. "The Crazy Ladies” is set in New York—where Joyce Elbert lives—and describes

in minute detail the lives of four young and initially innocent girls who leave their mid-west homes to find careers and marriage in the big city. Instead they find a lonely concrete hell where nothing, least of all romance, is even remotely normal. The New York male really gets it in the neck from Miss Elbert.

“Yes, I do have a pretty dim view of him. In fact, he’s a callous bastard. The men who come to New York come specifically for power, for success, for money.

And they’re very busy, so busy they don’t have time for romance. They’ve got time for fast sex, but that’s all. They’re just too obsessed with success and making it.” What is she writing next? “I have one being published in America at the moment. It’s called “The Godess Hangup” and it’s about a girl who’s 32 and has been divorced four times. She’s been married to a Jew, a Protestant, a Catholic and a Negro, and her father, who’s rather tired of all this, asks her what she plans to do for an encore. At this point a Chinese who’s a spy for a pharmaceutical company enters the picture ... I’m not going to tell you what happens after that.”