My Library

The Sexual Revolution had just begun, and the demands for sex-type literature were on a drastic upward swing. Sex was one of my, and Zelda's, favorite topics, and I felt I could write something original and daring along those lines -- about extraordinary sexual experiencing. Porcelain had taken on one of my early novels entitled PINK NEON. This was a somewhat surrealistic adventure into the strange sex life in the 1960s gutters of the lower East Side of Manhattan. Surrealism had been one of my favorite forms regarding my paintings; but the literary format I turned out bothered a lot of people whose minds think in ordinary, mundane ways and can't think in surrealist terms. None the less, most found the novel had intrinsic merit. Porcelain submitted it to a number of publishers -- all of which thought it down. The publishers all agreed, though, that it was not obscene, was not pornography, but that it challenged too many social taboos. PINK NEON was never published. One important publisher had turned it down on the grounds that there was too much sex in it. Another equally important cutting-edge publisher turned it down because there was not enough sex in it. But we were enthusiastic regarding future novels. Meanwhile, my New Year's resolution never to interact with the Media had become troublesome to just about everyone -- even to Janet Mitchell and Dr. Karlis Osis at the ASPR, and certainly to my three powerful gossip and espionage Centrals.