paste up #007 - harold robbins

(outside Allsorts Books, High St, Northcote—a great new place to hang out)

 

I wanted to revisit Harold Robbins recently but didn’t have any copies of his books on my shelves. I probably dumped them at the local book exchange years ago after buying into the myth of the high art/low art distinction.

There’d be no trouble finding secondhand copies of his books at a book exchange but sadly, there are hardly any left in Melbourne and none I could find in the inner city. (There used to be a really good one in Thornbury but it closed down after the owner was murdered in the store.)

I tried a couple of the newer secondhand bookshops that have sprung up around the inner city recently but had no luck. I asked one bookseller where he thought I might be able to find copies of HR’s books and he said: “You’ll have to go to the 'burbs for that.”

 
Not that I required any further proof that the high art/low art distinction is nothing more than a class distinction but it was confirmed by his response. Ironically, “the 'burbs” is exactly where I did end up locating my replacement copies of HR’s books—in a fantastic, old-fashioned, book, music (and even DVD!) exchange on Mt Alexander Road, opposite the bus terminus at Moonee Ponds.

 
Back in the days when the local library shelves were chock full of “bonkbusters”, HR’s novels were a guilty, pre-teens, pleasure for me. His books are unabashedly trashy, full of lurid (and laughable) sexcapades but they’re also page-turning stories. I think I agree with Andrea Toback who suggests that as it was the time of the sexual revolution, “it made sexually explicit scenes mandatory in books and movies.  The scenes didn’t have to be very realistic or even interesting (they weren’t), they rarely included anything approximating love; they just had to be there.”
 

My 3 favourite HR books:
1.    The Adventurers
2.    The Betsy
3.    The Pirate

 
And then there are the trashfest film versions of HR’s novels, best summed up by pocca from Canada who describes the film version of The Lonely Lady as: No, it's not to my liking, but I couldn't stop watching . . .

And if that isn’t enough of an enticement to watch the film, then this Wikipedia entry should do it.

 
The Lonely Lady was hugely panned by critics, where the film was nominated for 11 Golden Raspberry Awards and won 6, including: Worst Picture, Worst Actress, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Musical Score and Worst Original Song ("The Way You Do It"). Pia Zadora won Worst New Star of the Decade for this film. She was also nominated for Worst Actress of the Century, but lost to Madonna.

(download it from Cinemageddon)