MEMOIRS OF A NOT ALTOGETHER SHY PORNOGRAPHER

Wolfe is best remembered for his novels of the late '50's; twenty years before that, just out of Yale where he was anything but a Yalie and hoping to become a wordsmith, he spent a year writing on consignment for someone called Barneybill Roster who was fronting (or was he) for a Tulsa oil millionaire. He completed his first ""Eros-ive novel"" in two weeks; wrote four more, and then went on to pornographize the great books and quit after 11 months, 10,000 dollars richer. Wolfe is one of the more voluble sorts -- believes in the ""grand spatter business"" like Celine and Henry Miller (the latter appears here too) and he can soup up a line so that it comes out this way: ""So the slobbered appetites of the cradle hang on undented and undaunted in the sophisticated eroticisms that infantile Libido ultimately gets channeled into."" Work -- work is what we mean -- your way through it and you may find all of this minimally rewarding although those allured by the title will not find it much of a tickle.