NOT FOR LOVE

by Virginia McManus ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Virginia McManus achieved a certain notoriety in October of 1958 when she was arrested in New York and sensationally headlined as the ""schoolteacher-turned-call-girl"". She received so much unwarranted publicity at the time that it is not difficult to understand why she might wish to turn some of it to her own uses. But insisting as she does in her book -- after she had been caught -- that she wants to get away and reorganize her life, her motives in hurling herself back into the press are, at least, questionable. Miss McManus is quite pretentious; she quotes a good deal of poetry -- significantly Omar Khayyam and Edna St. Vincent Millay -- by way of demonstrating, presumably, that her education has been of some worth and that she is not insensitive to the ""world of the mind"". It is, in fact, her devotion to the world of the mind which led her into prostitution in the first place: sex meant nothing to her; she needed money and sex was ""merely"" a better ""business"". Her activities took her from Chicago where she had taught in a very eccentric school to New York and a rather short-lived career. After she was arrested and obviously made an example of she spent three months in the Women's House of Detention. A good part of her book is concerned with the ""exposure"" of the prison's shocking conditions, the disreputable habits of the Vice Squad, the wholesale blackmailing which wiretapping permits and the general hypocrisy of law-enforcement agents. All of this, however, has been dealt with before, though admittedly in a more documentary fashion. There is no doubt that her book has dramatic qualities. And, yes, Virginia, there was a Polly Adler.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1960

Categories: NONFICTION