The Velvet Underground

Here is an incredible book. It will shock and amaze you. But as a documentary on the sexual corruption of our age, it is a must for every thinking adult. (on the cover)

The Velvet Underground is a paperback by journalist Michael Leigh published in September, 1963. The legend is that Andy Warhol found this paperback on the streets of New York, in the gutter, and named a rock band after it. This gesture influenced the reception of the paperback, becoming a necessary collectable. Various sources modify the legend: actually Lou Reed and Tony Conrad found a copy lying in the street. The group liked the name, considering it evocative of "underground cinema," and fitting, due to Reed's already having written "Venus In Furs", inspired by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's book. But back to the book:

Michael Leigh writes on various sexual practices everything other than reproductive intercourse conducted in privacy by a heterosexual couple: swapping, group sex, sex orgy parties, LGBT activities, corset fetishism, sado-masochism. This paperback explores the various ways in which sexual practices are solicited “to exchange strange experiences and discuss bizarre and exotic” (from newspaper advertisements, clubs etc.), and how getting in touch happens. Even if the book deplores the sexual depravity of the modern age, the detailed descriptions filled with pathos makes you wonder about the author’s fantasies and experiences.

The historical shift in attitude toward sexuality is American society finds its best expressions in this fun to read book. A central passage in the book is a paraphrase from a 1961 article in the French Esprit magazine, which calls this liberal attitude toward sex the sexual revolution, and attributes it to the general availability of contraceptives. What makes it annoying is the moralizing view that explodes especially in the introduction. Louis Berg, “a professional lecturer on topics of psychological interest” who has “studied abroad”, writes this introduction, considered by Susan Stryker “the most hateful, perversely twisted antiqueer propaganda ever printed in a mainstream American paperback book.”

Gay and transgender people are for Berg the absolute nadir of humankind and enjoy numerous privileges: “In America, as in Europe, they have their own bars and clubs, their restaurants, their magazines and newsletters. They even have certain areas of the city where they can flaunt themselves without interference. But this is not enough. This ilk is never content to remain prisoners of their own abnormality. It would seem to be a condition of their aberrant drives that, as some light-skinned Negros, they should “pass.” And it is here that they frequently come into open conflict with the law. For it is as at such times that they attempt to raid the ranks of the normal.” Sounds familiar? The same discourse over decades on the gay conspiracy that brings the end of civilization. Nice normal heterosexuals and their kids are seduced into immorality by queer people who pass as straight. Racist paranoia arguments complete the picture. Sexual revolution from the 1960s was only beginning and reactionary Bergs became less mainstream or self-censored themselves. Here and there they still show their ugly heads.