Just a minor note: I’ve added titles and links to the bibliography pages shown in Books by Author in the sidebar. Everything should now be up to date. Clicking through these pages is often an easier way to find the works of a specific author than using the Google search box, which sometimes produces peculiar results.
« September 2011 | Main | November 2011 »
A FLORENCE STONEBRAKER UPDATE
The number of words published by Florence Stonebraker (about 4.4 million) will, of course, never be overtaken by the number published about her. Still, the dearth of information regarding California’s most prolific female novelist is startling. Except for one small entry in a Who’s Who compendium (rewritten for an earlier post), I’ve come up with nearly nothing -- no biographical data from reviews, no dust jacket blurbs, no obituaries. So I was happy the other day when I returned to Google for another search and found a few tidbits from an online newspaper archive. It turns out that Stonebraker was in Washington as a teenager, played the piano, and performed in some amateur recitals. I also found a blurry newspaper photo that shows her in February 1914 helping to commemorate the deaths of sailors on U. S. S. Maine. Stonebraker was seventeen at the time and probably less than fond of this picture.
STRANGE SINNER
Florence Stonebraker wrote constantly about sex, but her take on the subject is not so easy to pin down. Look , for example, at this passage: “A deep sigh escaped her as her arms came up and drew him close to her, her body trying to tell him that every girl craves to be raped, but not many have the luck to have it happen, that in making her feel things that some women go through life without ever feeling, he had made things right between them again.” (p. 43 of the Macfadden edition). A bit surprising, right?
Strange Sinner by Florence Stonebraker. Stanley Library (1959), 159 pp.
For twenty-year-old Kevin Page the death of his father, a wealthy investor in Hollywood real estate, is a mixed blessing. On one hand he’s free of the contemptuous old man; on the other he remains in the clutches of his alluring stepmother, Marcia, with whom he’s been having an affair for several months. She controls the entire estate and -- by withholding funds, engaging in blackmail, and overwhelming his sexual defenses -- she pretty much controls him as well. Kevin knows he should be with his pregnant young wife, Joan, whom Marcia is determined to drive from his life. But he can’t live without money, can’t risk trouble with the law, and can’t give up hot sex with his stepmother. What’s the young man to do?
Stonebraker offers a new twist on the tale of an evil stepmother. And twisted it surely is. Marcia is nasty and imperious, but she’s also the victim of a powerful sexual obsession that controls her more completely than she controls Kevin. He, in turn, can’t resist acting on his own sexual desires. The narrative switches viewpoint from one to the other, so readers learn how each understands their odd affair. As usual, Stonebraker doesn't settle for simple-minded motivation - - lust or anger, for example. Instead, she points to past relationships to provide explanations (or at least rationalizations) for present behavior. Of course it’s all implausible and overdone. But the book is short, the writing is snappy, and the action proceeds without diversions. It’s not difficult to see why it was reprinted in 1969.
