3 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
David R. Slavitt, Poet and Critic With a Side Gig in Pulp Fiction, Dies at 90
One day in 1966, not long after he wrote a scathingly funny review of Anya Seton's novel 'Avalon' in The New York Herald Tribune, David R. Slavitt arrived for lunch in Manhattan with the publisher Bernard Geis.
Mr. Slavitt was an up-and-coming poet and novelist with a preference for the classics. Mr. Geis specialized in the opposite: He had just hit it big with 'Valley of the Dolls,' a salacious novel of sex and secrets by Jacqueline Susann.
Having thrilled at Mr. Slavitt's work tearing down 'Avalon,' Mr. Geis asked him to write his own 'Valley of the Dolls.'
Mr. Slavitt protested. He said he had a 'serious' novel, 'Rochelle, or, Virtue Rewarded,' coming out later that year, and didn't want to undermine it with something much lighter. Plus, he said, he was a highbrow author and translator of classical poetry, not a paperback hack.
But the chance to try a new genre was too tempting. He hit on a solution: writing under a pseudonym, Henry Sutton.
The result, 'The Exhibitionist,' about an actress and her rich father, appeared in 1967. Tame by today's standards, it was decried as near pornography. And it sold four million copies.
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