FRUIT OF THE LOON

San Diego: Greenleaf Classics, 1968. First printing. Very good plus.. First edition of this contemporary parody of Richard Amory's Loon Songs trilogy, issued by the same publisher for a readership thoroughly familiar with the source material. SONG OF THE LOON's unprecedented popularity inspired more than one equally unprecedented derivative work: a 1970 film adaptation which was "the first independently produced, non-pornographic gay male feature to be granted mainstream theatrical release," and two years before that, this "silly, occasionally amusing" burlesque (Bronski). Where admirers of the original pointed to Genet, Fenimore Cooper, and the sixteenth-century Spanish pastoral as models, the publisher's back-cover references for FRUIT OF THE LOON are the Man from C.A.M.P. series by Don Holliday (Victor Banis), the Loon Songs books themselves, and Dr. Seuss. By a pseudonymous George Davies, (aka Lance Lester, Clay Caldwell, Thumper Johnson, and Rod Hammer), "a writer for the Disney people" who in his spare time wrote "a series of underground pornographic comic books" (Banis) featuring the Mouse of that house. Increasingly scarce. 7'' x 4.25''. Original color pictorial wrappers. 176 pages. Light edgewear and creasing to wrappers.