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A post ago I mentioned a book that was on my mother’s “adult” bookshelf, The Big Love, by Mrs. (note the Mrs.) Florence Aadland, As Told to Tedd Thomey. This is the first line, which has stayed with me ever since my first trembling pre-pubescent encounter with this tome: “There’s one thing I want to make clear right off—my baby was a virgin the day she met Errol Flynn.”

Wow. Take that, Call me Ishmael. Eat dust, Happy families are all alike.

Apparently finer minds than I were taken by this Hollywood-Babylon memoir, for none other than William Styron wrote a nine-page(!) introduction to the 1986 reprint, declaring it to be “a work of such striking originality...that one may declare it a masterpiece without hesitation.”

What did I miss? I only read it for the sex.

cantara

Skirtsetter

Editor and Publisher of the PDF-exclusive literary quarterly Cantaraville.

Literary editor, videologger and essayist. I own and run the small press Cantarabooks, home to works in paperback and ebook, and the PDF-exclusive literary journal Cantaravill...