| Title | : | The Girls in 3-B |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1558614567 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781558614567 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1959 |
The Girls in 3-B Reviews
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This Author, Valerie Taylor also wrote "Prism," a popular lesbian novel from the mid eighties, and several other books in the Lesbian Pulp Fiction genre. I read them before time began.
She had been married with children until she came out, and had one son, possibly two. When I first knew her, she was a wonderful woman, just past sixty years of age. Her life partner of many years, lesbian Lawyer Pearl Heart, had died just before we met. I was proud to call her my dear friend for years. We visited, chatted and exchanged letters for many years.
She published a book of Poetry with another lesbian poet, Jeannette Foster, author Of Sex Variant Women in Literature, a mighty overview of lesbians in literature. Jeanette was also the writer for Kinsey, Pomeroy and Martin at the University of Indiana when they wrote "Sex in the Human Male" and "Sex in the Human Female"
She was involved in, and Keynote Speaker at two Lesbian Writer's Conferences in Chicago, organized by Marie Kuda and other lesbian Writers in the Chicago Area.
When she retired from her long time job at a clipping service and from her daytime editor job, she moved, First to Margaretville, New York, where she lived in the small town of her dreams. Making a fresh start in life in her early sixties. She had a brief but passionate affair with a widowed straight woman, who broke her heart. She spoke of this woman but once to me, when she later quipped, "These mixed marriages never work out."
She had a very bad fall on the ice that winter, and broke some bones. When she recovered, her son helped her move across the country to relocate someplace with no ice. She always had pain where she had broken bones,
Tucson, Arizona was the place she chose to rebuild her life from scratch yet another time; this time permanently. She became Mother Goddess to a whole new group of young lesbians, who loved her and lovingly cared for as she aged. A couple or three women moved in to care for her for several years, until she was unable to live at home.
Then she moved into a nursing home, where her friends raised money to pay for the cost of her care, and checked on her daily until her quiet death. She died surrounded by her friends, and was mourned Nationally in Lesbian and Gay Media. I, too, mourned her, and took comfort in the fact that she had a productive, full life and was beloved by all who knew her.
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12/2014
Femmes Fatales: Women Write Pulp, from The Feminist Press reprinted this 1959 novel. I was thrilled beyond belief when my boyfriend found this and brought it home for me. Three 18 year old girls, in the story, leave the country for Chicago. The best parts depict the beat scene and an experiment with peyote. One character's discovery of lesbianism is treated very positively and non exploitatively. I'd give this a 4, as a book, but a 5 for existing. Included is a publisher's forward and a substantial afterword, which were both terrific. I look forward to finding online the other two (more? I can hope) books they put out in this line. -
A couple of years ago I discovered The Feminist Press and their Femmes Fatales 'women write pulp' series. It introduced me to writers such as Vera Caspary, Evelyn Piper and
Valerie Taylor. I first read Taylor's
Stranger on Lesbos. She was noted as an author in the lesbian pulp fiction genre.
The Girls in 3-B is my second look at her work.
Annice, Pat and Barby are three friends living in a small farm community. For their own differing reasons, they want to move to the big city, Chicago. Annice is bored with farm living and wants to explore the arts and life in the big city. Barby wants to get away from home from a childhood trauma. Pat wants a career in the big city. The three share an apartment, 3-B, in Chicago. Annice starts as a student trying to improve her poetry. Barby's father, who has a strange relationship with his daughter, gets her a job in a department store. Pat gets a job with a book publisher.
Their lives diverge quite rapidly. Annice, even though she is sort of dating Jackson, a student at the college, gets involved with a 'Beatnik', Alan and begins to explore sex an drugs. Barby is raped by the apartment manager and finds herself stressed and more and more under his control. Pat has a deep crush on the editor of the publishing company.
The story follows the three, developing their characters nicely. Many powerful themes are approached and discussed, child abuse, abortion, incest, lesbian relationships, drugs. Considering the story was originally written in 1959, they must have been more powerful. The pulp publishers seemed to have much more freedom than the movies and TV and more conservative publishing companies. Taylor approaches these themes delicately without too much titillation. It's an interesting, different story, maybe a gritty Harlequin in some ways but dealing with strong issues. I enjoyed reading it. I liked the Introduction description of the pulp authors and I enjoyed the Afterword, covering Taylor's life. I also liked the ending. (4 stars) -
Lesbian pulp fiction from the 'golden age' (roughly 1952-1965) is one of my greatest genre loves. It has the dual appeal of being both an interesting glimpse into the world of women and LGBT folk in a long ago, much more hostile time period AND a quick, soapy, often campy-sleazy read. These books are very rarely great - or even good - literature and shouldn't be read by people who are looking for such. They were almost universally written by straight men and their only real purpose was to shock and titillate their male readers. To avoid postal censorship, these books also generally contained A Very Good Lesson about the evils and dangers of homosexuality and a heavy dose of Freudian analysis on why these otherwise seemingly healthy young girls fall into a life a Sapphic desire! Almost every story had to include a REAL MAN who came in at the last minute to save the young, impressionable heroine from her strange, twisted path into the twighlight world of women who shun men! The fact that Valerie Taylor veers so strongly from this path in The Girls in 3B is one of the reasons it's such an interesting example of the genre.
On its surface, The Girls in 3B has all the trappings of your typical lesbian pulp. Barby is a young women from rural Iowa with a haunted past: she was raped by a family aquaintance at the age of 13, thereby ruining her for any and all men. There's something wrong, different about her, she knows, but she just can't figure out why. She loathes men, but upon moving to Chicago with two girlfriends from high school, she easily submits to the first greasy sleazebag that propositions her. The plot divides early on into three separate storylines telling the trials and tribulations of each girl as she struggles to make her way in the BIG CITY. (If you're wondering why I keep capitalizing the words BIG CITY it's because pages upon pages of these books are taken up by internal solliloquies on the vastness and anonymity of the city.)
Already, we have the big three indicators of a pulp fiction heroine about to be seduced to the darkside of lesbianism: 1) a vulnerable young girl from a small town making her way into a new environment (the BIG CITY, 2) a heroine thats hates men and is constantly thinking about how repulsive they are (this is literally one of the only things Barby thinks about. Ever.) and 3) she has been abused or abandoned. In this case, Barby was raped, but she could have just as easily been orphaned or been a bastard. Being an orphan is so popular I was actually surprised to have both Barby's parents make appearances in the first couple chapters. These three elements are pretty much universal in the world of lesbian pulp fiction. They provide the reason for the abnormal behavior and, more importantly, a reason that can be identified and corrected, thereby saving the young heroine from a life... in the shadows!
Normally, in lesbian pulp fiction, Barby would move to the city, meet a gorgeous, seductive older woman and fall in bed to her before quickly being rescued by a REAL MAN who marries her and saves her from her lesbian urges. Half of this does happen: Barby falls hard for her boss, an older female executive at the department store they both work. They start slowly and sweetly with lunch dates and several chats that talk around the subject of their growing interest in each other and share long, lingering looks while on the job.
As someone who has read a number of these books, I kept waiting for the REAL MAN to show up. And, to my surprise, he never did. Soon, Barby is moving out of the apartment she shares with her friends and into her older girlfriend's swanky pad where they live discretely and for what we can only assume is happily ever after. There's no commentary on how sad and pathetic they'll be and how they'll never really know love. No, they're just cuddled together in front of a fire talking about how awesome life is together and how much they love each other. And that, in the judgey, preachy pulp world is practically bananas.
This ending is so satisfying in it's break from the usual doom and gloom that concludes the majority of these pulps that I can't help but give it 4 stars. Valerie Taylor, the author, is actually a lesbian and you can tell by the longing and sensitivity she imbues in her female characters.
This is far from a great book, though. I was so bored with the other two girls' storylines that halfway through I started skipping them all together. One of Barby's roomates wants to bang her boss but saves herself at the last minutes while the other gets knocked up by an Ayn Rand wannabe who looks like a beat poet and acts like a douche. The only really good part of their storylines is when Annice, the one who gets pregnant, trips on peyote with Mini-Rand. The imagery is quite fantastic with, like, disembodied baby heads that just happen to be stacked up in the wood holder by the fireplace. And it's really colorful. You know, the usual stuff. The mesculin trip is so non-sensastional and matter of fact in it's description that it almost makes me wonder if Ms. Taylor took a couple trips of her own back in the day. (Get down with your bad self, Valerie.)
Anyway, this books is definitely worth the read if only for Barby's story. There's a lot of legitimate discussion about how important it was for gay people to live two lives at this time: one in public and one in private, and I found that to be very interesting and worth reading. So, all in all, I have to give it a thumbs up for the social commentary and lesbians who escape with their dignity, sanity, and lives intact at the end. Also, with the book costing all of one or two bucks on kindle, it's not really much of a loss if you hate it. -
I have this book in an edition published by The Feminist Press. Femmes Fatales: Women Write Pulp. We've managed to find a handful of books from this series over the years and this one is the first one I've finally gotten around to reading. Originally published in 1959, on its surface The Girls in 3-B was purely intended to pique the interest of book browsers in drug stores and truck stops, looking for something risqué to read without shelling out a lot of money in a dingy porno store on the wrong side of town. Lesbian fiction was a successful genre with some paperback houses, and probably a fairly reliable way for publishers and writers to make some quick money.
Far from being salacious, this novel depicts a fairly frank story of three college-age friends embarking on their lives away from their parents in the big city. The book shows a time when sexual harassment in the workplace and sexual aggression in general was open and tolerated by society: "Why don't you women learn that your place is in bed? All this futile struggle to create when all you're really good for is to release some man's inhibitions." It also shows the ultimate squalor and shallowness of the Beat scene that probably ran rampant on campuses. And yes, it explores a lesbian relationship, but in a sensitive way instead of a sensational manner. Much of the novel is explicit and somewhat brutal for its time. And Valerie Taylor had a terrific eye for social observations that is often missed in standard paperback fiction of the day. "Unemployment in other parts of the country brought Negroes, hillbillies and Latin Americans into the city at the rate of three or four thousand a day, to crowd overflowing tenements and seek non-existent jobs." I suppose one could say that the ending isn't particularly realistic, but the demands of paperback publishers of the day didn't give writers a lot of room to work with in wrapping up a story within an expected page count. But the novel has a lot of subjects worth exploration in its short length. More than you'd expect from just another dime-store disposable paperback.
This edition also contains a forward and afterward that examines the history of "pulp" novels, especially those written by women. Worth picking up for anyone interested in the genre. -
The Dorothy B. Hughes book I recently read ('The Blackbirder') is part of the 'Femmes Fatales' series from The Feminist Press. Since Hughes hooked me in, I perused the other 'FF' series titles. ~ and happened upon this unlikely entry.
~ 'unlikely' because I was halfway through the book when I said to myself, 'Let's hold these horses! Just how 'fatale' *are* these femmes, anyway?!' There was nary a noir trope in sight. The sultry book cover notwithstanding, the only thing marginally 'dangerous' about the 3-B gals was that they'd decided to share an apartment together in Chicago in the '50s... unsupervised!
Full disclosure: ~ well, things do get a little edgier than that. One of the three realizes that she's *had it* with men and, upon being handed a classic lesbian novel in the way one might be slipped a mickey, she goes Sappho-a-go-go!:"It's what I've wanted all my life. How can anybody want a man, when there's this?"
That's slightly fatale in spirit, I suppose. (And slightly humorous.)
'The Girls in 3-B' is not unlike Rona Jaffe's 'The Best of Everything' of the previous year (1958), as both books feature a trio of hopefuls out to make their mark in the business world. But perhaps it's a bit less dynamic; it does feel perfunctory and the pulse of the narrative thrust is weak. Still... there *is* that girl-on-girl angle - and
SPOILER ALERT
- there's nothing particularly tragic in the depiction. No hint of "strange lust" or "unnatural love" here. In that sense, it's more like Patricia Highsmith's 'The Price of Salt' than the other kind (the darker kind) of lesbian pulp novels widely available during the period.
From reading the book's afterword, I certainly gained respect for the author (whose real name was Velma Young). She had a fascinating, very full / influential and noteworthy life. I can see where 'The Girls...' may have had more punch in its day, even if it's not particularly explosive stuff.
Today, the book retains historical value in the way it presents sexual attitudes. It's of its time and I guess it never needed to be great lit. -
[EXHIBIT A of why it's important for me to get my thoughts about books down in writing at the time of reading. Here's a review I wrote in 2010 of a book I have ZERO recollection of reading. And yet, here it is; a detailed review proving I did, indeed, read it. Reposted with some slight corrections].
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This book was mentioned in another book I read recently in a chapter discussing gay and lesbian history. The book was written by a lesbian writer for the pulp trade and published in 1959. Like most pulp books its main audience was heterosexual men and the objective was titillation. But Taylor is a better writer than that, and this book is smart, sympathetic, charming and fairly non-sensationalistic, with plenty of elements of a cautionary tale.
Three country girls, high school friends, from Iowa trek to Chicago to see if they can make a go at life on their own, living in a dingy apartment on the South Side in the 1950s. The trio, Annice, Pat and Barby each have their own backstory and personalities, which Taylor details just enough as necessary for the story. Barby, the daughter of a successful department store owner, seems to be the most mysterious of the three; sexual abuse in her past has made her leery of men. The other two girls, it seems, are looking for love in all the wrong places; fantasizing over bad boys and wolfish executives. Annice learns the hard way in her fling with a loafing, arrogant, drug-using beatnik prick, while Pat reluctantly seems to be heading toward a conventional marriage path. At first, it looks like the book is going to be told from Annice's point of view, but soon we see that Taylor has a more ambitious agenda and juggles her shifting centers of interest between the inner thoughts and actions of the three girls with ease.
Although Taylor wants to show the limited options for women in the patriarchal-marriage-menial jobs dynamic of the 1950s, she is not so simplistic as to depict all the men as leering assholes. Several of the men are sympathetic characters, even though all of them have a healthy sex drive, but this is something that all the characters realize and accept as normal. Barby's relationship with an older lesbian mentor is handled tastefully and sweetly; there are no regrets or suicides or recriminations -- something probably refreshing for a lesbian-flavored novel of the time. There is sexual abuse in Barby's past and a series of sleazy and guilt-ridden liaisons with the Italian janitor, and it seems like these are meant to build sympathy for Barby so that her path to lesbianism seems "acceptable" for readers of the time. The poignant and sad state of the non-acceptance of lesbian love at the time, in which it had to be hidden, is summed up by one character: "As long as nobody can actually prove anything it's all right."
The book offers a fairly vivid portrait of living and working in Chicago in the 1950s. Near the end, when the office wolf finally makes a move, Pat finds her childish romantic fantasies not so much shattered as willingly abandoned; her reflections on her own sense of right and wrong are very touching. She is growing up. I vacillated between three and four stars on this. It was very enjoyable, perhaps surprisingly so. It's a solid effort.
2010/slight edits 2019 eg/kr -
This book has some gems that kept made me happy I read it. For example, Chapter Seven takes place at a college poetry gathering (the book was first published in 1959). Here's some great dialog:
"Emily Dickinson yet. She's reactionary. You ought to read Henry Miller and learn a new idiom."
"I disagree," the dark man beside the fireplace said. "Emily's in the vanguard. You kids are old-fashioned. But then,"he said sadly, "your whole generation's reactionary."
"You're quite right." The popeyed girl pushed up her pink-rimmed glasses. "We're still hanging on to the standards formed in the Twenties, the Golden Age of revolt. Kerouac says-" -
I expected something more like Ann Bannon's works. Actually, I expected something more honestly Lesbian, since Valerie Taylor is an actual Lesbian author and Ann Bannon is straight. I have learned never to expect anything like The Price of Salt, or some of the contemporary Lesbian books I have absolutely loved (Milk Fed, Last Night at the Telegraph Club, The Stars and the Blackness Between Them), but what you get with this book is still something interesting!
The Girls in 3-B follows three young women who come from the same small town (honestly it doesn't seem like the same town but later the text says it is) to Chicago to try to make their way as modern young women! One tries to attend college but gets waylaid by some terrible boho boy (I really love how this book makes fun of fake boho culture). One works in an office and looks for love amidst a powerful crush. One figures out she's gay!!!!
There is honestly very little gay content in this book and the story doesn't really even feel like a fully developed beginning, middle, and end. I feel like we are just getting a little taste of parts of three women's lives in a small period of time, but the resolution doesn't really feel that satisfying. What I appreciate the most about this book is that it's another view of contemporary late 1950's writing, and it's really interesting to see the way women's issues and sexual issues are discussed in that era!
Be aware, there is description of non consensual sex in this book, so if that is a trigger, best to skip this book. -
Not strictly lesbian pulp, as the lesbian relationship isn't the main focus of the book.
An interesting read because the lesbian relationship is one of the more normal of the story, where other pulps of the era show lesbian relationships as doomed at best and a product of mental illness at worst. -
I guess I feel the way I should feel having read this in 2019. We could have been (and still could be) much better humans.
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The Girls in 3-B is an interesting read from a historical perspective, even if the lesbian romance, which was like a miniature version of Carol minus the drama, did not occur until halfway through. I really don’t mind as the insight into the pitfalls and problems faced by young, single women in 1950s Chicago was equal parts fascinating and horrifying. If you’ve read Kerouac’s
On the Road, here’s the perspective of the women who were (by and large) the victims of the Beat movement, and of an insidious chauvinistic culture in general.
Taylor was obviously constrained by the conventions of the pulp paperback genre;
On a personal note, I appreciated Taylor’s realistic depictions of migraine auras and attacks throughout the book, even if I didn’t buy into the implicit psychological explanations for these. The onset of menstruation seems a much more likely culprit. -
I went from one rough read because of blatant racist and misogynist language to another rough read where the bigotry was "hidden". I understand what Taylor was doing, and bravo for her deciding to bridge that stereotypical pulp lesbian fiction of the time with something a little closer to reality.
Still, a rough read, especially knowing that all(?) of her lesbian characters all "became" so after some traumatic event(s) with men. The afterword in this edition captured most of my thoughts -- I was ultimately glad for Pat and Barby's characters, and I was pissed about Annice (and I'm pretty sure that's how it was supposed to be). But goodness, reading this just made me think of my grandma and how she was a single working woman with two daughters in the 50's, and all of the crap she must have endured. -
Very stressful read lol
Again a dope afterword that connected a bunch of strings, life and times wise about the social history surrounding the book
I feel more like these girls than I expected work-wise location-wise, everything cept the expectation of marriage xoxo
Fascinating how they so instantly grow apart
Was also expecting this to be like, sexier
What is a pulp novel anyway; how is this one?
Wanna find out more about Valerie Taylor; wish I had gone on the Read Run about it
...
I actually don't think this is fantastic literature but it is so fascinating as a document of it's time, and I'm so thrilled by the attitudes portrayed by it about sexuality and working class living -
An interesting and decently written pulp reprint by the Feminist Press that provides a good look at the lives of 3 women struggling against the constraints of femininity in post-war America. The added front and back matter essays provide great context on genre/pulp publishing in America as well as how female characters were treated by the author, specifically her view on lesbianism.
Kudos to the author for the creation of Alan the Beat writer, quite possibly one of the most loathsome examples of a male character I've ever come across in all my days. -
3.5 Stars
Valerie Taylor's The Girls in 3-B is an interesting example of lesbian pulp fiction. I studied lesbian pulp fiction in college, specifically for a Historical Perspectives on American Sexuality class, so I'm unsure how someone without prior knowledge of the genre would appreciate it. Lesbian pulp fiction was an exploitative paperback phenomenon that claimed to be a glimpse into the secret world of lesbianism, but was typically written by men using a female pseudonym. Girls doesn't quite fit this mold, in part because Taylor was the pen name of Velma Young, a bisexual writer.
Taylor's personal identity aside, the novel subverts the tropes of the genre. While other writers were needlessly exploitative: They were often overly descriptive of the characters... anatomies, and contained explicit scenes. Girls instead focuses on the psychology of the three main characters, and how sexism affects their lives. This makes the novel feel especially feminist, especially with the history of the genre.
The novel itself is an interesting historical relic. The afterword in this edition is a great bonus to the story, and provides more cultural context to the story. I must admit that it made me appreciate the novel more. -
Valerie Taylor is a hell of a writer. Maybe too good. Who writes things like “A look like a caress passed between them.” I didn’t know we were allowed to write shit that good. And Alan! I hate Alan. He sucks. He’s like a beat generation edge-lord. Who does Valerie Taylor think she is, writing someone so hateable? Read this book. It’s good.
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Absolutely deserves its place in feminist and lesbian pulp history. Though I didn't quite enjoy Pat and Annice's stories as much, they still served as a sharp critique of the predicament newly-liberated women found themselves in thanks to suffrage and their post-war world. But my girl Barby... she too-well deserved to be happy.
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For a book published in the 1950’s, it touches on a lot of taboo and everyday experiences of women today and back then. I was happily surprised. The character development was solid and I appreciated that characters mentioned in the beginning were brought back towards the end in each of the girls’ storylines.
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I found this surprisingly dense considering how short it is. In some ways, it feels delightfully close at hand, especially since it’s set in chicago and Hyde Park, and I felt genuinely interested in the characters. On the other hand, it is a pulp novel, and every decision someone makes is going to end in drama - except the lesbians, which makes this little 1950s slice feel unexpected and brave.
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Story just wasn’t my style, but I owned the book and wanted to give it a chance. The plot is predictable - you don’t really feel like you know the characters. The storyline seemed to go slow during bland moments and sped through elements of the story that were important.
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Okay we did get a technically happy ending but with such a horrific lead up it was still tough to read at times. It was fun to read about the straight girlies like it was just crazy gossip. Very abrupt ending but fine enough!
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3.5 stars -- last book of 2022 / first book of 2023; first lesbian pulp novel. I'm new to the genre but excited to explore more this year. Hoping the next one I try will be a bit more ~explicit though I did enjoy the subtlety and the coded language, as well. Subtext can be sexy, after all.
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*Read for my Lesbian Fiction class in my gender studies minor
I have a lot of thoughts about this book but suffice to say for now, I hated it a lot. -
I enjoyed this story of three young women who are making lives for themselves in Chicago in the 1950's. It's the POV I wish shows like Mad Men would tell.
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3.5
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A brilliant coming-of-age story of three girl friends who move to Chicago in the 1950's.
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My takeaway from this was mostly how awful it seems to be a straight woman in the 50s. Lesbianism seemed chill by comparison.
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A surprisingly nuanced and trope-defying take on the 1950s lesbian pulp genre.
