Earl Kemp - Pornography and Gay Books

Pornography and Gay Books

During the 1960s and '70s, Kemp was involved in publishing erotic paperbacks through a company, Greenleaf Classics, where he was employed by William Hamling. In an example of détournement, Kemp published an illustrated edition of the Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. The book was "replete with the sort of photographs the commission examined." Kemp eventually was sentenced to a one-year prison sentence for distributing the book (as was Hamling). However, both served only the federal minimum of three months and one day. The story of their arrest and prison time was covered in Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife.

Kemp also was involved in publishing gay-themed books while at Greenleaf, one of the earliest editors to do so, leading novelist Victor J. Banis to call Kemp the "Godfather of gay publishing" (even though, as Banis says, "Earl himself was resolutely heterosexual"). Among the books Kemp edited in the 1960s were Banis's novel The Why Not and a series of gay pulp fiction spy parodies called The Man from C.A.M.P. Banis says once Kemp and Greenleaf proved how much of a market there was for erotic gay fiction, other publishers soon joined in.