How did you spend last weekend? Well, I didn’t make it to APE (wrong coast) so I spent some time in my local charity-based thrift shop looking for a Halloween costume. No wait, just kidding. I was there because they happen to have a really great used book section and since most used book stores are gone like yesterday’s VHS, a thrift shop remains a shining beacon of musty old paperbacks that smell of basements and cigarettes. That’s where I picked this up: McCaffery by Charles Gorham (Crest Books, 1962).

It’s one of those heavy-handed books that’s packed with stereotypes and talks about sex with the oddball euphemisms of the day, but also with shocking (for the time) language. And the reason I picked it up was because of the back cover copy, which I’ll get to in a little while.

On the pages inside, you get to find great paragraphs like this, as McCaffery enjoys the company of a woman: “I kissed her on the mouth and held it there. I was in charge. I was a man. I could feel it in my blood, the sense of my manhood. I was a man and there was no one in the whole world except me…” Issues much, Mr. Gorham?

So what’s McCaffery about? A guy named Vince McCaffery grew up in an awful family situation. As an adult, he befriends a female prostitute, works as a male prostitute, falls in with a wealthy gay theater producer and his companion. He betrays the producer by borrowing his car and sleeping with a woman. As punishment, McCaffery is gleefully whipped and locked in the producer’s apartment until he “comes to his senses.” Then, when everyone’s asleep, McCaffery pops some codeine and liquor to dull his pain, escapes to the kitchen, grabs a meat cleaver and chops everybody up. He’s caught by police when he returns to the old family home and tries to chop up his father who’s sleeping with his aunt. He’s sent to the nut house. The end.

It’s like Final Crisis without capes. You know who really liked McCaffery? This guy who blurbed it on the back cover. This is what he wrote and, because of who he is, that’s why I happily plunked down my 50¢.

“This is a raw book…one of the most controversial novels of recent years. For readers old enough to know where babies come from, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is really a dull book. Nobody can say that about McCaffery.”

Now who’s the author of that book blurb? And why is this showing up in a blog about comics? Why that blurber is good ol’ Frederick (sic) Wertham, M.D., the psychiatrist who wrote the scathing indictment of comics known as Seduction of the Innocent back in the 1950s.

Frederic Wertham is reviled by lots of comic book fans—especially those of a certain age who mourn the loss of their beloved EC comics—as the comic book industry’s Darth Vader. He was determined to prove a link between comic books and juvenile delinquency and arguably started the modern quest that all old-school media still follows: blaming kids’ behavior on whatever new thing is popular (rock music, video games, the internet, texting, Twitter). He might have meant well, but then the government got involved, and you know how those things go.

Dwight Decker has a nice article on Wertham’s career over at art-bin for those who need a well-written history lesson.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m headed back to the thrift shop.

You can read some more about Charles Gorham over at Neglected Books.

[Artwork: Cover to McCaffery by everyone’s favorite “Artist Unknown”]