Rona Jaffe (June 12, 1931 – December 30, 2005)

Rona Jaffe (June 12, 1931, Brooklyn, New York – December 30, 2005, London, UK) was an American novelist.

Born in Brooklyn, Ms. Jaffe grew up in affluent circumstances on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the only child of Samuel Jaffe, an elementary-school principal, and his first wife, Diana (née Ginsberg). Her maternal grandfather was Moses Ginsberg, a millionaire construction magnate who built the Carlyle Hotel.

Jaffe wrote her first book, The Best of Everything, while working as an associate editor at Fawcett Publications in the 1950s. Published in 1958, it was later made into a movie, starring Joan Crawford. The book has been described as distinctly "pre-women's liberation" in the way it depicts women in the working world. Critic Camille Paglia noted in 2004 that the book and popular HBO series Sex and the City had much in common with Jaffe's novel in that the characters, who have similar lifestyles, are both "very much at the mercy of cads."

During the 1960s, in addition to writing more novels, she was hired by Helen Gurley Brown to write cultural pieces for Cosmopolitan with a "Sex and the Single Girl" slant.

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Rona Jaffe's Books on Amazon: Rona Jaffe

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rona_Jaffe & http://www.ronajaffe.com/about.htm

I Want It All (All Together: The All Trilogy 1) by Dirk Vanden

Considering this book was first released in 1969, I was quite surprise to find a very good romance in the middle of a Gay Erotica novel (almost to the level of porn) in which there is rape (actually that is the very first scene, and it will be not the last), free use of drugs and extreme BDSM.

Warren is not an hero, but even for him it’s no acceptable to torture a man for the only fault of being gay; so when he sees that his best friend Bill and another bunch of men are planning to castrate a man who dared to propose Bill in the backroom of the local bar, he intervenes proposing an “alternative” solution: to rape the man, all of them. Well, that is not exactly an heroic decision, but it’s probably the only way to escape from that situation with both of them alive, if not in good condition. The man’s name is Brad, and as soon as he cleans up a bit, Warren has the feeling to look into a mirror: Brad could be is lost twin, and I think there is a metaphor right here, Warren and Brad are the same man, only that Brad was brought up in liberal California, and he grew up accepting to be gay; Warren instead repressed it, and only the traumatic experience of seeing Brad, his imagine, being almost killed by the same men he called friends, brought it out.

The following scene, Warren and Brad in a motel trying to overcome the fear of what has just happened, is the most romantic and sweet scene of all the novel, and the reason why I considered this one to be a romance; Brad will leave Warren the morning after, but Warren is not ready to renounce to love and he will set in a quest to find the man again. He will end up in late ’60 San Francisco, hustling and bustling to make the ends meet, and exploring the gay life, that life that Brad advised is not “gay” at all.

Now if you are a romance lover, you will find difficult to go through this part of the novel, Warren will see and do a lot, not always in the name of love, but mainly for the sake of pleasure. I wondered on this part of the story, as I wondered on its ending, and I arrived to the conclusion it was right; that was an era where free sex and multiple partners were not a “kink” but more or less ordinary events. By the way, if you read through Dirk Vanden’s bio, you will find that even him had a similar experience with one of his partners, and that relationship lasted for a long, long time.

I Want It All is for sure extreme, but truth be told, not more than other today BDSM/Erotic Romance novels I read; as I said, it was a nice surprise to find a bit of romance and above all an happily ever after (or at least that is at the end of this book, I have still to read the other 2, so I don’t know what it will be of Warren and Brad, but I have hope).

Amazon: All Together
Amazon Kindle: All Together
Paperback: 532 pages
Publisher: loveyoudivine Alterotica (August 11, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1600546307
ISBN-13: 978-1600546303

Reading List: http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle


"EMBRACE" by Dirk Vanden - oil on canvas - 24x30 - 1970. This paint hung briefly at THE STUD (a private club owned by the same people of DAVE'S BATHS) in San Francisco & sold quickly for $75

I Want It All (All Together: The All Trilogy 1) by Dirk Vanden

Considering this book was first released in 1969, I was quite surprise to find a very good romance in the middle of a Gay Erotica novel (almost to the level of porn) in which there is rape (actually that is the very first scene, and it will be not the last), free use of drugs and extreme BDSM.

Warren is not an hero, but even for him it’s no acceptable to torture a man for the only fault of being gay; so when he sees that his best friend Bill and another bunch of men are planning to castrate a man who dared to propose Bill in the backroom of the local bar, he intervenes proposing an “alternative” solution: to rape the man, all of them. Well, that is not exactly an heroic decision, but it’s probably the only way to escape from that situation with both of them alive, if not in good condition. The man’s name is Brad, and as soon as he cleans up a bit, Warren has the feeling to look into a mirror: Brad could be is lost twin, and I think there is a metaphor right here, Warren and Brad are the same man, only that Brad was brought up in liberal California, and he grew up accepting to be gay; Warren instead repressed it, and only the traumatic experience of seeing Brad, his imagine, being almost killed by the same men he called friends, brought it out.

The following scene, Warren and Brad in a motel trying to overcome the fear of what has just happened, is the most romantic and sweet scene of all the novel, and the reason why I considered this one to be a romance; Brad will leave Warren the morning after, but Warren is not ready to renounce to love and he will set in a quest to find the man again. He will end up in late ’60 San Francisco, hustling and bustling to make the ends meet, and exploring the gay life, that life that Brad advised is not “gay” at all.

Now if you are a romance lover, you will find difficult to go through this part of the novel, Warren will see and do a lot, not always in the name of love, but mainly for the sake of pleasure. I wondered on this part of the story, as I wondered on its ending, and I arrived to the conclusion it was right; that was an era where free sex and multiple partners were not a “kink” but more or less ordinary events. By the way, if you read through Dirk Vanden’s bio, you will find that even him had a similar experience with one of his partners, and that relationship lasted for a long, long time.

I Want It All is for sure extreme, but truth be told, not more than other today BDSM/Erotic Romance novels I read; as I said, it was a nice surprise to find a bit of romance and above all an happily ever after (or at least that is at the end of this book, I have still to read the other 2, so I don’t know what it will be of Warren and Brad, but I have hope).

Amazon: All Together
Amazon Kindle: All Together
Paperback: 532 pages
Publisher: loveyoudivine Alterotica (August 11, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1600546307
ISBN-13: 978-1600546303

Reading List: http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle


"EMBRACE" by Dirk Vanden - oil on canvas - 24x30 - 1970. This paint hung briefly at THE STUD (a private club owned by the same people of DAVE'S BATHS) in San Francisco & sold quickly for $75