Dear Ms Meeker: While at Gold Medal, did you hear anything
positive or negative about the crime novelist David Goodis?
He did _Street of No Return_, _Cassidy's Girl_, _Down There_,
_Fire in the Flesh_, _Street of the Lost_. His _Cassidy's
Girl_ (1951)sold over 1 million copies. He may have been
mentioned as a successful "paperback original" writer. And as
an eccentric.
Do you remember any specific instructions Gold Medal writers
may have received as a result of the 1951 Gathings
Congressional Committee investigation into the influence of
paperbacks or young people, or on the effect of "lurid"
paperbacks on the "spread" of pornography or even communism?
The committee's hunt for scapegoats and easy explanations of
juvenile delinquency made headlines, as did the Kefauver
Committee hearings a few years later. I wonder if the Gold
Medal executives were concerned, or merely happy for the
publicity, regarding these committees.
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