By GIL LAMONT (Essex House; 1969)

A pretty typical product of the upscale smut outfit Essex House, which made quite a mark on the adult fiction market of the late 1960s.  In fact, I’d say ROACH by Gil Lamont is a prototypical Essex Hose publication, being vaguely poetic, heavily counterculture infused and containing a science fiction wraparound.

That latter element was one utilized by many Essex House authors, who were known to add dystopian overtones to their novels to appease Essex’s sci fi obsessed editor Brian Kirby.  That appears to have been the case with ROACH, which is nominally set in a futuristic Los Angeles ruled by fascistic overseers—an angle that is quickly abandoned in favor of a druggy phantasmagoria.

The protagonist is Malcolm Wren, who writes erotic fiction.  He finds solace from his unfulfilling existence through a lot of minutely described casual sex with anonymous women and copious amounts of weed (hence the title).  This has the effect of depleting his manhood (especially since one of his conquests turns out to be, in a pre-CRYING GAME shock reveal, a man), something his superiors take note of, and so elect to put him to work writing children’s books.  Things get so bad Malcolm turns to LSD, which of course only further addles his mind.

It’s all set down in very “with it” late-1960s fashion, with slip-streamy prose a la Burroughs and Pynchon (both of whom have made for ideal Essex House writers).  Malcolm’s inner voice is conveyed via lengthy parenthetical blocks of prose, and sentences that forego capitalization and are liberally packed with sixties slang (“She bummed my trip,” etc.).  Nor is the author above rudimentary shock value, as demonstrated by a lengthy passage in which our “hero” takes an especially smelly dump.

The most memorable passages are those detailing Malcolm’s epic third act acid trip, which were evidently inspired by actual experience: “She says something, but you are too fascinated by the spurts of air issuing from her mouth to hear sounds…her image wavers and her outline blurs and she becomes, she is, and you become and are and the room is and the world outside is, everything is…”  If this sounds interesting to you the chances are good you’ll enjoy this book, which if nothing else is, at 172 pages, mercifully short.