Sleeping with Bad Boys: A 1956 Playboy Model's Escapades with James Dean, Hugh Hefner, Norman Mailer and the Famous Writers of the 1950's Beat

Author Alice Denham, whose writings have appeared in "The New York Times", "New York" magazine, "Cosmopolitan", and "Playboy" (her fiction was published in the same issue as her centerfold) presents Sleeping With Bad Boys: A Juicy Tell-All of Literary New York in the Fifties and Sixties. Sleeping With Bad Boys lives up to its title and then some, offering lusty, sexy, between-the-sheets tell-alls about James Dean, Normain Mailer, Hugh Hefner, Philip Roth, and William Gaddis. Though sensual elements are definitely a highlight, Sleeping With Bad Boys isn't all sex, all the time; chapters also tell of the author's road to maturity, and pivotal events in her life, from private family emergencies to the assassination of JFK. Written in an anecdotal style of brief, discrete passages that lend themselves to being read a little bit at a time or all at once, Sleeping With Bad Boys is utterly absorbing from cover to cover and enthusiastically recommended.

Fools are they who kiss and tell the wise poet once sung. Man can hold many a place if he can only hold his tongue. Because of that, I usually avoid kiss and tell books. Who wants to read something written by a fool? But the New York Times reviewed sleeping with Bad Boys favorably and the book did touch on two of my favorite subjects: Literature and Sex. Alice didn't disappoint me. She is a real writer with intelligent things to say. Besides being literate, her memoir does not have the feeling of retrospective falsification that often haunts and sometimes adorns similar works. In fact, I can almost hear the file cards in the background, as she tells us, with a sense of immediacy, about James Dean (his is too small) in bed or Norman Mailer (what he knew about love was nada). And yes she was playmate of the month back in 1956, I think. I'm too lazy to look up the exact date. And yes, she did it with Hugh Hefner as many of the playmates did. Sort of like pay to play only it's play to play. Alas, alack, her sex friends disappointed her by not blurbing her book. She thinks that they are prejudiced against the second sex. More likely, they like women but not those who kiss and tell. Alice Denham is not quite the oversexed ancient Aztec goddess of earth and fire, Coatlicue. But she is close enough to inspire worship by me.

Sleeping With Bad Boys, Alice Denham's memoir about literary NY in the 1950s and 60s, reads like an intriguing, absorbing novel. Her talent for creating characters, not only the whole gallery of interesting people that appear in the book, but her very own narrative voice, is excellent. The well developed story line, with its twists of fate and suspense, creates an incredibly moving, tight, awesome under current of that so very special combine of the struggle for creativity, love, life itself. Maria Arrillaga

Though this smart, well-written book will mostly be bought for its gossip, "Sleeping with Bad Boys" is an invaluable literary history source for certain American writers who emerged in the 1950s. We learn much about underappreciated novelist David Markson, for example, and especially about William Gaddis, for whom little biographical info exists. (Two of his letters are quoted in their entirety.) There are eye-opening passages about Mailer, Roth, Heller, Porter, and others, and shocking accounts of how old-boy misogyny persisted in the publishing community throughout the Sixties. This is probably the only work of literary history with a photo-insert of pinup images, but this an enlightening, impassioned book that deserves a wide readership.

The title of this book promises lots of steamy sex, and it delivers in spades. Denham loved sex, and makes no bones about it. From a strategic location in Greenwich Village she knew the leading literary lights of the fifties and sixties, and slept with any of them she cared to. Her descriptions are not so much graphic as emotionally complete. Some of her flights of lyricism are so wonderful that the male reader gets to experience what he can never experience, how it feels to a woman in the throes of ecstacy. But, although Denham slept with a lot of stars, she was no starjumper. She politely turned down some of the biggest lit stars of the era, and managed to maintain good friendships with them at the same time. Her morality was not conventional, but nonetheless it was there. In the sixties when swinging came into vogue, and Plato's Retreat was the new hot thing in New York she was simply turned off by that scene. She did not require love, but she did require at least friendship and chemistry. But, in spite of the title, and in spite of the beauty of the way it's rendered, sex is not the best thing about this book. The description of the lit life of the era surpasses that, and the description of the difficulties of being female at a time when women were second class, not thought worthy of their typewriters surpasses that. The best chapters of this book describe her friendship with Katherine Anne Porter. This is fine writing, deeply touching, and a great story. Denham has never been given the credit she deserves as a serious writer. She is not merely good. She is magnificent.