KENTON, Maxwell; [Terry SOUTHERN & Mason HOFFENBERG] Lollipop. Paris: The Olympia Press.1962.
Small format 8vo., original green card covers, ruled and lettered in black and white; pp. title page with border in green; pp. [vi], 7-188, [iv]; a very good copy, lightly rubbed at edges, lightly creased and sunned along the spine; the odd spot/small splash to the outer edges of the text block and page margin, otherwise internally clean.
Later impression, No. 64 in the Traveller’s Companion series, priced 18 N.F. to the lower cover. Printed in June 1962 by Imp. S.I.P., Montreuil. Originally printed in October 1958, priced 1200 francs and entitled ‘Candy’. The name changed to ‘Lollipop’ in December 1958 in an attempt to fool authorities, bypass the censorship, and sell the remaining copies.
The story of a beautiful young girl, Candy Christian, who is born on Valentine’s day. Seduced by both her professor and later a ‘psychotic hunchback’, the book was later named by Playboy Magazine as one of the ‘25 sexiest novels ever made’. “Terry Southern and I wrote Candy for the money”, writer Mason Hoffenberg later claimed. “$500 flat. He was in Switzerland, I was in Paris. We did it in letters. But when it got to be a big deal in the States, everybody was taking it seriously. Do you remember what kind of shit people were saying? One guy wrote a review about how Candy was a satire on Candide. So right away I went back and reread Voltaire to see if he was right. That's what happens to you. It's as if you vomit in the gutter and everybody starts saying it's the greatest new art form, so you go back to see it, and, by God, you have to agree.” The book was subject to numerous bans and lawsuits, and remains one of the more popular works to have been produced by the Olympia Press.
Kearney (p.85).
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