The original edition of The Man Who Wrote Dirty B00ks by Hal Dresner had a brown paper wrapper for a dust jacket. It was published at a time when people actually noticed, and judged you by, the cover of the book you were reading. Had you been seen reading a dirty book you might have been banished from polite company. Thus the brown paper wrapper.

But in the 21st century anything goes and you can walk the streets freely with The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books, risking only to be stared at as you chuckle at the preposterous fix that Dresner’s porn-writer protagonist  has gotten himself into, having retreated to the wilderness to focus on his next book under a looming deadline.

Instead of peace, he is harassed by his old girlfriend and her angry father who are convinced that the nymphomaniac character in his last novel was based on the man’s daughter. Soon, the author finds his quiet getaway beset by a lawsuit and an investigation by the FBI and local sheriff. How to convince these yahoos that art does not imitate life – that’s the hero’s dilemma and the delicious irony of The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books, which has been delighting readers since its first publication in 1964.

“Really funny”
–The New York Times

“There is a superabundance of owlishly solemn writers in America, but very few with the comic talents of Hal Dresner”
–Chicago News