Ann Bannon wrote six lesbian pulp novels in the late 1950s and early
1960s, starring a character named Beebo Brinker: “Beebo was a big girl,
big-boned and good-looking, like a boy in early adolescence. Her black
hair was short and wavy and her eyes were an off-blue, wide, well
spaced… She took odd jobs where she could, anything that
would let her wear pants.” The six books, collectively known
as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, remain cult favorites to this
day, and Beebo Brinker has become, over the years, a bona-fide
literary sex symbol; Bastard out of Carolina author
Dorothy Allison has blurbed the most recent release of The Beebo
Brinker Chronicles with gushing praise that ends “I would have
dated Beebo, no question.”
Beebo Brinker may be a lesbian hero, but she’s also a huge
asshole. She abuses her beloved Laura, both physically and
mentally. She has a pathological fear of abandonment, but also
sluts around with just about any woman who flirts with
Laura. She’s less a role model than a how-not-to diagram, but at the
time of publication, her brutish masculine aggression might’ve seemed
refreshing. Or at least bracing.
Patricia Highsmith and Marion Zimmer Bradley got their start in
lesbian pulp before moving on to write critically acclaimed mainstream
fiction. Times were lean—in a recent phone interview, Bannon
recalls how Bradley “was heating up ketchup with some salt and
pepper and crackers and calling it dinner“—and their
characters’ anything-goes morality is perhaps a product of the
bleakness of writing novels for a fraction of a penny a word. “Myself
and Marijane Meaker, who wrote novels under the name Vin Packer, we’re
the only two from that era still around,” Bannon said.
Beebo—who Bannon visualized as “a big handsome girl, a cross
between Ingrid Bergman when she wore the pants in
For Whom the Bell Tolls and Johnny Weissmuller,” (an Olympic
gold medal winning swimmer who starred as Tarzan in a dozen popular
films of the 1940s)—still brings out fans a half-century later.
Last year, a play version of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles opened off Broadway to great success, and this weekend, Bannon will
read in conjunction with a Seattle Women’s Chorus concert named
Vixens & Sirens.
Bannon is grateful that her work remains popular, but she’s also
glad that she stopped at the sixth Beebo book, before dulling
her nasty edge: “If I continued to write her, she probably
would’ve gotten away from the darker side and more toward her wry
humorous side.” Though her wry humor is undoubtedly part of Beebo’s
charm, it seems as though her darkness—the alcoholism, the
poverty, and the readiness to explode into an apoplectic rages over
love—is why thousands of women, straight and gay, still love
her.
Ann Bannon reads in performance with the Seattle Women’s Chorus
at Meany Theater, 4001 University Way NE, 323-0750, on Sat April 12 at
8 pm and on Sun April 13 at 2 pm.