JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

September 23, 2014

Prurient Interests

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 2:52 pm

buy stromectol europe We have here another of John’s abandoned projects from the ’80s, and it’s an odd one. Prurient Interests was to be a comic novel written in exaggerated bad taste, under one of his preferred pseudonyms, Randolph Halsey-Quince.  And the main character was none other than Dr. Thornton M. Vaseltarp.

Vaseltarp was the name John used for his humor pieces for Screw.  I revealed this in an article in the Fortean Times in 2002; William Gibson read it, and used the name in his novel Pattern Recognition.  Since then, Vaseltarps have proliferated on the internet.

In Prurient Interests, the good doctor appears as a fart expert on a TV show, warning about the danger that flatulence poses to the atmosphere, and promoting the Vaseltarp Fart Filter.  His performance leads to the producer being taken away in a strait jacket.  After an irrelevant and obligatory sex scene, Vaseltarp visits a gun store, where he buys a field mortar.  He then goes to the park, and shoots mortars at all the people having sex in the bushes.  He also runs into one of his fart subjects, Stanley Furchin, who is dressed as the Shadow.  (John knew Walter Gibson, who wrote the Shadow novels, which may explain it.)  After an interlude in which the TV director and his assistant discuss the commercial possibilities of flatulence, an unnamed couple tries to have sex in the back seat of a Volkswagen.  Claustrophobic sex scenes also played a large part in Kiss My Gun; John must have found them particularly funny.  A novelty song called “Making Love in a Subaru” did pretty well in 1977; maybe he was responding to that.

John sent the 34 pages to his agent, Knox Burger, but Burger’s response isn’t in the envelope.  Judging from his reaction to Kiss My Gun, I suspect he wasn’t enthusiastic.  John must have had fun writing it, though.

Following are the first few pages, the irrelevant sex scene, and a concluding pitch.

PRURIENT1

PRURIENT2

PRURIENT3

PRURIENT4A

PRURIENT5

PRURIENT6

 

2 Comments

  1. Unbelievable. Gotta respect John for sheer fearlessness and a fuck-all approach. I had caught, while reading Gibson’s amazing PATTERN RECOGNITION, the Vaseltarp name-check. As you know, Gibson is a fan of Forteana. Thanks so much, Doug!

    Comment by William J. Grabowski — September 24, 2014 @ 12:41 am

  2. John wrote for “Screw,” and was a fan of “Horseshit,” “The Realist,” and underground comix; this fit right in.

    Comment by Doug — September 24, 2014 @ 6:08 pm

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