John Colleton (1907–1993)

I had already read (and enjoyed!) six of the fourteen Cloris and Amy novels by John Colleton when I finally managed to read the first of them, The Trembling of a Leaf. As it happens, the plot was largely "spoiled" for me by my prior reading of the twelfth book The Enticement of Cindy, which recounts many of its events as a consequence of the narrator John reviewing his aunt Amy's diaries of the period. I think that Cindy takes place after the body of Leaf but before its epilogue. The show more epilogue did surprise me!

But plot is not what makes this book worth reading. It is full of drollery and engagingly semi-lucid reflections, along with the pivotal erotic episodes. Colleton is at pains to represent the elite culture of Charleston, South Carolina, in both its public propriety and its private license, and the scene that he constructs in the environs of Isabelle Wescott's Berkeley Hall reminded me of Aldous Huxley's portrait of Crome Manor in Crome Yellow. Especially in light of the memoiristic tone, it seems likely that Colleton was exploiting an actual Charleston house party milieu much as Huxley had Garsington Manor as "Crome."

While one might dismiss Leaf as a Bildungsroman with incest, I found that it had all the satirical appeal of the Huxley book, and perhaps even more bite with respect to literary production. Its more contemporary setting (within living memory, at least, even if Colleton has gone to his reward) offers a Millbrook-style psychedelic guru rather than the Theosophical humbuggery at Crome.

There is a real sadness of reminiscence that sometimes comes to the fore in this volume, a pining for bygone vistas and a perplexity about old intimacies. These notes are not as present in the later books, where cleverness predominates. But still, Leaf is a comedy, and one with a bright conclusion notwithstanding its touch of gray. I don't suppose Colleton foresaw another dozen of these novels in his pen, but I am glad they were there. show less

I bought this weathered paperback decades ago at a garage sale. Since then, I discovered it was part of a series of fourteen and read three of the others. Now, on the verge of reading its direct sequel, I have just re-read it. It is far, far funnier than I remembered. While I recalled some of the erotic set-pieces, I had entirely forgotten the number of laugh-out-loud droll moments. Also, while I remembered that the plot involved revolutionary politics in Italy, I had not recalled the show more extensive skullduggery or the full comedy of mistaken identities.

The tale includes a couple of gustatory passages that put me in mind of the moments of culinary excess in the Hypnerotomachia. Also, there is soixante-neuf on an ancient altar, and a demonstration of the discipline of "mammaromancy"--later, the term mastomancy is suggested as more apt--i.e. divination by means of the veins of a woman's breasts.

In the ongoing business of Lady Cholmondeley's cinematic productions, this volume sees the completion and debut of Monna Vanna, along with the conception and inauguration of the eponymous Naked Countess of Liechtenstein. But the narrator Bill spends no significant time on the sets of the films for which he is the writer. He begins in Sicily, convalescing from the failure of his "dejected part" in recent lovemaking, and at the turn of the first page he has already glimpsed the "compelling new girl" who will be the axis of the story.

I had remembered that the pacing of this novel was strange and seemed to reflect its position as a serial installment, with a resolution that spoke more to the larger series, and several plot threads begun but unfulfilled. That being still the case, my reading of some of the other Colleton books definitely helped me appreciate this one better at a second pass. show less

This book marks the first time I've been able to read one of the fourteen Cloris & Amy books of John Colleton following on its immediate predecessor (The Delights of Anna, in this case). I was surprised to find that the narrator had changed! The other books I've read all had Bill Benton--actually absent and only occasionally mentioned here--as the narrator. This book is "written by" John Dellmore in the way that the others I've read have been by Bill. Other than a brief detour to New York show more City, it takes place entirely in Charleston, and it is centered on John's relationship to his aunt Amy. John is back from Oxford and about to embark on an unpromising academic career, but he is drawn into the "charmed circle" of Amy, Cloris, and their lucrative and lubricious projects.

The story proceeds with the help of many embedded texts, primarily Amy's diary, in which the reader is offered the frisson of seeing through John's eyes Amy's private accounts of her early encounters with him, as he both indulges his own curiosity and uses the content as material for a screenplay. The screenplay draft itself is another component. There is also a snippet from a Bill Benton book (one of the other Cloris & Amy novels?) and various pieces of media reportage. Colleton flaunts some esoteric erudition with throwaway references to the Hashishin and Jakob Boehme in rather surreal news reports (214, 218).

Colleton succeeds in giving John a different voice than Bill, and I think I preferred it on the whole. John is conscious of his own unfortunate tendency towards dry academicism and defeats it fairly well. This younger narrator is however no less preternaturally fortunate in winning the attentions and affections of the women in the story. The eponymous Cindy is a former competitive diver and Las Vegas dancer who is being groomed as a candidate for public office, but she doesn't even get a mention until past the midpoint of the novel. As is typical for these books, a subplot (superplot?) makes hay out of moral hypocrisy in politics, and the ending is comedic with some incidental violence helping to tie up the loose ends. Published in 1981, it definitely reflects the US culture of its time on a variety of levels. show less

This eighth of the fourteen John Colleton erotic novels from the 1970s and 1980s begins on the calendar as specified by its punning title, and I also read it on that schedule. In early June, the sun is in the sign of Gemini, and accordingly the title character June is in fact a twin, who with her sister Elza is the focus of the first half of the book, and the inspiration for narrator Bill Benton's newest screenplay The Seabrook Sextet.

The woman on the photographic cover can't be meant to show more represent the eponymous June, who is a blond teenager. I suppose it is supposed to be Amy Dollemore, one of the central characters of the series. Bill's seduction of the teenagers June and Elza is, of all the Colleton I have read so far, the passage most reminiscent of Casanova's Life. The city of Charleston is itself an important character in this part of the story.

The second half of the book goes to New York and then across the Atlantic. It is dominated by Bill's maundering self-regard and his attempts to fathom Amy, but what it chiefly communicated to me was the social and psychological puissance of Cloris Lady Cholmondeley, the high priestess of the book's sexual cabal, and the way in which public recognition for her cinematic productions has fired her ambitions.

As usual, Colleton's prose is entertainingly erudite. The sort of droll circumspection and laconic pacing reminded me of the manner of Len Deighton's early novels, despite the very different subject matter. show less