How Majorcan porno novel empire flourished

PATRICK Meadows is such an integral part of Majorca's classical music scene, and has devoted so much time to masterminding the Deià Music Festival, that not many people know he is also a writer. Even fewer are aware that he once made a living by churning out hard–core pornographic novels. Although Patrick actually came to Majorca to write, having had some success publishing science–fiction stories in several American magazines, he got involved in the music scene here and writing was sidelined. But there has never been any money in the classical music business for Patrick, so he had to find a way of paying the monthly bills. He did so mainly by teaching. One day in 1971, long before the Deià Music Festival started, the poet Ruthven Todd, a long–time resident in Galilea, came knocking on Patrick's door to tell him about a man in Deià who wrote pornographic novels.

This was the start of an incredible interlude in Patrick's musical career that revealed, right here in Majorca, an empire built on pornographic novels.
This was at a time when rigorous censorship was so strictly applied that you couldn't even buy Playboy anywhere in Spain. “Ruthven told me that everyone had written pornography,” said Patrick. “T.S. Eliot had done it, Ruthven said, and he knew Dylan Thomas when Dylan was writing pornography to make a living. They all did it when they didn't have any other money, according to Ruthven.” Ruthven suggested that Patrick could do it. “Ruthven told me to go up to Deià and knock on the door of Miramar. I did, and this guy came to the door in a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, a red silk robe and naked underneath.” This turned out to be Bill Matthews, an American who had written 30 pornographic novels. He put Patrick in touch with the publisher, another American with a big house on the sea at Calamayor. “I was told the publisher was a lawyer from California who did a favour for some mobster who owned a printing press underneath the Vatican,” said Patrick. “The mobster gave the lawyer the printing press, and when he went to take a look at this Vatican printing press he found these four pornographic novels called The Captive Virgin, Up, Boy, Up, Teacher's Pet and Thy Neighbour's Wife. These became the four models of the pornography the lawyer started to publish.” The lawyer had started his Majorca–based pornography venture about three years earlier and was paying $1'000 for one novel a month. That was good money in those days and there were no less than 35 writers in Majorca churning out these novels month after month. “The books were written in English and then translated into seven languages,” said Patrick. “It was hard–core junky stuff. There were five basic scenes you had to write and there were certain sequences you had to go through. It was a formula, for truck drivers in the Midwest.” Each writer was given a certain type of novel to do. Bill Matthews, the American Patrick met in Deià, was an expert in the dog books (Up, Boy, Up) and had written 30 of them. “I was assigned wife–swapping books (Thy Neighbour's Wife),” added Patrick, “except I also did one captive virgin book.” The system was that these 35 writers in Majorca wrote a novel of about 60'000 words every month. “We used to deliver the manuscript to the maître d' of a luxury hotel who passed it on to the lawyer,” said Patrick. “Once I went in and I dropped my manuscript and the pages were all over the lobby of the hotel and the maître d's face was red. He was really afraid that somebody would see what was on those pages. “Pay day was the end of the month. When we all got our money, we'd go to Mam's bar for a bowl of chilli and a beer. “We had to go to Paris once a month for an editorial meeting where they decided which words were in vogue that month. The publisher had a big mansion on the Rue Foch in the Champs Élysées district and we weren't allowed to talk business while his family were around. His wife and daughter weren't supposed to know what he was doing. “His mansion was quite a place,” continued Patrick. “One of the guest bedrooms had a big black bed in the middle. I suppose it was for voyeur purposes.” The big attraction of this porno novel deal, for the writers, was the $1'000 pay day. Patrick wrote 15 novels in 15 months and it paid his basic expenses for several years. “But it was hard work,” said Patrick, “and it just ruined everybody's marriage. You couldn't do anything anymore with your wife because you started laughing every time you touched her. Or she started laughing because she'd read what you just wrote. It was a terrible time.” These were the days when hard–core pornography was banned just about everywhere, so none of this was done openly. “The manuscripts were sent to Paris and Copenhagen to be edited, the covers were made in Monaco and then everything was sent to Seattle, Washington, to be printed and distributed in several languages.” Then the publisher got interested in doing films and lost most of his money in the attempt. Bill Matthews was killed in a car accident between Valldemossa and Deià and Patrick and other writers started to quit. Soon after that Majorca's porno novel empire came to an end. Patrick never thought of these novels as anything but a way to make some money and pay the rent. He didn't even keep any of the novels. “I don't have any copies of the books,” he said, “although I still have some of the edited pages that were sent to me. The publisher had editors in Paris, Nice and Copenhagen and they really edited. Every word, practically, all the way through.” And Patrick only once saw the novels on sale. “I was on my way to California and I stopped off to see my son who was working in a Love Motel. In the entrance to the motel were all these books from LLP, Liverpool Library Press. That was the name of the company that published the porno novels. And there were my books. My son didn't know I had written them, and I didn't tell him.” Patrick had started writing when he was only 12. “My first short story was called The Treasure of the Emerald Cave. I wrote it in green ink. I published my first poetry and short stories in university magazines. “Much later I published my first science–fiction short story in Analog magazine. I called it The Moral Computer, which wasn't a very good title. The editor changed it to Counter Commandment, which was a great title.” The story was about the American and Soviet computers being given the order to fire the inter–continental ballistic missiles...and refusing to do so. When the experts examined the computers they found that they wouldn't fire the missiles because they knew right from wrong. Having also been used to store the Bible, the Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta and similar works, the computers knew that killing wasn't allowed. Patrick immediately sold a second story to Fantasy & Science Fiction about the human race wanting to set up a station at the edge of our solar system as a take–off point to the next galaxy. They had to have permission from the Vosks, the people living there. But this was refused because the Vosks didn't really know what the earthlings were like. So an organ and an organist were sent up in a spaceship. The organist played Bach's great toccata fugue in D Minor (which Fellini used in La Dolce Vita) and that convinced the Vosks that these earthlings were worth helping. That was when Patrick went to New York to become a writer and then came on to Majorca. But once here he became involved in music, and his writing was sidelined. Patrick is now hoping that he can give up running the Deià Music Festival in the near future and then go back to writing – although not porno novels. “I've got 75 short stories in my computer that are not finished,” said Patrick. “I've got to fix them, make sure they say what I want them to say.” So as he unwinds on the music scene, he's winding up on his writing again. It will be interesting to read what comes out of his computer a couple of years from now.