it's a double thread

According to Google, it's a Lorell Butler painting. Your point is what?

The womens can be queer, too.

Though Peggy Swenson apparently is actually Richard E. Geis.

I think it's a book, pulp novella specifically, but my question is: who would think to write it? "From which there is no escape"? Huh?

Kind of insulting?

Gayness as predatory ("the spider's web...")?

A bit too pejorative? (I doubt gays buy any more rohypnol per capita than do straight folk...)

Well, Richard E. Geis was a science fiction writer who also published "lurid" novels under pen names as way to get quick cash. he probably tossed the book off in a drunken weekend in the early 50's or something.

it's my summer of '72 memoir.

Aces.

That was a pretty common theme in 40s and 50s pulp. If you wanted to write about homosexuality you had to write about it in a negative light. These books were often pretty subversive, though, and if you read between the lines a little, there were often (but not always) gay positive messages.

Come to think of it, though, 75 cents would have been a lot to pay for a pulp paperback in the '50's. I think it's a painting made to look like one of those novels and the artist got the price wrong.