Dolls and Dues, Suburban Wife, The Torrid Teens, Call Me Bad, Dial ‘M’ for Man—all characteristic titles for pulp fiction short stories and novels of the 40s and 50s. But Orrie Hitt (1916-1975) was not your typical writer of pulp fiction, and some of his 150-plus novels also have more unexpected and intriguing titles—take Panda Bear Passion, Love in the Arctic, Ex-Virgin, Diploma Dolls, and Abnormal Norma for example. The writer Brian Greene dubs Hitt “the Shakespeare of Shabby Street,” and a “visionary artist” who explored characters within “moving human dramas.” (Shabby Street is both a metaphor here and the title of an early Hitt novel.)

At first glance, Nudist Camp, published in 1957, appears to be just another exploitative example of the genre, but there is a little more going on between its covers than meets the eye. 🪐

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