Read the book

329

Think Fifty Shades of Grey invented lowbrow erotic literature? Put down your drink. The biggest literary heist of the 1960s was an orgy novel cooked up as an April Fool’s stunt to humiliate the purists. In 1969 journalist Mike McGrady, scandalized by American bad taste, bets he can turn pure smut into a bestseller. He recruits 24 fellow reporters, each tasked with a chapter intentionally worse and wilder than the last. They fabricate “Penelope Ashe,” a supposedly repressed suburban mother played by McGrady’s sister-in-law, and the hoax explodes: America laps it up, mesmerized by her domestic fantasies, and the book soars onto the New York Times bestseller list. When the team finally outs the prank to mock literary critics, the industry lands one last barb—the public isn’t offended; the myth wins, sales spike, and the scandal proves more valuable than lyrical prose.