Feil does a glorious job of capturing the candid, unapologetic nature of Susann’s personality and work, while breathing importance and meaning into what most of the world considered trash in the 1960s. For decades, only the die-hard film nerds and LGBTQIA+ pop-culture fanatics recognized Susann’s impact, but hopefully Feil’s book will open her legacy to a wider audience.
~Emily Kubincanek
This is literary criticism at its most eloquent, impressively researched and saucy.
~Kevin Howell
Camp is lit within, and Jacqueline Susann, a writer stigmatized as trans by Truman Capote, will flicker further thanks to Fearless Vulgarity—and Feil's unparalleled knack for the mass love machine.
~Quinlan Miller, Author of Camp Tv: Trans Gender Queer Sitcom History
In Fearless Vulgarity, Ken Feil embarks on a detailed, fascinating, and illuminating study of Jacqueline Susann's work. Eschewing camp as a reception practice, Feil argues that Susann encoded her work with camp sensibilities such that it could be read by her legions of readers as camp. Fearless Vulgarity is a vital contribution to studies of stardom, production, media, and camp.
~Alfred L. Martin Jr., Author of the Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom
Unappreciated during her lifetime for her wit and her camp, and with her own bisexuality effaced yet kept as an open secret, Susann is well worth rediscovery today, especially through the lenses of queer theory and mass culture studies, as Feil convincingly proves. This is a learned and substantive book.
~Steven Cohan, Author of Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value and the Mgm Musical and Hollywood by Hollywood: the Backstudio Picture and the Mystique of Making Movies.
Proving that 'once is not enough,' Ken Feil applies established expertise on genre and camp humor to the case of roman á clef author Jacqueline Susann. In Fearless Vulgarity: Jacqueline Susann's Queer Comedy and Camp Authorship, Feil positions Susann's relentless self-promotion and 'bad manners' novels about celebrity and sexual identity as central to the circulation of camp, feminism, and queer politics in popular culture since the 1960s. A critical work as fearless as its subject!
~Mary Desjardins, Author of Recycled Stars: Female Film Stardom in the Age of Television and Video
