Introduction
If Charles Dickens were alive today and residing in the Midwest, he undoubtedly would have come up with a character like our Cassie in The Peeping Lens. Cassie is a poor waif-a nubile, sexy, enchanting, and not very bright woman-child who goes through life not truly comprehending the difference between good and bad, allowing herself to be led by others.
Although half a hundred people plunder her body's riches, she remains innocent and trusting to the end. Cassie undeniably is the victim, yet it is she who is ultimately disgraced, arrested, imprisoned! And not even then does she realize what she has done wrong.
Leroy Biscayne, a promising young San Francisco writer, has written what we feel to be one of the most movingly powerful novels of the year. It sparkles with humor; its dialogue is so real that one can almost smell the dust blowing across the Oklahoma plains at the beginning of the story.
Cassie, who runs away from a cruel, insensitive father and a hot, cramped trailer home, dreams of becoming a famous Hollywood actress. Like all innocents everywhere, she becomes a victim once she ventures into the jungle of modern society. Hitchhiking, she falls an immediate prey to a truck driver even more brutal than her father; she is raped and thrown from the cab. Her second ride is with Jerry, a pornographic motion picture producer. He is kind to her, sensing there are possibilties in this woman-child; it is the first act of kindness ever shown to her, and she is thus thrown off guard. Before Cassie knows what is happening, she has become an unwilling actress in a pornographic movie. Her slide into the depths of depravity is accelerated from this moment on. She achieves the fame she always wanted-her name is emblazoned in lights ten feet high-but it is a fame tainted with despair and uneasiness.
When Cassie shows signs of rebelling against the degrading use of her body, Jerry fraudulently offers to marry her. The wedding scene is one of the most incredible ever printed. Not since the Mar quis de Sade's Justine, ou les Malheurs de la vertu has such licentious and irreverent behavior been recorded.
Biscayne has written not only a penetrating and unforgettable character study of a young girl, but also an expose of San Francisco's thriving pornographic motion picture industry. Heinie and Jerry are two of the most likable (and despicable) villains we have met in a long while. It is quite possible that they, like poor Cassie, have no real comprehension of doing wrong. We feel it necessary to point out that Mr. Biscayne has assured us that the characters in this novel are purely fictional and any similarity to pornographic motion picture producers in San Francisco (or elsewhere) is purely coincidental.
The closing pages of this book are heartrending. Cassie, who has been beaten and cheated and whipped all of her life, offers advice to parents who have girls. "I didn't have enough discipline," she weeps. "My father should have whipped me more. Parents everywhere should remember that you can't spare the rod, or you will spoil your child."
The Publishers of Dansk Blue Books are proud to present for your reading enjoyment, The Peeping Lens; we feel the book may very well become a classic in its genre, as well as an important sociological document for future social historians.
-The Publishers North Hollywood, Cal. March, 1971