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''Naked Came the Stranger'' is a 1969 novel written as a literary hoax poking fun at the American literary culture of its time. Though credited to "Penelope Ashe", it was in fact written by a group of twenty-four journalists led by ''Newsday'' columnist Mike McGrady. McGrady's intention was to write a book that was both deliberately terrible and contained a lot of descriptions of sex, to illustrate the point that popular American literary culture had become mindlessly vulgar. The book fulfilled the authors' expectations and became a bestseller in 1969; they revealed the hoax later that year, further spurring the book's popularity. ==Hoax== Mike McGrady was convinced that popular American literary culture had become so base—with the best-seller lists dominated by the likes of Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann—that even a wretchedly written, literarily vacant work could succeed if enough sex was thrown in. To test his theory, in 1966 McGrady recruited a team of ''Newsday'' colleagues (according to Andreas Schroder,〔Schroder, Andreas. ''Cheats, Charlatans, and Chicanery'' McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1997.〕 nineteen men and five women) to collaborate on a sexually explicit novel with no literary or social value whatsoever. McGrady co-edited the project with his ''Newsday'' colleague Harvey Aronson, and among the other collaborators were well-known writers including 1965 Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Goltz, 1970 Pulitzer Prize winner Robert W. Greene, and journalist Marilyn Berger.〔Matt Schudel, ("Journalist was ringleader of popular literary spoof" ), ''The Washington Post'', May 16, 2012 .〕 The group wrote the book as a deliberately inconsistent and mediocre hodge-podge, with each chapter written by a different author. Some of the chapters had to be heavily edited, because they were originally too well-written. The book was submitted for publication under the pseudonym "Penelope Ashe" (portrayed by McGrady's sister-in-law for photographs and meetings with publishers). The publisher, Lyle Stuart, was an independent publisher then known for controversial books, many with sexual content. According to Stuart, he appropriated the cover photo (a kneeling nude woman with very long hair down her back, photographed from behind) from a Hungarian nudist magazine; the model and photographer later demanded and received payment.〔Anthony Ramirez, ("Lyle Stuart, Publisher of Renegade Titles, Dies at 83" ), ''The New York Times'', June 26, 2006.〕〔Christopher Reed, ("Lyle Stuart: US publisher who challenged the constitution and the boundaries of taste" ), ''The Guardian'', June 28, 2006.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Naked Came the Stranger」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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