The first book, Inside Linda Lovelace, is very obviously ghost written, a sexy potboiler aimed at the one-handed reader. But that's no surprise - it's merely the swinging seventies, XXX version of the classic showbiz autobiography; a fictionalised account of the myth rather than the reality.
The second, titled The Intimate Diary Of Linda Lovelace, was written after she had left Traynor, and, while it's almost certainly not entirely her own work, it has a far greater ring of truth, in both style and content.
It's a facinating read for anyone interested in the battles over porn in the 70's and 80's. In particular, many of the sensational claims about Traynor's domination that she made in Ordeal had already appeared in this mass market paperback. However, the nascent anti-porn feminists didn't pick up on them and the book was quickly forgotten.
On the subject of Lovelace and co-authors, it shouldn't be forgotten that Ordeal and Out Of Bondage weren't entirely her own work either. They were written with Mike McGrady, who somewhat ironically had been responsible for the collectively-written, sexy novel Naked Came The Stranger, which itself became a XXX film.
Reading the 'Lovelace' books in sequence is instructive. Each has a certain immediacy, presenting a snapshot of her feelings (albeit highly mythologised in the first book) at four stages in her life. And the overall picture is far less simple than the anti-porn campaigners who adopted her as their poster child would have had us believe.
In fact, Linda herself observes (in an archive interview in Inside Deep Throat and - iirc - even in Out Of Bondage) that the anti-porn campaigners were happy to promote her to support her arguments but weren't there for her when she needed financial or other practical help.
It appears that it was her fate to be used, first by Traynor and then by the so-called feminists whose fame increased as hers declined. But this sort of exploitation is hardly unique in Hollywood and the world of showbusiness - or politics, for that matter.
The tragedy is that, if she had lived just a few more years, she'd have seen far greater acceptance of porn as a cultural and cinematic phenomenon and, I feel sure, would have finally found the fame and acclaim that she had known twice before - but this time, maybe it would have been on her terms.
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