This is my second blog post in my blog experiment of writing short reflections on Edye in service of book drafting.
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When I was in grad school I told everyone I could get to listen to me about Edythe’s story, how miraculous she was and how talented and witty, showing them copies of Vice Versa hoping they’d be as awed as me. How miraculous that Eyde had written a cornerstone piece of queer history at work when her boss asked her to look busy! [1]. One of the professors in the Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies department pointed out how impressive it was that Eyde had to do the justification of her text herself when she wrote the issues. I don’t mean justification here in the case of convincing us that the work mattered or was worthy; I mean the literal lining up of letters so the text touched the left and the right side.
Ben was very good at typing, having done secretarial work in other spaces, writing the minutes for the LASFS, submitting letters and creative writing to SF lit mags. I suspect that her wanting to justify the writing in Vice Versa was her desire to make the magazine professional (she was playful, but she took her creative work seriously).
The way Vice Versa is laid out, from the Table of Contents to the types of writing included to the asterisks between pieces, harkens to the SF magazines Eyde would have been reading and writing at the time. The way I got into studying periodicals was by looking at the letters to the editor and personals, because I was intrigued with the ways writers and readers would use the magazines for communication and connection. Eyde bookended Vice Versa with an Editorial and “The Whatchama-Column: Wherein readers express their views and opinions.” Her Editorials were themed to the month and were a place for her to speak directly to the reader, often asking them to submit writing to the magazine:
- June 1947: In Explanation
- July 1947: Just Between Us Girls
- August 1947: S.O.S. Editorial
- September 1947: Still Camp-Aigning for Material
- October 1947: The Hallowe’en Spirit
- November 1947: Thanksgiving
- December 1947: Ring Out, Wile Belles!
- January 1948: Co-Oper-8 in ‘48
- February 1948: Heart-y Greetings!
Vice Versa was entertaining, sure, but it also served as an access point to gay media for readers who might not be able to access it themselves. I love thinking of Edye attending film showings with a little notebook, taking notes for her “Cinema Ramblings” so she could later recount the story and guide her readers through not just experiencing a story, but considering its implications as a piece of media with sometimes hopeful, but often scathing caricatures of lesbians and gay men. In addition to films, Eyde reviews fiction and nonfiction books, music on records, and journalistic articles (which is one of my personal fascinations and informed my dissertation’s first chapter focus, the role of journalism in circulating antihomosexual discourse).
Reading through Eyde’s archive, I haven’t found drafts of Vice Versa, handwritten or typed. She kept drafts of her fiction and poetry and songs, so I’m wondering if she truly did sit down to write Vice Versa at work and did it all there. It’s likely that she had drafts of things that she destroyed, like notes from a film showing or drafts of a fiction piece, though she didn’t keep these in the archive. This lack of evidence of Vice Versa’s creation feels appropriate to the timeliness of the project: she started it out of curiosity and a need to fill time at work, and she ended it when she abruptly lost her role due to company changes. Vice Versa is valorized for its role as the first of its kind. It was radical, and Eyde was brave, though it’s nice to remember the magazine served its immediate and most important purpose. Eyde got her what she needed: a real life community with other lesbians.
[1]: Eyde also commandeered time and materials from other jobs for personal writing. While she worked at the War Dog Reception Center in the early 1940s during WWII, she sent letters to her cousins on the company typewriter and sent them with company letterhead. This is documented in a 2018 Washington Post piece.
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