Tony Fekete on Collecting Erotica

The only real acquaintance I’ve had with erotic literature came years ago when I was a teenager. I read My Secret Life, in the fat, purple Grove paperback edition. And re-read and re-read, and re-read it.

Man was it exciting. Then again, not surprisingly the briefest glimpse of a bare breast (Sarah Miles’s, for example, in Ryan's Daughter) would set me spinning back then. My having had to turn to reading for thrills says as much I think about the dearth of visually stimulating content easily available to young men in the seventies, as it does about anything else, particularly when you consider what’s on offer today. It would be fascinating to know what impact this huge change in the lives of teenage boys has had on Western culture, for good or bad.

Anyhow, about six months ago a bookseller friend of mine showed me some erotica, deftly feathering in a comment about how exotic and interesting this collecting area is. Of course I took the bait and bought, then started looking for more. First I found some old reference material,

then some new,

I hung tough for three to four months, acquiring this

and that,

mostly newer stuff, and then basically withdrew from the field, dropping it for a new fascination. Typical behavior. Now I have a draw full of smut

under the bed that I don’t look at, often. Pretty well exactly the way not to go about collecting. During this dalliance I did, however, come across the renowned 2014 catalogue of highlights from the erotica library of Tony Fekete (which incidentally contains a very scarce first edition set My Secret Life)

Items from the catalogue netted more than £1 million. Tony is on Instagram it turns out, so I started following him. Nice feed. His posts popped up periodically. They were fun. I messaged him recently to ask if he might like to talk about his collections.

The book that Tony references during our conversation is entitled The Skin Book (not The Skin Game) by C.S. Vanek. It’s one of his favourites. Lots on role playing and S &M. Budapest, he says, is good for used antiquarian bookshops, and is home to a favourite cafe, the 'Muvesz’ or Artists Cafe, one of the oldest and most beautiful in the city.