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 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. Later that year, they revealed the hoax, 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 any book 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, nineteen men and five women) to collaborate on a sexually explicit novel with no literary or social value whatsoever.

The group wrote the book as a deliberately inconsistent hodge-podge, with each chapter written by a different author. Some of the chapters had to be exactingly edited, because they were judged as originally too well written.

The book was submitted for publication under the pseudonym "Penelope Ashe"; the fictional author was portrayed by McGrady's sister-in-law Billie Young for photographs and meetings with publishers. The back of the first print run's dust jacket features a black-and-white picture of a fully clothed Young with her pet Afghan Hound and the accompanying caption: "PENELOPE ASHE is a demure Long Island housewife...."

Lyle Stuart was an independent publisher then known for controversial books, many with sexual content. According to Stuart, he had appropriated the cover photo (a kneeling nude woman with very long hair down her back, photographed from behind) from a Hungarian nudist magazine. Both the model and photographer later demanded and received payment for their work.

Synopsis

Gillian and William Blake are the hosts of a popular New York City breakfast radio chat show, The Billy & Gilly Show, where they play the perfect couple. When Gillian finds out that her husband is having an affair, she decides to cheat on him with a variety of men from their Long Island neighborhood. Most of the book is taken up by vignettes describing Gilly's adventures with a variety of men, from a progressive rabbi to a mobster.

  • Joshua Turnbull (Jack Schwartz)
  • Arthur Franhop
  • Mario Vella
  • Marvin Goodman (Bernie Bookbinder)
  • Alan Hetterton
  • Paddy Madigan
  • Taylor Hawkes (William McIlwain Jr.) whereupon the co-authors decided to go public, in August 1969. The male authors gave their confession on The David Frost Show, after being introduced as "Penelope Ashe" and walking out on stage, single file, as the orchestra played the song "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody". The revelation of the true origins of the book prompted more sales with the book selling approximately 90,000 copies by October 13, 1969.

The New York Times critiqued in its 3 August 1969 book review, "In the category of erotic fantasy, this one rates about a C. The passing grade is for the author's attempt to twine a few thin strands of humor into her wishful thinking." By the end of the year, the book had spent 13 weeks on the New York Times Best-Seller List,