The Leatherman's Handbook - Silver Jubilee
The Leatherman’s Handbook by Larry Townsend appeared in a Special 25th Anniversary Silver Jubilee Edition published by LT Publications, Townsend’s own press. For that edition Jack Fritscher, PhD, contributed “I Am Curious (Leather): Leather Dolce Vita, Pop Culture, and The Prime of Mr. Larry Townsend.” The cover is shown below.
Larry Townsend (1930–2008) was a Los Angeles writer who published dozens of books and helped bring leather and kink to a general readership. His handbook first appeared in 1972, and the Silver Jubilee edition marks twenty-five years of the book. For twelve years, beginning in 1980, Townsend also wrote the “Leather Notebook” column for Drummer magazine, and he continued the column in Honcho until 2008.
Fritscher’s contribution takes its title from the 1967 Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow) and Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, and its subtitle promises a look at leather’s dolce vita, pop culture, and the prime of Mr. Larry Townsend. More of Jack Fritscher’s writing for the leather press can be found in the Drummer Magazine Archive, where the leather community that Townsend’s handbook addressed is documented issue by issue. Readers interested in leather history can also read Jack Fritscher’s Bay Area Reporter review of Leatherman: The Legend of Chuck Renslow, the biography of the Chicago leather pioneer who founded International Mr. Leather.