A high-ceilinged, book-filled house in Port Townsend is a publishing company quietly producing an eclectic, outrageously entertaining line of books.

“I’m drawn to things that are not being done, that are off the track. Things I think are important but are being ignored,” said Adam Parfrey of Feral House books. “I’m not frightened off by political or conspiratorial books, or books that are ‘too much.’” Weird sex, serial killers, drugs, George Bush – no topic is too off-the-wall.

Several of the books published by Feral House are not carried by independent bookstores.

“Good mothers don’t want to take their children near it,” said Parfrey, adding that larger chain stores such as Barnes & Noble and the now-defunct Borders Books have offered Feral House books, but independent bookstores often only carry “what the New York Times deems as being appropriate.”

‘APOCALYPSE CULTURE’

Parfrey, who moved to PT about five years ago, is perhaps best known for his 1987 book “Apocalypse Culture,” a collection of writings by several authors, himself included. Titles of some of the essays in the book include: “Frank Talk from a Psychopath,” “The Cereal Box Conspiracy Against the Developing Mind,” “A Case for Self-Castration” and “Satanic Technology and the West.”

“We still get contacted regularly by people who say [‘Apocalypse Culture’] changed their life,” said Jessica Parfrey, Parfrey’s sister.

In a blog on the Feral House website, Parfrey recently wrote of the book’s popularity, “I think it had to do with recognizing the presence of insane ideas intentionally ignored or dismissed by the society’s titans and papers of record.”

When he had the idea to write the book, he was living in New York, doing typesetting and layout for a small publishing company. He knew it wasn’t a book that would find support in conventional publishing circles.

“My ideas are kind of far-out for the trade,” in terms of the substance of the books, or the content, he said. It was a risky idea. “It wasn’t a celebrity cookbook.”

He met a guy who had enough money to get “Apocalypse Culture” printed, and “there was enough profit we could divide it up.” His first press was called Amok Press. He then moved to Portland, Oregon, and later, Los Angeles, and founded Feral House in 1989. Meanwhile, he worked as a freelance writer for San Diego Reader, Juxtapoz, “Penthouse and Hustler and other very worthwhile publications.” Hustler wanted stories about “weird sex cults.” Penthouse was a bit more lenient, he said.

STIRRING THE POT

Feral House publishes 10 titles each year. A sister company, Process Media, publishes four or five titles each year.

Parfrey doesn’t have to market his companies to authors; they bring ideas to him.

The art on his walls hints at his political and aesthetic leanings. There are Korean propaganda posters, a large portrait of Stalin that he bought on an LA street corner; prints that combine Lenin and McDonald’s imagery (communist and capitalist propaganda); a painting of “Chocolate Jesus” incorporating the Tom Waits lyrics.

Parfrey explained that people who write books already know which publishers will be a match for their work. For example, writers who emulate Charles Bukowski or John Fante might submit their own work to Black Sparrow Press, publisher of the avant-garde American authors.

Feral House only prints nonfiction. Parfrey chooses books based mainly on what interests him, as well as what he expects will sell. He edits the books and hires a few part-time copy editors and a designer.

He’s weathered some unpleasant responses to the books he publishes.

“I was sued by a Mormon once,” he said, because of something written about that person in a book called “Psychic Dictatorship in the USA” about “conspiratorial things.”

The deputy chief of the FBI didn’t like what was written about him in another book, “The Oklahoma City Bombing: The Politics of Terror.”

In 1992, Parfrey published a story in the San Diego Reader about Walter and Margaret Keane, which was reprinted in Juxtapoz and inspired a show of Margaret Keane’s paintings at the Laguna Art Museum. A recently released Tim Burton movie, “Big Eyes,” tells the story. Parfrey received no credit, but he’s philosophical about it. No sense in being bitter, no matter how justified.

“The years pass. You go, ‘That crap happens.’ ... That’s the kind of world we live in,” he said.

In May 2014, he published a book that tells the expanded story about the Keanes. “Citizen Keane: The Big Lies Behind the Big Eyes.”

BOOK LIST

Meanwhile, Parfrey continues to publish his books, in all shapes and sizes.

From a small green volume titled “War Is a Racket” by Gen. Smedley Butler to a large book of arresting pictures titled “American Grotesque: The Life and Art of William Mortensen,” the books are beautifully designed.

“I work with guys who are really good at [book design] ... people with really good ideas about it,” Parfrey said.

There’s a plaid cover on “Cholo Style: Homies, Homegirls and La Raza” by Reynaldo Berrios. Book lovers, beware: There are plenty of gems here.

If Seattle Seahawks fervor irritates, try “The Fix Is In” by Brian Tuohy, about the commercial realm of sports.

There are drug books: “Speed-Speed-Speedfreak: A Fast History of Amphetamine,” “Pills-A-Go-Go,” “Opium for the Masses” and “Hashish: The Lost Legend.”

There are many books about music, including “American Hardcore: A Tribal History” by Steven Blush, “Black Metal” by Dayal Patterson, and Blush’s entirely ironic book about pomp and spandex: “American Hair Metal.”

“I really hate these fuckers, but I [published] a book about it because it amused me,” Parfrey said.

There’s “The Gates of Janus” by Ian Brady, a famous British murderer, and a book so gruesome it comes with yellow caution tape already around it: “Dying for the Truth: Undercover Inside the Mexican Drug War,” “a pretty risky book to do” about drug consortiums and the Mexican cartels, Parfrey said.

“The Essential Mae Brussel: Investigations of Fascism in America” is about a woman who did a lot of radio shows and political writings. “She’s kind of forgotten, so I’m trying to revive her,” Parfrey said.

Other Feral House titles: “The Gigantic Book of Sex”; “Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin”; “Sin-A-Rama,” filled with color plates of the covers of 1960s sleaze-sex paperbacks; and my personal favorite, “The Complete Motherfucker: A History of the Mother of All Dirty Words.”

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