In an interview, Dahl remarked that his earliest stories had been sexually tasteful, that only in midlife did he start writing about sex. This is not entirely true; in the short story "Madame Rosette," from the short-story collection Over to You (1946), sex is a prominent theme. On the other hand, in the 1960s Dahl became one of numerous writers to take advantage of the loosening of censorship laws and greater public tolerance to write sexually explicit fiction. Already a wellestablished writer for "slick" magazines, Dahl would have found writing a sexy tale for Playboy to be a natural extension of his market. His first Uncle Oswald story for Playboy was "The Visitor," which resembles his eerie gothic tales more than the novel My Uncle Oswald. This story was a big hit with the readers of Playboy, and with additional sexual stories, Dahl built an important new...