Paperback 309: Yesterday's Love / James T. Farrell (Avon 260)

Paperback 309: Avon 260 (2nd ptg / 1st thus, 1950)

Title: Yesterday's Love
Author: James T. Farrell
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $17


Best things about this cover:

• You know what they say: "Yesterday's Love, Today's Floating Head"
• Marion celebrates her victory in the "Ornamented Boobs" contest by ordering up a pizza for her and the floating head of her recently deceased boyfriend: "Oh, and get extra anchovies. I can't taste for shit since I became incorporeal."
• "Yes, hello, Home Depot? My wallpaper seems to have grown a head. Also, it's astonishingly ugly. Can you help?"
• "Studs Lonigan" always struck me as a great porn name. "Long Studsigan" might be better, though perhaps too spot-on.

Best things about this back cover:

• Yes, I knew it. "Frankness!" I was just perusing this back cover going "come on, some form of the word 'frank.'" — "These stories will sear you with their frankness!" Then they will put you in the oven of "brutal awareness" and gently roast you until you are cooked through.
• Is James T. Farrell the reason so many writers and hipster affect a scroungey "I could give a fuck" look. This guy's got it down pat. He's like the original. "Hair-combing's for squares! Fuck ties! Where are my cigarettes?"

Page 123~

She went to Sonny. Harry looked at her with utter contempt. His eyes were full of hatred. He got up and turned on the radio. He could hear the child babbling and gaily talking to its mother as she washed him. He turned off the radio and sat there waiting until they would take their walk. Then they would eat their supper, see another moving picture, and come back to the hotel. [final paragraph of "The Sport of Kings"]

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Books 18-20

Biography Edition — three lovely ladies to spice up your Thanksgiving

Yours for: you tell me!

Title: Red Carpet for Mamie Eisenhower (Popular Library G164, 1956)
Author: Alden Hatch
Cover artist: photo!

• Note to Mamie — hire a portrait painter next time. You are lovely, but this photo makes you look like a girl nervously awaiting her prom date
• Love the Marilyn Monroe / stripper gloves. The bangs ... not so much

• I'm hoping "folksy" means something different than it does today (where it's code for "white and backwards")

Title: The Elizabeth Taylor Story (Hillman MF-1, 1961)
Author: Alan Levy
Cover artist: photo!

• Superior book design compared to the other two bios today. Love the font and alternating colors on the title, and the 90-degree tilt to the author's name. Plus, the photo's hot
• This book is numbered "MF-1," which would be a badass name for a private plane

• Yowza!
• I must tell you that Alan Levy is the "author of Operation Elvis" (acc. to the title page)

Title: There Goes What's Her Name: The Continuing Saga of Virginia Graham (Avon V2153, 1966)
Author: Virginia Graham
Cover artist: photo!

• "There goes what's her name ... you know, the one who looks like a drag queen with a tidal wave of shellacked hair..."
• I love the false modesty of the title. "Aw shucks, I'm a nobody but OMG HERE COMES MY NAME IN BIG YELLOW LETTERS!"

Page 123~ (from "... What's Her Name")

It is almost as unheard of to be sentimental in today's world as it is for a teen-ager to stand when an adult walks into the room.

Almost as uncommon as the hyphenated spelling of "teen-ager."

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Books 8-11

A Mess of March ... I'm moving all the NGAIO MARSH titles to the front of the queue (literally, Roger Daltrey sang the word "queue" as I typed it just now ... freaky coincidence) because one of my readers seems to have a thing for her :)

Book 8: Singing in the Shrouds (Berkley, 1960)
Cover artist: photo?

• A book that takes on the collapsing telecommunications system, apparently
• Her miniskirt has its own miniarm.

• Finally, someone has tamed the wild, native, animalistic mystery novel and made it "civilized literature." Where's my houseboy with the tea!?

Book 9: Death of a Peer (Pocket 475, 1947)
Cover artist: Aargh, uncredited

• This lady's got Fear Hand (TM). In fact, she appears to have a double case of it.
• Ouch. Skeleton key to the eye. That's gotta hurt.

• Well if it's WEALTHY, of course we care...

Book 10: Death of a Fool (Avon T-254, late '50s)
Cover artist: Uncredited

• Fear Hand! (TM)
• Jenny recoils in horror as she sees that her gardener has failed to blow all the leaves off her front lawn. And squirrels on her bird-feeders!? Oh, the humanity.

• Inspector Alleyn arrives to cut through the heathen nonsense of the simple souls. Civilization! God save the Queen, wot!

Book 11: Swing, Brother, Swing (Pocket 762, 1951)
Cover artist: Lew Keller

• "Swing, Brother, Swing ... for Hepcats only, man!"
• Secret ingredient to all good mystery cover copy — just add "... with DEATH!"

• I'm sorry, I started laughing at "accordion" and haven't stopped yet

~RP

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Paperbacks 284-287: The work of Clark Hulings

Sorry for missing Wednesday. First week of school had me a bit overwhelmed and I completely spaced. To make up for it — a glut of paperbacks. Four, to be precise, all featuring the cover art of Clark Hulings. I culled all the Hulings covers I had and scanned them at the request of someone producing an article on Hulings for Illustration magazine. Sadly, upon perusing the covers I have, there's no signature style that I can see, and no one cover that really makes you go 'wow.' They are all very typical mid '50s covers, but only "Savage Holiday" really gives Hulings a broad enough canvas to have a real artistic impact. The others crowd the cover with text and offer only tiny pictures — mostly free-floating heads. Cover for "Winesburg, Ohio" is about as dull and generic as they come. The clear WINner here is "The Brave, Bad Girls." Bold, bright design with fantastic background use of the familiar fedora'd and trenchcoated detective. Coincidentally (I assume), two of these covers deal with interracial themes.

Paperback 284: Lion Library 47 (PBO, 1954)

Title: Strange Barriers
Author: J. Vernon Shea (ed.)

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• "Strange Fruit" + "Racial Barriers" = "Strange Barriers"
• Given the tagline, this cover is *very* disappointing. Where's the tumult, I ask!?
• These heads are drawn in different styles, to different scales, with different textures ... we get it, they're different! There's a "barrier." etc.
• Mark Schorer?

Best things about this back cover:

• "I'm enthralled by his jazz trumpeting, but his shirtless gun-toting just makes me howl with laughter."
• Man, I really, really wish I knew what was going on in that last panel.

Paperback 285: Avon T-86 (PBO!!!?, 1954)

Title: Savage Holiday
Author: Richard Wright

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

• Oh no, why is bed-headed Anthony Perkins attacking Lena Horne!?
• "I was just borrowing your Dick Tracy trenchcoat! I swear I was gonna put it back!"
• Love the random pseudo-japonesque pattern on those curtains.
• "I've made my decision, Steve. I choose the roses — not you."
• Her hands look very wrong — like she's got extra fingers or stubby fingers or fused fingers or something.

Best things about this back cover:

• The first and last time "The Yale Review" was used as a blurb on a paperback book.

Paperback 286: Signet 1304 (2nd ptg, 1956)

Title: Winesburg, Ohio
Author: Sherwood Anderson

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• "Breathe, damn you, breathe! Oh, why won't that doctor stop staring wistfully into the distance and get over here and help me!"

Best things about this back cover:

• Why is there no picture of "The girl who walked naked in the rain"!? Booooo!
• Thank god my neighbors "completely hide their private lives from" me. Barely repressed anger + miniature fainting couches (!?) = some crazy-ass !@#@ I don't need to know about.

Paperback 287: Perma Books M-3089 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: The Brave, Bad Girls
Author: Thomas B. Dewey

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Damned sticker pull!
• Red-on-yellow Totally makes this cover pop. Beautiful.
• Looove the expression on Girl 1 — nice, smug F@#$ You expression to complement the (in order) Just Woke Up, Meek and Scared, and Suicidally Depressed expressions of the others.

Best things about this back cover:

• "A Man! A Man, I say!"
• "A large pea?" — wtf? Like ... a marble? A dime? How big is a "large pea?" Are we talking freakishly, County-Fair-ribbon-winning large or what?
• Things Not To Say To A Lady You Just Met: "Just for tonight ... I wish you were seventeen."

Page 123~

• I was a friend of Karl Kadek's ("The Brave, Bold Girls")
• He took a cheap revolver from the case and began to wave it about. "You get out of here!" he shrieked. "We don't want any collar fasteners here!" ("Winesburg, Ohio")
• "On a Sunday morning?" There was a trace of scorn in his voice. "And what would he be doing barefooted?" ("Savage Holiday")
• Then he saw the hole in Jenny's side, right between the ribs. It was round, wet, red. ("Almos a Man" by Richard Wright —from "Strange Barriers")

Jenny is a mule, for the record.

~RP

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Paperback 222: How Rough Can It Get? / Joe Weiss (Avon T-332)

Paperback 222: Avon T-332 (1st thus, 1959)
Title: How Rough Can It Get?
Author: Joe Weiss
Cover artist: Milo

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• She looks excited about the possibility that it will get very rough, indeed.
  
• Her posture looks demure, but her hands?: holding a sledgehammer.
• That dude's butt and jaw are all kinds of wrong.
• Is there a difference between a trouble and a tribulation?
• That red is horrible. Pus + blood.

Best things about this back cover:

• Where is a picture?
• Oh good. I love a good human frailty war.

Page 123~

Beverly's five minutes were up, and she latched herself onto a new guy. She was showing this guy her arm. She told him that he should know she bruised very easily. So he then made a determined effort to see if he could do a better job with the other arm and maybe break it for her.

Remember when co-ed Fight Clubs were popular? Me either.

~RP

Paperback 218: The Saint Goes West / Leslie Charteris (Avon 635)

The Make-Your-Own-Commentary Experiment continues - fire away (in Comments)

Paperback 218: Avon 635 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Saint Goes West
Author: Leslie Charteris
Cover artist: illegible

Yours for: $12




Page 123~

"She died soon after. Too many sleeping tablets." Groom's voice had an almost ghoulish flatness. "She was pregnant. She was trying to get into pictures, but I guess she never got any further than the casting couch."

~RP

Paperback 208: Beat Not the Bones / Charlotte Jay (Avon PN286)

Paperback 208: Avon PN286 (6th ptg, 1970)

Title: Beat Not the Bones
Author: Charlotte Jay
Cover artist: Uncredited (come on, someone must know this...)

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Let's start with the title ...
• Because honestly, I'm not sure where to begin ...
• Beat Not the Bones! - for if you do, the Psychedelic South American Tree God will alight on your head with mind-altering fury!
• Revealed!: the secret of soprano Alma Gluck's outstanding voice!

Best things about this back cover:

• "Hair-raising" is not an effective qualifier of or follow-up to "persuasive." I mean, really - how do you en-dash your way from "hair-raising" to "persuasive?" That is nuts, New York Herald Tribune.
• "Proceeding?" It's not a trial. Horrible blurbs! Hey, I have a new blog tag.
• Civilization = innocence = sanity. Nice.
• "Rumors whispered suicide" - yes, when you play it backwards, the American version of Fleetwood Mac's most popular album does just that. And to think, Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne got all the bad press.

Page 123~

"I'm not at all well," he stated. "Fever always put my nerves on edge and those damn Kerema dogs come over and root up all my vegetables."

~RP

Paperback 183: Death is the Last Lover / Henry Kane (Avon T-291)

Paperback 183: Avon T-291 (PBO, 1959)

Title: Death is the Last Lover
Author: Henry Kane
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• The color scheme. It's gutsy - pink, baby blue, and then ... some kind of maroon
• The title - sensationalist writing at its best / worst. Does she literally sleep with Death, or does her John kill her, or what?
• Thank god Death was her last lover - that makes a much better title than "Herb the Copier Salesman from Wichita is the Last Lover"
• Her face is unfortunate. The painting makes her look vapid, which is inherently unsexy. I do dig that oversized hat box she's sitting on, though. Her legs and cleavage aren't awful either.

Best things about this back cover:

• Personally, I like "bosoms and brandies" with pretty much anything.
• That negligee has too many adjectives. It stopped being sexy right around adjective #3
• Oh look, it's that insipid face again. Nope, it's no sexier in blue tone.

Page 123~

I sat near her, enjoying the warmth of her thigh. "Honey," I said, "you're a nice, sweet, attractive gal, and I'm crazy about you."

"Yeah, I remember," she said.

Wow, she talks a lot cooler than she looks.

Paperback 135: Aphrodite / Pierre Louys (Avon 113)

Paperback 135: Avon 113 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: Aphrodite: A Great Pagan Love Story
Author: Pierre Louys
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $9



Best things about this cover:

• Aphrodite is seen here doing an ancient version of the Men Without Hats classic "Safety Dance," only instead of forming an "S" with her arms, she is forming a psi ("Psafety Dance!")

• If you put your thumb over this lady's head (which is to say, her ridiculous headdress), she is almost look-at-able.
• Nice clip art in the background there, Picasso!
• I kinda like how the border of this cover echoes the borders of her robe and negligee. That is about all I kinda like about this cover.
• Pierre Louys was what passed for a soft porn writer in the 40s. Him and Zola.

Best things about this back cover:

• A great example of an early paperback, from an age when publishers were still anxious about the social status of this fledgling product (mass market paperbacks having come into being only 7 years earlier). "GOOD" "GREAT" "SHAKESPEARE-HEAD" ... nothing at all about the content of the book itself; just a lot of weirdly over-reaching sales copy ("can easily be washed clean"???)
• "Rough usage" - HA ha: "We know how you semi-literate peons love to rassle with your reading material"

Page 123~

Her long, thin build was disconcerting in a family where all the women were plump. She ripened like a badly grafted crossed fruit of foreign, obscure origin.

~RP

Paperback 86: Finger Man / Raymond Chandler (Avon 219)

Paperback 86: Avon 219 (1st ptg*, 1950)

*Originally published as Avon Mystery Monthly 43, 1946

Title: Finger Man
Author: Raymond Chandler
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $50


Best things about this cover:

• The lady is hot and all, but it's Joey Green Visor who really sells this cover. He's either trying to commiserate with Captain Handsome about how stunning the lady is, or else he is starstruck because he thinks Captain Handsome is Clark Gable.
• This woman is in Desperate need of a new hairdo. Her hair has all the textural allure of sculpted rubber. Plus, that left nipple ... it's like I'm staring down the barrel of a gun.
• "Oh, excuse me, I seem to have dropped my bulging wallet ..."
• I see the "roulette wheel," but ... where's the "redhead?"
• In case you didn't know, Raymond Chandler rules. Best Crime Fiction Writer Ever.

Best things about this back cover:

• The fact that all the adjectives in the line "Fast Action, Hard Women, and Ruthless Crime" are interchangeable.
• Shakespeare Head!
• "Blood-and-sex" is a category of writer?
• Please notice all the hyphens. I'm telling you, it's a rule: Toughness is proportional to hyphen density.

I have this theory that if you take the best line out of any crime novel of your choosing, and then take the best line on a random page of any Chandler novel, the Chandler line will win hands down. I will now test this theory on ... Page 123!

"Shut up, snow-bird!" Mallory snapped. "Nobody's getting anybody. This is just a talk between friends. Get up on your feet and stop throwin' curves!"

"Mallory" was the name of Chandler's detective in the early days, before he settled into my personal hero, Philip Marlowe.

RP

PS thanks to Todd Robbins at The Modern Con Man for naming this site his "Site of the Week." His book is beautiful and you should buy it.

Paperback 54: Nero / Frank Castle (Avon T-521)

Paperback 54: Avon T-521 (1st ptg, 1961)

Title: Nero
Author: Frank Castle
Cover artist: Uncredited (but possibly James Meese - see if you agree)


"Man, why does Nero get all the hot semi-naked chicks, while I gotta wear this silly pants-less uniform with 75-lb headgear? It's not fair. I'm telling mom."

Best things about this cover:

• Yet another example of the nipple-free female - the great unheralded malady of mid-20th-century America (and ancient Rome, I guess)
• Love the emperor's expression and pose: "That's right. I'm the emperor. Naked ladies love me, not you. Whaddya gonna do about it, Mr. Feather-headed No-Pants? Nothing. Peel me a grape, that's what you're gonna do."
• Spine reads: "A Historical by Frank Castle" - I love when I can comment on a book's spine. They really knew how to use the Whole Book back in the day...
• The cover is well and truly beautiful, actually. The colors, the composition ... I'm telling you, this cover isn't spectacular, but walk into any Barnes & Noble and check out the front table and you'll see how badly modern book design / cover art suffers by comparison. This painting is rich in color and detail. It's textured. It's fundamentally not cooked up in some advertising lab.
• Sword = drooping phallus = sad Centurion
• I don't require much of my novels ... as long as they are "throbbing."

RP

Paperback 26: Avon Books 245

Paperback 26: Avon Books 245 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: The Big Four
Author: Agatha Christie
Cover artist: Uncredited


"Steve Manley really, really hated to lose at chess..."

Best things about this cover:

• The Floating Head of Fu Manchu! - and check out the Asian-y lettering on the title. You can almost hear the gong.
  
• Chloroform - you don't see that on paperback covers nearly enough. Usually it's all guns and knives with these guys. Nice to see someone mixing up the violence.
• Again, I have to ask, who dresses these people? She's decked out for some kind of fiesta, while he appears ready for Jeeves to bring him his pipe.
  
• A pinkish robe with quilted cuffs and collar? And a white handkerchief with matching ascot? His far-off gaze suggests he's being controlled by the Floating Head of Fu Manchu. Maybe he's chloroforming the woman because she dared mock the fancy bedtime garb that is sacred to the Head.
  

RP

Paperback 18: Avon F-148

Paperback 18: Avon F-148 (PBO, 1962)

Title: The Bad Man
Author: Joseph Wayne
Cover artist: James Meese

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

"Before he went to the gallows Al Cobb wanted to do one decent thing ... so he shot a man in the face and abducted his child"

Apparently "decent" meant "psychopathic" in The Old West.

RP