2 books handed to me at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament: Book 2

Title: Consultation Room (Pocket 654, 1st ptg, 1949)
Author: Frederic Loom, M.D.
Cover artist: Stanley Meltzoff

Yours for: not for sale

• "What's the matter, doctor? Do my boobs ... frighten you?" "Er, I'll just put the stethoscope ... uh ... here, or ..." "Be a man!"
• "Normally, patients sit down for this exam. Also, normally they don't wear wedding dresses to the exam."
• This book should be called "What the Gigantic Brass Door Handle Knows"
• "My world has revolved around sex as a pivot" — "... as a pivot"?? That's redundant *and* stupid.
• "Frank!" I love when paperbacks get "frank." That means people are gonna do it in some non-marital and possibly non-missionary way.

• Clifton Fadiman shows off his mad (mad mad mad) blurbing skills, while the Dayton News tries, and fails, to make up an adjective.
• "From the young wife to the woman of 50" — All the way to 50!? Way to push the envelope, guys.
• "Frank!"

Page 123~

"Don't do it!" she cried when she could speak coherently. "Please let me have my baby now. I don't want to have a Brazilian soldier!"

"Brazilian soldier" being, of course, code for some fairly serious pre-delivery waxing.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 234: Diagnosis: Love / Barbara Bonham (Monarch 466)

Paperback 234: Monarch 466 (PBO, 1964)

Title: Diagnosis: Love
Author: Barbara Bonham
Cover artist: Lou Marchetti

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• The long awaited prequel to "Diagnosis: Murder"
• Whatever was going on in "their private lives," it apparently involved massive amounts of nitrous oxide
• "Take off that clown make-up. This is a hospital, not a whorehouse!" / "Oh fuck you, Steve. Perform the appendectomy yourself. I'm going outside to smoke ... and maybe talk to Larry. That's right, I said 'Larry.' Asshole."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Garnet?"
• "Chad!" - that's more like it.
• " ... a strange malady ..." - later diagnosed as "hot pants"

Page 123 (last page!)~

He took the thermometer from her and glanced at it quickly. "Normal. No germs here. It would be perfectly safe to kiss you." He pulled her up into his arms.

I really hope that thermometer was in her mouth.

~RP

Paperback 224: Two Surgeons / Richard Meade (Lancer 70-012)

Paperback 224: Lancer 70-012 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Two Surgeons
Author: Richard Meade
Cover artist: Harry Schaare

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Doctor does not look interested. He looks disgusted. "Put your collar back down and get out of my office."
• She looks like the lead singer of a New Wave band and / or a man.
• Color scheme is entitled "Aquatic Nausea"
• What up with that finger-painted smear between their heads. There's daubing, and then there's sloppiness / laziness.

NO BACK COVER - scanner is dying a hard, horrible death and will likely have to be replaced. I'll see what I can do.

Page 123~

Garth nodded and left the operating room. In the corridor, he paused to light a cigarette. The smoke tasted good, abating some of the uncertainty that gnawed at him.

Smoking - good for the body and the mind. Just ask this surgeon...

~RP

Paperback 200: That None Should Die / Frank G. Slaughter (Perma Books M-4026)

Paperback 200: Perma Books M-4026 (2nd ptg, 1955)

Title: That None Should Die
Author: The insanely prolific Frank G. Slaughter
Cover artist: Charles Binger

Yours for: $6

So I had an early 70s movie tie-in of Chester Himes' "Cotton Comes to Harlem" all cued up and ready to go as my 200th Paperback ... and then I went to Plattsburgh.


Best things about this cover:

• This doctor is

a. preparing to shoot the newborn at the ceiling like a rubberband
b. preparing to make "newborn tea"
c. deciding whether to keep it or throw it back
d. looking Way too long and hard at the baby's genital region, or
e. so handsome that nobody cares what he's actually doing

• I love how the mother is the very least important figure on the cover - almost like an afterthought, or a shorthand visual cue to let you know that the baby is alive and he didn't steal it.
• "That none should die, Dr. Rand Handsome ingested the mysterious, rune-inscribed baby before it could explode."

Best things about this back cover:

• "That story alone is fascinating" - uh, no, sorry it's not.
• If this description makes the book sound anti-socialized/nationalized medicine, that's because the book *is* anti-socialized/nationalized medicine. The first (teaser) page has as its headline: "President announces medical care free to rich and poor alike!" - in this book, that's the terrifying Orwellian future. Because we all know that real doctors are all driven by "ideals" (see cover), unlike nameless bureaucrats who want only to flatten all social distinctions and erect statues of Lenin.

Page 123~

"I shouldn't be saying this, I suppose, but you look like a better class of man than we usually get in a job like this, and I hope you're going to stay with us."

He added, "I mean, I'm not gay or anything, but dear god you're handsome."

~RP

Paperback 193: Naked Nurse / Ben Anderton (Chariot Books CB-216)

Paperback 193: Chariot Books CB-216 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Naked Nurse
Author: Ben Anderton
Cover artist: [Robert Maguire]

Yours for: SOLD (June '09)


Best things about this cover:

• Semicolon? Really? Did you think that would look fancier than your run-of-the-mill comma? And what is up with that first dash, after "Raw"? What did the comma ever do to you, copywriter guy?
• That's right, my first comment about the cover of a book called "Naked Nurse," which depicts an honest-to-god naked nurse, was about punctuation. That is how I roll.
• "She admired his skill in surgery" - Really? She does not look like she is "admiring" anything. She looks like she is cowering in fear. Naked fear.
• The art is actually first-rate and looks suspiciously like the work of the legendary Bob Maguire (his female faces and hair are very distinctive)
• Ben Anderson's chosen pseudonym was woefully inadequate
  

Best things about this back cover:

• Oh god. And I thought the front cover had punctuation issues. It's a bloodbath back here. "White capped" needs a hyphen, the dash after "nurse" is ridiculous and superfluous, there should be a comma after "Young" ... jeez louise, there's subject / verb disagreement in the description of "Lynn!" I can't go on. You can see the carnage for yourself. I wonder if Chariot Books outsourced their cover copy-writing to, let's say, the Ukraine, and then had the Ukrainians forward their work to Laos for proofing...
• "Penetrating" - tee hee
• "For Men" - you don't say ...

Page 123~

The local minister who performed the ceremony, so far from the strident complexities of the city, had expressed his pleasure in learning that the community was to have a new expert surgeon to help care for their ills.

Oh boy, an expert surgeon! No more getting appendectomies from Floyd the Barber! Hurrah!

~RP

Paperback 133: The Doctor on Bean Street / Simon Kent (Dell D143)

Paperback 133: Dell D143 (1st ptg, 1954)
Title: The Doctor on Bean Street
Author: Simon Kent
Cover artist: Bill George (yay, an artist credit!)

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• How many visual signifiers of "squalor" does one cover need? Sheesh. Look at that guy's shirt. The overflowing trash ... and did the Hulk have at the railing to those steps!? Bill George appears to have invented a new color: filth.
• "He knew the hungry passions of the damned ... and he knew Ingrid Bergman, who liked to stand on his front stoop, exuding a radiant aura of limeness."
• "We who wear the beret have a silent, secret language all our own..."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Street Walker" - subtle!
• "... about a cold ..." HA ha. Nice euphemism for gonorrhea / unwanted pregnancy
• O My God why would anyone read this book? It appears to be about a doctor so jaded that his only remaining joy in life is imagining the ways in which his patients will, inevitably, commit suicide. This cover copy makes Camus seem sunny.

Page 123~

Slap on a heap of records, without discretion, hook them on the spindle, start the turntable off. Then the wizard begins.

Yeah, that's right: wizard. Bet you didn't see that coming.

~RP

Why Book Sales are Like Crack Dens To Me, Part 2

Welcome back to further tales of my addiction.

Dondie is back with me once again to help me comment on the paperback carnage. And we're off:

Title: The Man with the Heart in the Highlands and Other Stories
Author: William Saroyan
Cover artist: Cassler

• And thus "Riverdance" was born ...
• "Dance, Timmy, dance, or I'll cut off your other arm!"
• This book was later retitled "The Child Predator with the Heart in the Highlands." (Subtitle: "Queerscarf!")
• Dondie says: "Ballet for the geriatric pedophile in all of us!"
• Dondie and I cannot agree on whether that is a cornet or a flugelhorn.

Title: The Age of Analysis
Editor: Morton White
Cover artist: Uncredited

• "Shh, I'm contemplating."
• "My bicep is HUGE! And astonishingly truncated!"
• Spirograph! - "Mom, look what I made in Arts & Crafts today!"
• Dondie says: "P.S., my hand looks like a buttox!"
• If you cover up "YSIS," this title is funny.

[Interloper book - not from Book Sale, but from Salvation Army]

Title: Satan's Rock
Author: Marilyn Ross
Cover artist: [George Ziel]

• Lucy Ashton says: "Pax vobiscum"
• "We finally saved up enuff to get that castle addition on the old barn - uh oh, Bessie, it done caught fire already!"
• Rex says: "This castle is pooping out the moon ... onto a boat."
  
• Satan's architectural abomination - how does that monstrosity not crush the outcropping it's built on top of?
• Dondie says: "I want that shade of lipstick. I think it's called 'Coral.' I haven't seen that shade in some time."

Title: Echo Round His Bones
Author: Thomas M. Disch
Cover artist: Uncredited

• Jewfro Sanderson and His Posse of Floating Vitamins!
• "I've come back from the future to get a refund for this awful haircut. You are getting sleepy ..."
• Is he coming through the rainbow pastel portal on his knees?
• Most highly decorated general ever: "I came back to get my forty-third star, biatch!"

"The year is 1990" is the funniest sentence ever.

"The year is 1990. The universe has witnessed the ultimate invention: The Chunnel!" (also "The Simpsons" and Windows 3.0)

Title: The Dark Frontier
Author: Eric Ambler
Cover artist: Oliver [...]

• Apparently, her bra is only 50% operational.
• Pencil Mustache liked to grip his gun with just two fingers - Euro-style.
• Her pendant weirdly matches the emblem on Pencil Mustache's gigantic cap.
• Dondie says: "I'm quite sure he is doing something to her ass."
• Are they in a ghost lab? What is that syringe / baster / bunsen burner on her left?

Title: Daybreak
Author: Frank G. Slaughter
Cover artist: James Meese

• First thing you must do - click on "Daybreak" (above) for background music while you read this entry and clap your hands like a doofus with your fingers drastically outstretched.
• Next thing you must do - read the back cover. Since you can't, we'll tell you what it says. It begins:

"The operation is simple. It is called a frontal lobotomy and its purpose is to pacify the violently insane."

OK, that's pretty much all you need to know. And now, the one-act play that is ... Daybreak:

Lynn: "Hello, my name is Lynn. Will you be removing my frontal lobes this morning? I put on this yellow dress for you. Let's go play tennis. I want to kill you with my teeth and bare hands."
Jim: "Your eyebrows are far too black for us to proceed. Do you like my neck whistle? I just came back from coaching a soccer game."
Lynn: "Your hands feel manly."
Jim: "Your shoulders are small. Say 'aaah.'"
Lynn: "Jim, I don't want to be rude, but ... you have a giant dollop of toothpaste on your head."
Jim: "No, Lynn. That's my yarmulke. You are just being violently insane. Now, I repeat, Say 'Aaah!'"
Lynn: "But Jim, my mouth only opens this far."
Jim: "Well then, we have our work cut out for us, and I do mean 'cut out'"
[both characters chuckle amiably]
Jim: "Here, take two of these gigantic Mexican aspirin and take off that dress."
Lynn, reading: "'Aspirina...' Is that safe?"
Jim: "For the violently insane, yes. It helps numb your lobes. P.S. your slip is showing."

FIN

Title: Angélique
Author: Anne Golon
Cover artist: photo cover

• "RO RO RO your boat..."
• The casting of "Ginger" on "Gilligan's Island" was a long and arduous process, and involved many a gland check.
• Dondie says: here is a one-scene play I have written about this cover:

Ginger: "Don't hate me just because I'm wrapped in a curtain!"
The Count: "But my cuffs are so satiny and superfluous, I must strangle!"
Ginger: "Perhaps if I expose my teeth in a feral grimace, I can convince you to leave me alone and shave your sideburns."

FIN

Title: Dance of Love
Author: Arthur Schnitzler
Illustrations: Rene Gockinga
Cover artist: Uncredited

• Dondie says: "Those are pretty nice boobs ... If I had those boobs, I'd probably have a lot more money."
• Why is her right boob so much longer than her left one?
• Her hair is patriotic.
• She has a face that says one or more of the following:

A. "My boyfriend is a douche."
B. "Thanks for the heroin."
C. "My left breast casts an impressive shadow."
D. "Are you looking at ... this nipple?"
E. "Get me a beer, put the money on the dresser, and get out."

Join us next week for Further Tales from the Book Sale.

RP (with Dondie)