Paperback 253: Each Won Two / Marsha Bates (Fabian Z-101)

Paperback 253: Fabian Z-101 (PBO? 1959?)

Title: Each Won Two
Author: Marsha Bates
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $14


Best things about this cover:

• "Each Lost Dignity"
• That Cathy, always egging on the drinks. "Go drinks! You can do it! Be cold and tasty!"
• I'm pretty sure that "veteran impersonators" do not get drunk, wrap themselves in bed sheets, and do impressions of gay lobsters.
• The dude in the middle with the blush and the ear injury appears to be wearing a burlap sack. He also appears to be floating.
• Florine prepares to do what any sensible person would do in her position: drink herself into a stupor.
• Don't look for that wall paint color at your local hardware store. It's available only in hell.

Best things about this back cover:

• Kandinsky strikes again!
• "Florine, Cathy, and Jim — names?" Uh, yes. "Not when you mix them up." Hmm, let's see ... nope, still names.
• I love how there is no way in hell you could possibly have any idea what this book is about despite the fact that the description is lengthy — 3 paragraphs! And no there there at all. "Things ... it ..." Dear god, just tell me what they're doing!

Page 123~

The minute I'd finished, her eyes told me that she knew I had asked a question for which I already had an answer. But I had to know, hear it from her mouth, hear her admit something I'd for some time suspected.

~RP

Paperback 252: Decisive Years / Marsha Bates (Fabian Z-100)

Paperback 252: Fabian Z-100 (PBO?, 1959?)

Title: Decisive Years
Author: Marsha Bates
Cover artist: uncredited (same guy did a LOT of the Fabian stuff — don't know his name)

Yours for: unavailable (property of "Paperback 250" Contest winner)


Best things about this cover:

• Check out their matching cigarette-holding stances, wrist baubles, and broken left ankles! Double your pleasure!
• "Just don't tell our dad, OK? The runny eggs have caused him disappointment enough for one morning. I mean ... well, just look at him."
• This title is Terrible — like a bad coming-of-age dramedy. "M*A*S*H" : "AfterM*A*S*H" :: "Wonder Years" : "Decisive Years"

Best things about this back cover:

• "Stop! Depression Time!"
• Those girls on the cover are 12 and 13 on what planet?
• AUDYNE = newest entry into "Laughable Names" Hall of Fame
• Oh, man, I can't wait to show you "EACH WON TWO": if you love clownish tales of drunk men dancing in drag at their wives' behest, then yes, "EACH WON TWO" "promises to be a story you'll want to read."
• I've just decided to move "EACH WON TWO" to the top of the list. Look for it as Paperback 253.

Page 123~

"Fine!" Charley said, angering me more. "Now, there's one other little item to take up here. It's about the relationship between Audyne and me. I'm only a foster uncle to her, and my responsibility's been only verbal and charitable."

Yuck. This book is starting to make "Lolita" look family-friendly.

~RP

Paperback 70: Our Flesh Was Cheap / Eve Linkletter (Fabian Z-128)

Paperback 70: Fabian Z-128 (PBO, 1959)

Title: Our Flesh Was Cheap
Author: Eve Linkletter
Cover artist: Uncredited


Best things about this cover:

• "Are you depressed? Is your apartment a dank, run-down hovel? Is your flesh, well, cheap? Then why not join the movement that's sweeping the nation - Knit Your Way to Happiness!"
• This cover is decidedly unsexy. Coverless bed, cracked walls, naked lightbulb, portrait of Dear Old Grandma (or Man With Enormous Beard). And yet some kind of Cézanne-esque still life appears to have broken out on the book's western border...
• "Our Flesh was Cheap" - starring Illeana Douglas!

Best things about this back cover:

It's the same as the last back cover - clearly the country was in the grip of Eve-mania.

RP

Paperback 69: The Gay Ones / Eve Linkletter (Fabian Z-124)

Paperback 69: Fabian Z-124 (PBO, 1958)

Title: The Gay Ones
Author: Eve Linkletter
Cover artist: "Chuck"

Yours for: SOLD! (4-28-08)


Best things about this cover:

• Absolutely nothing about this cover screams "Gay" except the text. Am I supposed to believe that dancer is a man? No way. Am I supposed to believe that female spectator is turned on? Come on. What I see is Captain Smoky Bowtie ogling the gam of a rather voluptuous female dancer. "Where is the gay?," I ask. Is the hazy shade of purple supposed to suggest gayness? I have a right to know.
• "The third sex" was a not-uncommon way to refer to homosexual folk in the mid 20th century. "Pranks of nature," however, is a new phrase to me.
• I can only hope that Eve Linkletter has some relation to Art "Kids Say the Darnedest Things" Linkletter.

Best things about this back cover:

• I've just ... never seen anything like this. So ahead of its time - using the back cover not to provide information about the book, but to market the image of the author. Nice faux signature at the bottom, too. "Eve ... just Eve."

RP

PS Check out G's site - its banner is basically a collage of images from this site. It's so beautiful that I want to steal it (and / or hire her to make me one like it).

Paperback 68: High Pillow / Betty Short (Fabian Z-122)

Paperback 68: Fabian Z-122 (PBO, 1958)

Title: High Pillow
Author: Betty Short
Cover artist: Uncredited ["Chuck?"]

"Uh, hi, we're here to judge the Joan Crawford look-alike contest..."

Best things about this cover:

• "High Pillow!" Like there's a caste system or pack hierarchy in a whore house, HA ha.
• We are now getting into the creamy center of my collection: the sleazy publications of Sanford Aday's Fresno-based publishing empire: Fabian Books, Vega Books, and Saber Books. These books are so low-rent that I can't believe they really exist. They are produced on the cheapest of paper, with covers as frail as magazine pages. The cover paintings are uniformly hilarious - ditto the back and front cover copy. And the content is as wide-rangingly sexual as anything published in this time period. Aday is the first mass-market publisher I know of to go into the realm of transvestism, bisexuality, and other forms of, let's say "non-normative" sexuality, and to do so in an astonishingly sympathetic fashion. Aday was an outsider in his industry, and he specialized in books about outsiders - sexual outsiders in particular. He was at the forefront of the pro-gay movement in the 50's and 60's - a major figure (along with his partner Wallace de Ortega Maxey) in the Mattachine Society, and ultimately the object of an obscenity lawsuit that got him sent to federal prison. After the trial, his imprints went south very quickly, losing their overtly political edge (which included pleas to the reader, reprints of Supreme Court cases, etc. in the backs of his books) and degenerating into mere porn. I aspire to write a book about this guy - that's how interesting and important I think he is in the history of publishing and civil rights. But for now, I will just admire the beautiful badness of his publishing output.
• This artist did a Lot of Sanford Aday-published books. I have another book with a visible signature, "Chuck," so that's what I'm going to call ... him?
  
• I should add that the quality of these books - mostly horrible. I mean ... Horrible. Sometimes laugh-out-loud horrible. The back cover copy should give you some indication:

Best things about this back cover:

• Mid-century modern abstract art meets middle-school-level prose.
• I love how the underlines make absolutely no sense.
• "Figuratively speaking" - HA ha. Good to know she wasn't chewing on an actual red light.
• "She was firmly racket" is actually a very original, tantalizing sentence.

RP