57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 55

Titles: Catch-as-Catch-Can / Then Came Two Women
Author: Charlotte Armstrong
Cover artists: Uncredited / Uncredited

Yours for: $9

• Had mainstream cover artists / designers just given up by the mid-60s. I'm seeing a lot of slop lately. What is the concept here? Girl in pink dress running — OK. But then, what, a rough pencil sketch of her shins from a different angle, blown up as a background + random EMT running to check her gigantic left ankle + wee man tickling her right heel??? Maybe the lady in the pink looks so nauseous and is running so fast because she's trying desperately to escape from this cover concept. "Oh god, it's terrible, boo hoo, save me!"
• When Drexel Drake talks, people ... honestly, I don't know what people do. Drexel Drake is a porn name.

• Responsible housewife by day, trashy Cougar by night...
• Love the attire on the women. Also love little miss Bad Seed in her best buggy-riding attire.
• "God, I hate my two moms..."
• That is some supernatural shit that Bad Seed's hair is doing at the tips.

Page 123~ (from Catch-as-Catch-Can)

But she could see. That his hand and arms moved nervously and secretly to thrust the gun into the thick shrub beside which he was standing. He turned his body and wavered like a shadow.

Who let her break that first sentence in two like that?! Jebus! Also, I'm trying to imagine what that last sentence is supposed to look like. And failing.

~RP

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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 147: Shock Treatment / Wright Williams (Beacon Books 143)

Paperback 147: Beacon Books 143 (PBO, 1957)
Title: Shock Treatment
Author: Wright Williams
Cover artist: Peeping Tom

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• I love how she looks - not terrified, but exasperated: "You again!?"
• Wait - I thought she was in her bathroom and the peeping tom was opening the window shade, but it seems just as likely she's in a hospital with mobile curtain dividers, in which case a. whose arm is that?, b. what's it yanking on?, and c. what is that red cloth? What am I looking at!?
• "AT LAST..." - HA ha. I was just asking myself, "Why is there no book that explores the borderland between love and perversity?" Now, at last, that void is filled.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Sure, big Eric was crazy. Crazy about women! And who can blame him? Am I right, guys!? Yeah, you know what I'm talking about ... [amused chuckles from drunk comedy club crowd] ... ah, chicks."
  
• Whimsical drawings of cruel medical experimentation. "It'll cure your pervertedness, but ... you're gonna experience some rubber-arm, I'm not gonna lie."
• Maybe those arms are supposed to represent the gyrations of patients at the "hospital dance" (!?)
• "Not since Snake Pit ..." - I can't stop laughing long enough to comment on that line
• "Frankly!"
• "Passion-wracked!"

Page 123~

Instead of thinking of Katrine as a lovely, attractive girl who had bravely come out of a harrowing experience, I was drawing mental pictures of her in bed with a man married to someone else. It was rotten of me, and I almost welcomed the self-loathing that I began to feel.

Well, we've all been there, right?

~RP