Paperback 352: Me An' You / Jay Thomas Caldwell (Lion 220)

Paperback 352: Lion 220 (PBO, 1954)

Title: Me An' You
Author: Jay Thomas Caldwell
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $30


Best things about this front cover:

• "Grrr, Hulk hate ordinary kitchen chair. Prefer mid-century modern aesthetic. Grrrrrr... Hulk crush chair!"
• They promise a "two-fisted Negro," but I can see just the one fist. Rip-off.
• I think the white t-shirt was a late decision. Pretty sure he was originally depicted shirtless, but then censors were like "Dude, we're already pushing the interracial envelope on this one—put some clothes on the guy." Anyway, late-add would explain somewhat the remarkable definition visible even through the shirt.
• I love her bored expression: "What's shaking my chair? Oh, it's you ... I don't suppose you're a big shot yet?"
• Lots of telling details in this one—the liquor, the news headline, the pile of dirty dishes, and of course, the pervading aura of grime.
• I think I remember Robert Polito saying (in his Thompson bio) that Jay Thomas Caldwell was a black writer who died young, possibly in a bank hold-up. But I could be misremembering my details.

Best things about this back cover:

• Why in the world would you even get *on* "the long ladder of bitterness and bleak despair?" I imagine any direction on that thing is a bad one.
• I am a little worried about Irma.

Page 123~ (four pages from end of book)

"People I used to know in the fight game stop me on the street an' say, 'Tommy, I hear you're a preacher now.' Yes, I tell them. I'm workin' for the Lord now."

"AAAAmen!"

"Praise the LOOOrd!"

Well, I did not see that coming.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 14

Title: Down These Mean Streets (Signet 3471, 1968)
Author: Piri Thomas
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: Whatever

• A stirring tale of laundry!
• I got this only for the title, which comes from Raymond Chandler's "Simple Art of Murder": "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean ..."

• "Attempted Killer!?" As Sideshow Bob once famously said about "attempted murder": "Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel prize for attempted chemistry? Do they?"

Page 123:

I tried to dig myself.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 300: The Winds of Fear / Hodding Carter (Popular Library 300)

Paperback 300: Popular Library 300 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: The Winds of Fear
Author: Hodding Carter
Cover artist: Rudolph "Creamy Skin" Belarski

Yours for: $23


Best things about this cover:

• "The Winds of Fear hurt my ears."
• That is the rackiest rack I've seen in a while. Those boobs look oddly fake for 50s boobs. Braless boobs of that magnitude should not do what those are doing, i.e. remaining perfectly taut and nearly perfectly spherical, defying gravity, etc.
• Not enough people are named "Hodding" these days. Damn shame.
• I can't tell if the sheriff is assaulting the poor black man with his heat vision, or if the black man shoots fire out his ears when he gets real angry.
• I usually avoid things that are both angry and probing...
• Complete and utter (and eerie) coincidence that "Paperback 300" is actually numbered 300.

Best things about this back cover:

• "KICKED OPEN," I say.
• "Cancy!" The absurd name train just won't stop runnin'.
• "A scheming honkytonk girl" — now we're talking.
• "Decent people protested ..." Why do I have a feeling I won't find them "decent"?

Page 123~

Colored boys from Carvell City and from near Carvell City were complaining of mistreatment and humiliation, or boasting from overseas of another world where white girls and sort of white girls in England and North Africa looked favorably on soldiers with dark skin.

"Sort of white girls" is a new category to me.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 205: Third Ward, Newark / Curtis Lucas (Lion Books 80)

Paperback 205: Lion Books 80 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: Third Ward, Newark
Author: Curtis Lucas
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: SOLD (3/12/09)


Best things about this cover:

• "Oh, U.S. 1, please don't leave me! I love you so much! You're the only .... one. For me."
• "... the jolt of her life!"??? Way to make a brutal rape sound like a caffeine high. Jeez.
• If those are her assailants, they're not fleeing very well. "Hurry, let's ... damn! My contact lens! Hang on, Pete."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Wonnie?" Really. That's almost as bad as "Mihie." Is naming characters really That challenging?
• Revenge! Sweet, now I want to read this. I hope it is less brutal than "I Spit On Your Grave," which I never saw, but just hearing about it made me kind of sick.
  
• She "ripened" on "filthy" "pavements." Like all the finest fruit. What an endearing portrayal of your heroine.
  
• "I'm sorry, honey, but I just can't sleep in such a comically small bed. There, there. Let's get out of the kid's furniture section and see what we can find."

Page 123~

Wonnie came back from the kitchen and sat beside Joe. "I'm gonna work here every night, Joe. I'm gonna cook all the corn bread and biscuits, and I'll cook greens with real seasoning in them. In a little while that white man over in the diner will lose all his customers to us."

Worst. Revenge. Ever.

~RP

Paperback 170: A Korean Tiger / Nick Carter (Award Books A248X)

Paperback 170: Award Books A248X (PBO, 1967)

• Title: A Korean Tiger
• Author: Nick Carter (who is also the main character...? and who is also, btw, a Backstreet Boy)
• Cover artist: Some McGinnis imitator

Yours for: $17


Best things about this cover:

• Bring me the floating head of Nick Carter! Oh, nevermind. It's right there.
• The disembodied head of Nick Carter thinks you're a swell-looking doll. {wink!}
• If the book is trying to suggest to me that that lady is "Korean," I challenge. She looks like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, only with somewhat smaller boobs and no shirt.
• I like how she is taking a sidelong glance at the title, as if thinking "WTF?"
• How is it possible that no rapper has picked up the name "Killmaster?" That would be my handle for sure. That, or "Optimum Slim" (a name I derived from the cereal I eat every morning)
• Fake Korean Post-op Elvira Impersonator needs a refill, dammit!

Best things about this back cover.

• Text! Who doesn't like ... that?
• Oh my god, I am in love with this book - any book that features the word "slatternly" is hottt with three t's.
• I hope the "dark underbelly of Asia" is just some really hairy Laotian guy.
• Paragraph indentations are for suckas!

Page 123~

The wide green stare did not waver. Behind those basilisk eyes he thought he could detect a hint of something warmer. Desire? Plain old-fashioned lust? Was this creature really so human?

Oh please dear god don't let him be talking about the "Korean" woman. "Though she was Korean, she seemed oddly human."

~RP

P.S. this book is immaculate. As crisp and new and bright as the day it first hit the shelves. Maybe there's a tiny amount of scuffing, but it's quite negligible. Paperbacks rarely hold up this well.

Paperback 142: Liana / Martha Gellhorn (Popular Library 529)

Paperback 142: Popular Library 529 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Liana
Author: Martha Gellhorn
Cover aritst: That guy who did all the Popular Library covers (i.e. I don't know)

Yours for: NOT FOR SALE


Best things about this cover:

• Note the censored (excised with scissors!) tagline - it should read: "Her Color Was No Barrier - To Men." I guess we're supposed to believe that that thing in red trunks is a man and not an oddly anthropomorphic lizard.
• "Are you done with your one-armed water chin-ups yet? My neck is getting tired."
• Martha Gellhorn was married to Ernest Hemingway. She was a writer and journalist of some note. I have no idea how she came to be responsible for whatever this book is.

Best things about this back cover:

• OK, this is officially the gayest not-explicitly-gay paperback I have blogged about to date. It wants you to think it's all about her, but the pictures say otherwise. It's beefcake central up in here. All the boy/girl interaction here feels forced and sexless.
  
• "Hey, Johnny Handsome, your broad, muscular back and impossibly toned ass are blocking my view of the lady!"
• "Now I'm going to show you what women's breasts look like, Johnny." Johnny backs away in discomfort ... while still managing to give us yet another view of his rippling delts and obliques.
• Her dress appears to zip down the front (!?) past her crotch (!!?)
  
• "... a realistic analysis of a woman's degradation" - Nothing sells books like a realistic analysis of degradation, boy howdy. It should have its own section of the bookstore.
  
• "Frankness!" - that means there's sex. Yee haw!

Page 123~

Liana sent the servants home early that night and they were glad to go. They would feel safer in their own flimsy homes with their own people.

Silly natives and their love of straw huts!

~RP