Paperback 325: Honest Sex / Rustum & Della Roy (Signet Q3857)

Paperback 325: Signet Q3857 (PBO? 1969)

Title: Honest Sex
Authors: Rustum & Della Roy
Cover artist: no

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• "Honest Sex"— Honestly? No thanks.
• If "Rustum & Della Roy" aren't pseudonyms, I don't know what are.
• These folks better be swingers—otherwise this book is going to be a Major disappointment.
• I like how the punch line of the entire cover (besides the author names) is "Christians"; you're just reading along, figuring you're looking at any old sex book, and bam. Sexy Christians, eh? Hmmm, I'm intrigued ...

Best things about this back cover:

• Whoa whoa whoa! Which of these things is not like the other!? Dear lord. The fact that "Abortion" is even on this list gives me a pretty idea of what these authors think of kinky (or even ordinary) sex.
  
• The "Playboy" endorsement does, however, give me some hope ... I really, really can't wait for Page 123 on this one.

Page 123~

Reluctant wives (rarely, reluctant husbands) are sometimes involved after persuasion by their spouses. The reports on the experience are so favorable—including a great deal of unanimity on the improvement of the marriage as a result of such experience—that we have hypothesized that the cause may lie deeper than the simple fact of having coitus with two or more partners. Unfortunately, we have had no personal contact with anyone who has participated in any club or even minimally organized mate-sharing.

A little clinical, but awesome nonetheless. First, that parenthetical aside. Nice. Second, "coitus." Yuck. There's a word designed to make you Not want to have sex. Third, "Unfortunately..." HA ha. "Me and Rustum were just talking about how we wish we knew some swappers so we could, you know, do some, uh, first-hand research, as it were."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 21

Title: Too Late the Phalarope (Signet S1290, 1956)
Author: Alan Paton
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: Whatever

• The "phalarope" is a wading bird, and not, as it sounds, a rope made out of penis.
• The background of this cover is an abstract horror show. Total fail.

• Well, N.Y. Herald Tribune, you were half right.
• Publishing imperative: do not, under any circumstances, mention "race" on the cover. "Instead of 'white,' why not try 'most respected'? And for 'black,' consider some version of 'forbidden.'"

Page 123~

And he would not eat in the sun, but in the house; and he would not eat at all, but drank many cups of coffee, and smoked the cigarettes. And again he said, what's the talk amongst the black people, Johannes? But the boy could tell him nothing of account.

~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]

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

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 256: About the Kinsey Report / eds. Donald Porter Geddes and Enid Curie (Signet 675)

Paperback 256: Signet 675 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: About the Kinsey Report: Observations by 11 Experts on "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male"
Authors: various
Cover artist: jonas

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• "Sexual Behavior in Male Mannequins with Irregular Heartbeats"
• This is pretty much as dull as these covers get. This book is impt from a historical standpoint, but not from an aesthetic one. "jonas" is a great early cover artist. Lots of great stylized, abstract covers from him on Penguin and Signet books in particular. This cover doesn't do him justice.
• The Kinsey Report was a boon for sellers of trashy fiction because they could (and did, in spades) use the data about unconventional (e.g. non-heterosexual, non-reproductive) sexuality from Kinsey's studies to justify and hype their books under the guise of the public's right to exercise its scientific curiosity. We'll see hilarious examples of this kind of self-serving cover copy many times in future installments of this blog.

Best things about this back cover:

• Small text! Who doesn't love that!?
• Signet is testing the waters here, waiting to see if their readers do indeed have "fair and open minds." Hence the very boring, scientific-looking, toned-down cover (and cover copy — you don't even see the words "masturbation" or "homosexuality," for instance). The U.S. mass-market paperback doesn't take a serious, overtly sexual turn for another few years, but once Gold Medal comes along with its sensational paperback originals and saucy covers, the heat starts to go up, and by 1960, it's a sexual free-for-all (see Paperbacks 252 and 253, among others).

Page 123~

It is not good to find masturbation continuing as a heavy factor in the sex outlet of married men among the better educated group.

I ... uh ... what?

~RP

Paperback 189: The Sound and the Fury / William Faulkner (Signet D1628)

Paperback 189: Signet D1628 (1st ptg, 1959)

Title: The Sound and the Fury
Author: William Faulkner
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: SOLD! (1/19/09)


Best things about this cover:

• Best thing? Hmmm. I can't decide. It's either the sound or the fury.
• I see the "Fury" (Yul Brenner tries to strangle Joanne Woodward) - the "Sound"? I guess it's the sound of me gasping at the sight of Yul Brenner with hair.
• This blue tint is so dark that it renders the picture almost irrelevant. I love the hand-drawn fon on the title. Makes the book look like an adaptation of a wacky Disney movie.

Best things about this back cover:

• "DECAY" - Why would I read any farther after that? That is perhaps the best single-word tagline I've ever seen on a book. And the bright, whimsical font! Inspired.
  
• By the picture, I would surmise that this is the story of an aging pirate with a bad hairpiece and massive pit stains who wants nothing more than for Maria from "Sound of Music" to admire his chest hair.

Page 123~

"Oh, forget your damned clothes. Does your eye hurt?"

I can't believe I just Page 123'd William Faulkner. John Faulkner, sure, but William? The indignity!

~RP

Paperback 173: Too Many Clients / Rex Stout (Signet J2334)

Paperback 173: Signet J2334 (1st ptg, 1962)
Title: Too Many Clients
Author: Rex Stout
Cover artist: Bill Johnson

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• "I love my blankie!"
• This is more mustard than any one cover should have to endure.
• The floating head of Nero Wolfe looks none too pleased with this flirtatious, naked hussy. It's as if he's thinking "So this is what selling books has come to - PFUI!"
• Good example of how paperback sellers learned to develop brand recognition - the whole left panel, with huge author name and logo Nero head, will get repeated on a whole series of Rex Stout mysteries. Thus cover art gets squished - the title seems almost irrelevant.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Sex wasn't Nero Wolfe's specialty" - yeah, we can pretty much tell from his expression on the cover
• Someone should win an award for the phrase "satin-upholstered bower of carnality."
• An ad for a John O'Hara book! I Love John O'Hara, and he used to be Ridiculously popular.
• Bantam is one of the few publishers I can think of who would use their back covers to advertise books Not by the author of the book itself - though this ad seems oddly placed and poorly demarcated, with nothing but a font color change and a black bar to let you know the bottom half of the back cover is unrelated to the top.

Page 123~

"They killed him. That's obvious. They killed him."

Well of course they killed him. That's obvious.

~RP

Paperback 172: Operation Octopus / James Dark (Signet P3303)

Paperback 172: Signet P3303 (1st ptg, 1968)
Title: Operation Octopus
Author: James Dark
Cover artist: McGinnis or some imitator

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Before there was "Octopussy," there was ... "Operation Octopus"! Starring ... Mark Hood, the world's tiniest spy.
• "Why is that star logo shooting the book number and the price at me!? I'll just duck down between the author's first and last names for protection..."
• That's a lot of bare back. Looks a little ... gaunt.
• Also, that's a lot of hair. Looks a little ... blue.
• "Submarine city?" Guess I'll have to turn the book over to see what the hell's going on...

Best things about this back cover:

• Boring:
• Adjectives:
• Large:
• Red:

• "Half-man, half-fish" - they called him: "Mafish!"
• "Intertrust" is a front! Worst fake business name Ever.
  
• "a body built for treason" - "Hey baby, you know who you remind me of? Benedict Arnold. That traitor was one shapely bastard."
• "A string of hard-core-convicts, all skilled divers" - first, this copywriter is overfond of hyphens. Second, "all skilled divers?" What are the odds? "Damn, why did we ever put S.C.U.B.A. lessons on the prison continuing education schedule!?"
• I can't tell if this is scifi or not. And I have absolutely no desire to investigate further.

Page 123~

"You haven't seen him," he went on tersely. "You didn't know him; you don't know what he is now. The damage is irrevocable. He'd be a moron forever. He'd want it this way. Wouldn't you? He'll be saving mankind. The dreadful pity of it," Hood said bitterly, "is that the poor guy will never know."

OK, two things

1. "Moron forever" - that's a memoir title that'll sell right off the shelves
2. No way, no how, does a whisky-swilling tough guy (which Mark Hood is supposed to be) begin a sentence with "The dreadful pity of it ..." Unless he is in some kind of time warp movie where he keeps switching back and forth from modern spy to 19th-century British Inspector.

~RP

Paperback 145: The By-Pass Control / Mickey Spillane (Signet P3077)

Paperback 145: Signet P3077 (1st ptg, 1967)

Title: The By-Pass Control
Author: Mickey Spillane
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• Ugh. Ugly multi-colored text crowds this poorly designed cover. And what is that photo? A leftover still from a Prell ad shoot?
• What is it with Spillane covers and naked blondes with hair that looks starchy and untouchable?
• Apparently the "By-Pass Control" is located at the base of her skull. Stop her, Tiger!
• "Multi-murder" is a ... noun?
• "They called him 'Tiger' because ... well, he snarled during sex, frankly."

Best things about this back cover:

• And you thought that little red dot was just some kind of sale sticker. In actuality, it is one of the least explicable book design concepts in paperback history. Maybe it represents the Communist menace. Or Tiger Mann's passion for gumballs. He's irrepressible!
• I'm not sure that Denver Post blurb is as positive as the publishers seem to think it is.
• How many different ways can a book convey to you that it contains rough sex? "Snarling sex," "deadly sex," "rough-tough touch," etc. Maybe the red dot symbolizes the marks Tiger leaves on his many sex partners / victims.
• If you wanna read the awesomest, most over-the-top, ridiculous conflation of rough sex and politics, please read One Lonely Night, where Hammer hammers a commie girl, and when he's done with her, she is red ... white and blue. USA! USA! Rough sex cures women of their political delusions. Who knew? Thanks, Mickey!

Page 123~

"Don't bother packing ... just get on the first one out [...]." I laughed and added, "Besides, you can use a vacation."

"Sure, without clothes?"

"What better kind?" I said.

"I didn't mean it like that," she told me, a lilt in her voice, "but you're making it sound awfully interesting. I'll see you shortly, mud dauber."

He's not just a Tiger. He's also, it seems, a wasp.

[Organ-pipe mud dauber - Trypoxylon politum]

~RP

PS Here are some Hillbilly Hussy covers ... if you're into that sort of thing (and I am - here's one of my own)

Paperback 127: The Up-Tight Blonde / Carter Brown (Signet P3955)

Paperback 127: Signet P3955 (PBO, 1969)

Title: The Up-Tight Blonde
Author: Carter Brown
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• The phrase "naked chicks"
• The McGinnis girl in the painting; the one holding the painting, on the other hand, is a hot mess and / or a transsexual.
• What has she got in her left hand? Some kind of orb or yo-yo? Is she trying to hypnotize me? That orb, coupled with the expression on her face, is freaking me out.
• I don't know what you call the "color" of this book, but it's Hideous. I think I'm going to name it "cheap luggage" or "walrus"

Best things about this back cover:

• Oh yes, the girl from the painting looks much better in stark isolation like this.
• The back cover copy goes from making every naked reference and pun in the book until finally devolving into a ... Monopoly metaphor?
• "A new kind of flesh game" - remind me - What was the old kind?
• Is that what they call "negative space?" All that ... emptiness in the top half of this cover? Bold aesthetic choice. Or else the printer just wasn't centered. Who knows?

Page 123:

Her eyes rolled listlessly as she turned away. I backhanded her against the nearest side of her face, and her head jerked upright again.

Thus answering the question: What do you do with a blonde who's UP-TIGHT? (A: You smack her in the face so that her head jerks UPRIGHT). Read all about it in "Al Wheeler's Man's Man's Guide to Manhandling Naked Chicks."

~RP

Paperback 119: The Erection Set / Mickey Spillane (Signet Y5120)

Paperback 119: Signet Y5120 (1st ptg, 1972)

Title: The Erection Set
Author: Mickey Spillane
Cover artist: Picasso

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• Is that extended leg supposed to simulate an erection or stimulate one? In either case: [shudder]
• If you ever doubted the phallic qualities of a gun, behold this cover. Of course, before this cover, I doubted the phallic qualities of a left leg. This cover's full of learning opportunities.
• Be honest: was there ever a time when that hairdo (bottle blond, unkempt yet sculpted, etc.) was attractive? I was three when this book came out, so I'm not a good judge.
  
• She is aggressively tan
• Remember when women with medium-to-smallish breasts could get shirt-removal work?

Best things about this back cover:

• "Hey, has anyone seen my artificial leg?"
• "Dogeron!!" - setting up the inevitable catchprase: "That doggone Dogeron done gone and done it again!"

Page 123~

My teeth were showing when I said, "You can always change your mind, pal. Like starting right now. I'll take all three of you out and be gone before the noise dies down."

~RP

Paperback 108: Tobacco Road / Erskine Caldwell (Signet CW 985)

Paperback 108: Signet CW 985 (43rd ptg, I think, ca. 1970)

Title: Tobacco Road
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Cover artist: somebody Baxter

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• It would be very sexy ... you know, if someone hadn't blown the right side of her face clean off. Really ruins the mood.
• There is something Klimt-y about the shapes and floral patterns in and around her ... dress. I guess that's a dress.
• This book is in near perfect condition. Feels unread, though if I hold it up to the light I can see the very faintest reading crease. Still, it's about as square and tight and shiny as a read book gets.
• Tobacco Road is paperback legend. This is the 43rd printing. It sold tons. A certain rural sexual frankness made this book good fodder for at least two generations of cover artists. I'm just really glad this "Baxter" guy signed, and dated, his cover painting, because Signet is crap for giving artists credit (or for dating their reprint editions clearly).
  

Page 123~

Dude said he was hungry, and that he wanted to go somewhere and eat. Sister Bessie had half a dollar; Jeeter had nothing. Dude, of course, had nothing.

~RP

Paperback 79: Stranger in Town / Howard Hunt

Paperback 79: Signet 729 (2nd ptg, 1949)

Title: Stranger in Town
Author: Howard Hunt
Cover artist: not credited (looks like "T.V." - an actual cover artist's name)

YOURS FOR: $15


Best things about this cover:

• This picture should be titled: "Yep, I'm Gay." That, or "Get Your Giant Hand Off My Shoulder and Tie My Tie Already!"
• I think that I think this guy is gay because he looks just like the first guy Cher (Alicia Silverstone) has a crush on in "Clueless" - who turns out to be gay.
  
• If the name Howard Hunt sounds familiar, it should: he was one of Nixon's "plumbers," and (along with G. Gordon Liddy) organized the first Watergate burglary. In his earlier, pre-criminal life, he wrote popular fiction.

Best things about this back cover:

• Apparently, Howard Hunt also played the dad on "Frasier." Versatile!

RP

Why Book Sales are Like Crack Dens To Me, Part 3

While we have a minute or two, Dondie and I thought we would blog another book-sale book.

Title: Flesh
Author: José Philip Farmer
Cover artist: Uncredited (sadly)

Dondie says: "I'm sorry ... have you read the back of this?" [Hands Rex book. Rex reads...]

Rex says: "Yes, that is quite something."

Here is the front cover:

• "Why isn't this working? What am I doing wrong? My left horn!?"
• "This moose won't make love to me. I'm sad."
• "I am pigeon-toed and can't seem to vault over this moose."
• The blood appears to be rushing to his ... everywhere.
• That reindeer is mincing. It also has cacti on its head.
• This cover is almost too insane to make fun of.

• "This was AWESOME!"
• "Commander Stagg" = least creative porn name ever
• This novel makes fun of itself.
• Dondie and I are out of ideas... :(

RP (with special guest star, Dondie)

PS Wendy (in Comments) mentions the cover art of other editions of this book. If you ever see this version:

... at a reasonable price (say, a few bucks...), Buy it! It is well known (among collectors) and reasonably valuable ($30-$50). But, really ... do you need a reason to buy it. Look at it! Who wouldn't want it?

RP

Paperback 33: Signet G2569

Paperback 33: Signet G2569 (5th ptg, 1964)

Title: The Body in the Bed
Author: Bill S. Ballinger
Cover artist: Mitchell Hooks

"I said 'Queen Size comforter,' you fool, not 'King!'"

Best things about this cover:

• False advertising - Technically she's by the bed, not in it.
• If the cover features a girl with a gun, I buy the book. Almost without exception. Hence my purchase of a 5th printing (!?).
• Whoever wrote the cover copy has a very tin ear: "When she was alive she was dangerous ... but when she was dead, she was dynamite!" - that's how a pro would have written it. This version clunks / sucks.
• "SEASON'S TASTIEST DISH" - Hey, S.F. Chronicle: what season!? Autumn? Easter? Hannukah? Could you not even afford to print the definite article?
  

"Did you think you could get away from me just by turning the book over?! Silly man..."

Best things about this back cover:

• In case you didn't get enough sickly aquatic-colored comforter on the front cover: reprise!
• "... favorite pipe and slippers"?? Somehow this image of domesticity doesn't quite seem to go with the idea of banging your secretary.
• "Barr Breed!" - Awesome. You couldn't invent a cheesier P.I. name if you tried. Go ahead, I dare you. The only thing better than that name is the use of "private eyes" as a verb!
• "... a disappearing lucky charm" - I wonder if it was the green clover or the blue diamond...

RP

Paperback 28: Signet Y6638

Paperback 28: Signet Y6638 (1st Signet, 1975)

Title: The Big Gold Dream
Author: Chester Himes
Cover artist: Uncredited

Best things about this cover:

• Orange!
• "Starsky and Hutch"-era font - and fashion!
• Somebody needs to tell the white woman in the bra and panties that a back alley is no place to play leap frog.
  
• Chester Himes rules - despite being a mid-70s reprint, this book is reasonably valuable, both because Chester Himes is the most important black crime fiction writer of the 20th century (sorry, Walter Mosley) and because this particular incarnation of Himes' work is hard to come by.
• This cover is poorly designed - sometime starting in the late-60s, you begin to see these covers where a single realistic scene gives way to a composite montage, where lots of different pictures are crammed together into a kind of blob in the middle of the cover. Somebody's (bad) idea of artistic. Check out how this cover gets all abstract expressionist toward its edges - like it was finished by Rothko or Rauschenberg.
• Yet another floating head - this time, an oddly benevolent-looking, kerchiefed young lady is preparing to devour Harlem.

RP