Title: Aphrodite: A Great Pagan Love Story
Author: Pierre Louys
Cover artist: uncredited
Yours for: $9
Best things about this cover:
- Aphrodite is seen here doing an ancient version of the Men Without Hats classic "Safety Dance," only instead of forming an "S" with her arms, she is forming a psi ("Psafety Dance!")
- If you put your thumb over this lady's head (which is to say, her ridiculous headdress), she is almost look-at-able.
- Nice clip art in the background there, Picasso!
- I kinda like how the border of this cover echoes the borders of her robe and negligee. That is about all I kinda like about this cover.
- Pierre Louys was what passed for a soft porn writer in the 40s. Him and Zola.
Best things about this back cover:
- A great example of an early paperback, from an age when publishers were still anxious about the social status of this fledgling product (mass market paperbacks having come into being only 7 years earlier). "GOOD" "GREAT" "SHAKESPEARE-HEAD" ... nothing at all about the content of the book itself; just a lot of weirdly over-reaching sales copy ("can easily be washed clean"???)
- "Rough usage" - HA ha: "We know how you semi-literate peons love to rassle with your reading material"
Page 123~
Her long, thin build was disconcerting in a family where all the women were plump. She ripened like a badly grafted crossed fruit of foreign, obscure origin.
~RP
