Paperback 742: The Quick Brown Fox / Lawrence Schoonover (Bantam 1178)

Paperback 742: Bantam 1178 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: The Quick Brown Fox
Author: Lawrence Schoonover
Cover artist: Harry Schaare

Yours for: $16


Best things about this cover:

• "Hey, baby, I'm just a quick brown fox looking for a lazy dog … wait, let me rephrase that … oh, man, I shouldn't have drunk All That Alcohol."
• I count five bottles. I assume other people were there, earlier.
• I love this cover so much. So many details. Wreaths! Charts! Rolodexes! Typewriters! 
• I also love her I-could-take-you-or-leave-you expression. Seriously sexy.

Best things about this back cover:

• Gah. Horrible.
• You'll pardon me if I don't think "dry Gibsons, quick seductions and eccentric clients" sound "dreary."
• There is a hole-punch in the shape of an apostrophe at the bottom left of this back cover. I have no idea why.

Page 123~

But lately, Betty said, while Don was drinking so much and getting all these weird and twisted notions about her, the banks had been uncooperative with some of his loans and the finance company had been pressing them about payments on the car. 

Let me get this straight: it's a book about mid-century Madison Avenue and two of the main characters are a couple named "Don" and "Betty"? And "Don was drinking…" Huh. Interesting. Sounds familiar.

~RP

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Paperback 440: What a Body! / Alan Green (Dell 483)

Paperback 440: Dell 483 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: What a Body!
Author: Alan Green
Cover artist: Gil Darling

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• "Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy ... oh, it's just a gun."
• "Hey, easy ... gimme that back. That's my special novelty lighter I got for being second-best regional sales manager in Pensacola."
• "OK, hon, you hold real still ... I'm gonna practice my ninja moves on you now. First, I crouch in plain sight, in broad daylight, in a sky blue suit. Next ..."

Best things about this back cover:

• Well, it's legendary, and you can see why.
• I can't even snark this. It comes pre-snarked.
• The best part about this chart is the arbitrary numbers. I mean, is there really an 11% chance I'll be able to place my date in my overcoat pocket? One in ten of my dating prospects is roughly the size of a ferret? That number seems awfully high.
• Was there ever a time where that woman looked appealing? Her boobs are non-existent, which is fine—no reason every woman should be busting out of her clothes—but she also has this odd growth on her head and she appears to have just strangled some poor scraggly bird. She looks like she's on her way to a funeral, or to worship Satan.

Page 123~

Prune-juice fancier that he was, he went on sipping staring into the hypnotic depths of the swimming-pool.

That is surely the only time in the history civilization that that particular opening clause has been used. And for the record, that sentence is punctuated *precisely* as it appears in the book, however unbelievable that may seem.

~RP

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Paperback 414: The Sex Habits of American Women / Fritz Wittels, M.D. (Eton 102)

Paperback 414: Eton 102 (2nd ptg?, 1951)

Title: The Sex Habits of American Women
Author: Fritz Wittels, M.D.
Cover artist: N.A.

Yours for: $7

[Cloudy parts are just peeling Perma-Gloss...]

Best things about this cover:

• Ugh. Way to make sex habits look austere, old, and dusty, Eton Books. This looks like the basement office door in some long-forgotten Institute of Bygone Studies.
• Well, if any name screams "authority on female sexuality," it's Fritz Wittels ("ahem, Dr. Fritz Wittels") (which really should be the name of some anti-hero in an underground sex comic of the early 70s; in fact, I'm pretty sure R. Crumb drew a Fritz Wittels at some point in his career: "Vood yoo like to taste my Vittles?" he'd ask...)
• I was going to mock like crazy the title given to Albert C. Rosenthal ("Planning Director of Graphics Institute"), especially after opening the book to a random page and finding this less-than-inspiring graphic offering:

Terrible stuff, if only because that graphic is totally racist ... but then, I came across an undeniable graphic gem—the kind that gives you remarkable insight into the human condition with just one glance:


Such realism! I mean, first off, that's the onesie *I* wear to bed. Second, what better way to illustrate the three classic post-coital moods: zonked out, playing air piano with one hand while staring at the ceiling, or curled up like Demi Moore when she freaks out near the end of "St. Elmo's Fire." Dig deeper inside, and you find more graphic classics (or "grassics," as I now like to call them). There's the "happy orgasm slide vs. my fat slob of a boyfriend came and then fell out of bed" graphic:



... as well as the "I learned about sex from an older lesbian" graphic:

[Hell yeah, Chart XXX!]

And many more! Now the back cover:


Best things about this back cover:

• I can barely read it through the damned hazy permagloss. *$%& it!

Page 123~

Lesbians are not as obnoxious as a couple of men in love with each other.

In 1951, I believe this attitude was known as "progressive."

~RP

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