Paperback 854: Spring Riot / Jay Presson (Lion 42)

Paperback 854: Lion Books 42 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: Spring Riot
Author: Jay Presson [Jay Presson Allen, screenwriter of some note; also, a woman] [h/t Bill Crider]
Cover artist: Alan Smithee (uncredited, actually)

Estimated value: $10-15


Best things about this cover:

• "I want MORE than your body, Susan … I want … I want your green sofa. I'll give you $20."
• His face reminds me of the Jaime Sommers ("The Bionic Woman") beauty/styling head my sister got once as a gift and then left on the bricks in front of the fire and then her face did a slow horror-movie cave-in. It's a good thing we can't see the right side of his face, because I am convinced it is doing terrible things.
• Art here is just terrible. Those hands! His are practically amphibious. Hyper-slim and not convincingly human.
• I love her 1000-yard stare. "No, Steve. I'm meant for bigger, for much bigger things than this book cover."

Best things about this back cover:

• Ah, the '50s, when rape = "passion." Good times.
• I keep seeing "Kipping Silk" and thinking "that sounds like fun … what is that?"
• "His mouth closed down on hers…" For the CPR fetishist in all of us!
• I love the idea of her palm "exploding" across his mouth. Exploding palms would be a cool superpower.
• Oh, she's "evil," so it's OK. You can enjoy the rape scene with no guilt. Just don't your friends how it ends (!?!).

Page 123~

And wonder of wonders, the next day she did go docilely with him to the dentist.

I don't even want to touch that sentence. I'm gonna leave it there in all its perfect, crystalline glory.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

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 111: Stars in My Crown / Joe David Brown (Teen Age Book Club T45)

Paperback 111: Teen Age Book Club T45 (1st ptg, 1956)

Title: Stars in My Crown
Author: Joe David Brown
Cover artist: Gould K. Hulse, Jr. (I think ... he's credited with the "decorations" on the inside)

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• "I'm your new preacher and I aim to give my first sermon right here ... even if I am jaundiced and half-drunk. Or drunk and half-jaundiced. Or dronk and half-jundiced. Point is, I got me a 12-pound Bible and this here gun, so what I says goes. Now if I can just traverse this comically high door frame..." "That's a window, you moron!" "In the name of Jesus, you better shut up!"
• Seriously, who taught this artist perspective? A five-year-old surrealist with bad eyes?
• The colors are so ... life-like. If your life exists only in primary colors and whatever color that guy in the corner is.
• Our hero looks like a sickly, less charismatic Robert Mitchum.
• What is that thing protruding from the chin of the man in the SW corner? A growth? A pouch of some kind? I want to say "beard" but ... it's got oddly regularly molded ridges on the end...

Best things about this back cover:

• "Grandpa"
• Why isn't this book called "Death Stalks the Parish" - it's a bit Agatha Christie, but it's a hell of a lot better than the current title
• Teen Age Book Club: For Teen Agers who are too emaciated to read standing upright.

Page 123~

"They didn't have no lamps when Ah went to school," he said, "an' Ah reckon what was good enough for me is good enough for the chil'lun [... sic!] nowadays."

~RP