Paperback 688: Never to Belong / James Williams (Fabian Z-135)

Paperback 688: Fabian Z-135 (PBO, 1960)

Title: Never to Belong
Author: James Williams
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $50 (actually, Not for Sale — don't think I'm ready to part with this one)


Best things about this cover:

• Pristine book from my favorite sleaze paperback publisher—Sanford Aday (publishing out of Fresno CA before eventually being convicted of trafficking in obscenity) was always trying to be sensational with the sexual themes of his books. He published a lot of stuff dealing with homosexuality, cross-dressing, miscegenation, etc., some it written by women authors, black authors, etc. He Was So Unusual. As I've told you before, he used the pages of his books to wage a battle against censorship—not just in the themes of the novels he published, but in the little essays and clippings he'd include in the backs of his books detailing court victories he or others had won against the government. In this book, he has forgone much of that back matter but still has a little note to his readers asking for feedback and proclaiming, "we are going to keep on giving you what you want to read as long as it is within our power to do so." He probably knew his publishing days were numbered. I just love the idea of waging a one-man battle for sexual openness and tolerance using only the medium of ... the sleaze paperback. He's kind of my hero.
• Not sure I've seen the word "mulatto" on a cover before. Remember when we subcategorized black people based on skin color?! Good times.
• Love the way the woman's skirt flies up. Fabian cover paintings are not generally known for their, uh, quality, but I like the suggestion of motion here. 
• Also, bald dude's face is Priceless.

Best things about this back cover:

• Awkwardest ellipsis ever.
• This is surely the greatest book ever about mule-skinning, whatever that is. Ooh, turns out a mule-skinner is just someone who drives mules, also called a "muleteer" (hmmm, this puts "Mouseketeer" in a whole new light) or "arriero."
• Crossword folks will be excited by this new cluing possibility for MAE.
• "High-towning it" is a great phrase I would like to bring back. I shall use it every time I'm determined to raise me a whole bunch of hell.

Page 123~

Louisiana was a rough place for a colored man to get into trouble with the law.

Hashtag understatement.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 666: Dark Quarters / Stella Hampton (Fabian Z-117)

Paperback 666: Fabian Z-117 (PBO, 1957)

Title: Dark Quarters
Author: Stella Hampton
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

• "Uh, yeah, I got a letter here addressed to "Sidewalk"—that you?"
• "... newspapers were her bed; her hair, a badger pelt." 
• "Dark niches" HA ha. Subtle.
• "As a child, dancing for her grandparents earned her shiny pennies ... but as a young woman, she earned naught but DARK QUARTERS."

Best things about this back cover:

• Mmm, early Fabian books had such an awesomely low-rent, DIY vibe. 
• Victims of their own success—"So many of you want the sleazy, badly written books we produce that we can't keep up w/ your orders! Long live barely literate perverts!"
• This is from the era before publisher Sanford Aday got convicted of trafficking in obscenity—when the end matter of his books was chock full of long disquisitions on free speech and obscenity laws, and clippings of news about Supreme Court decisions, etc. Also, he occasionally documented his own legal struggles: "... the jury acquitted as to the book Rambling Maids and voted nine to three in favor of The Strange Three and Turbulent Daughters!" Take that, Ulysses!

Page 123~ (nah ... way too boring ... here's p. 27)

"Put your hand on my breast, Steve. You want to, don't you?"

"Yes, but ..."

"Just a little,—feel it like it's something you've never felt before."

"Squeeze it like a pastry bag, you cowardly bastard!," she cooed.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 474: The Third Bedroom / Brenda Baker (Fabian Z-136)

Paperback 474: Fabian Z-136 (PBO, 1960)

Title: The Third Bedroom
Author: Brenda Baker
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $19

Best things about this cover:

• There were three things Brad loved more than anything else: bright yellow dress shirts, mirrored walls, and women covered in fondant.
• These curtains make me laugh every time I look at this book. It's like the artist just pawned off the design concept on Mrs. Jenkins' 1st grade art class.
• That woman is either a yoga master or has dislocated her shoulder. You try putting your elbow behind your head. Go ahead, I'll wait.
• The mirror symbolizes Brad's dual identity: the gentleman, and the slightly more boring gentleman.

Best things about this back cover:

• Feel the sadness.
• Fabian (and Saber and Vega) had lots of legal troubles due to the highly sexual and controversial content of many of their books. Publisher Sanford Aday and partner Wallace de Ortega-Maxey would eventually be convicted in U.S. District Court (in Western Michigan) of trafficking in obscenity. Almost all Fabian, Saber, and Vega books in the late 50s / early 60s have legal news as part of their end material. For instance, this book contains a report on the publisher's own recent court victories, and a long discussion of recent legal victories for booksellers all over the country. This is yet another reason I love the Aday paperbacks, cheesy and low-rent as they are: they defied the moral hypocrisy of their day and challenged the legal system in ways that (ultimately) mattered. You're not going to have much problem getting some high-minded literary professional into court to defend "Ulysses." Good luck getting the same guy to defend "Sex Life of a Cop."

Page 123~

I fully believed then that God spoke to me, but it was like when your conscience tells you something, you're not too sure of what it means. But I calmed down rather quickly, and after I had taken my seat upon the divan I took a cigarette and lit it.

And ye, verily, God said unto her, "Betty ... you must go to Flavor Country."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 461: Imposed Rebellion / James Williams (Fabian Z-127)

Paperback 461: Fabian Z-127 (PBO, 1959)

Title: Imposed Rebellion
Author: James Williams
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $55

Best things about this cover:

• Bill had told Bess that he was far too old to enjoy a game of "got-your-nose!" but Bess would not be denied.
• The right hand says "passions" but the left hand says "stabby."
• I don't mean to be judgmental, but ... those really aren't appropriate swamp-trysting shoes.
• "I said, 'Watch me pull a quarter out of your ear!?' Why won't you hold still and let me play my games, Bill!?"
• Possibly the worst title every conceived by humankind.

Best things about this back cover:

• Wow, they really don't want to tell us about this book.
• "Sergeant ... Sergeant ... the camera's over here, Sergeant."
• As this graphic suggests, Sergeant Williams is from Mirror-Image Nevada, which can be found in the alternate universe that also contains "Okinowa."

Page 123~

The joke was a little over Duce's head, but he laughed loud and long. Leola took a sip of her drink and crossed her legs. She had heard some of the best. She cut Duce off.

Such were the mad antics at the Strange Name Support Group.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 456: Stairways to Sin / Kip Madigan (Fabian Z-114)

[With postscript about "Book Blogger Appreciation Week"]

Paperback 456: Fabian Books Z-114 (7th ptg, 1959)

Title: Stairways to Sin
Author: Kip Madigan
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $14


Best things about this cover:

• "So this is a sporting-house? Gee, neat. So, where's football and baseball and stuff? ... Badminton?"
• "Alright, Billy, I'll pull a quarter from behind your ear one more time, but then I have to get back to fucking strangers for money, OK?"
• Whoever did this cover painting this missed the art class about "perspective." And "proportion." And "good."
• "Windbreak?" Again, I have to wonder if cover copy in this era wasn't written primarily by ESL students armed only with dog-eared thesauruses and an admirable "what-the-hell" spirit.
• 7th printing!!!! Unless this thing had print runs of, like, six, I'm stunned.
  

Best things about this back cover:

• This is the first time I've ever seen "sporting" to describe prostitution. "I know that when I need a windbreak, I like to go sporting. Works every time."
• "Though his work is out of tune with the literati" ... HA ha. You could have stopped that sentence after "tune."
• "Incest for Rene"!?!?! Wow. Worst Christmas ever.
• Thousands of letters!!!! I would literally (i.e. figuratively) kill to read even a half dozen of those letters.

Page 123~

"I'm not dumb," she said, dauntless, "I'm just ignorant."

"For instance, what does 'dauntless' mean?"

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

P.S. it's something called Book Blogger Appreciation Week. I doubt this blog counts as a book blog in the sense that the Appreciation Week's organizers intend, as it's overwhelmingly about covers, not content. Anyway, here's my part—anyone listed under "Fellow Cover Critics" in my sidebar is worth checking out. My favorite book blog that is not mine is "Caustic Cover Critic." Always thoughtful writing about the good, the bad, and the phenomenally ugly in the world of book covers. And thus ends my contribution to building blogger "community" in anything but the most indirect of ways. Cheers.

Paperback 400: Emotional Jungle / Ann Freeman (Fabian Z-143)

Paperback 400: Fabian Books Z-143 (PBO, 1961)

Title: Emotional Jungle
Author: Ann Freeman
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: not for sale


Best things about this cover:

• That lamp shade is epic.
• Who's up for some awkward, joyless, pasty sex? Anyone?
• "So ... you like pink, I guess, huh?"
• The first ever meeting of the Jaundiced Hair support group is about to begin.
• I don't buy that he is "slipping into her room." He has the distinct look of someone backing slowly toward safety.

Best things about this back cover:

• Love how Sanford Aday (publisher of Fabian Books) uses this quotation from Romans (on many of his books from this era) as a big middle finger to his censorious detractors. During this period he was adding anti-censorship material to the back matter of his books. This one has a one-page screed against censors and the several pages of Supreme Court and other legal decisions supporting the freedom of speech, and particularly the freedoms of book publishers and sellers. It's a fascinating (completely invisible, these days) intervention into the discussion of what counts as obscenity and what the government's role toward alleged obscenity ought to be.

Page 123~

"Gwen, I'm sorry abut the other day."
"Forget it. We all have days like that."

He added: "No, really. I had no right to tell you you had hair like an Oompa Loompa. That was totally uncalled for. I could have just kept backing silently out of the room..."

~RP

Paperback 253: Each Won Two / Marsha Bates (Fabian Z-101)

Paperback 253: Fabian Z-101 (PBO? 1959?)

Title: Each Won Two
Author: Marsha Bates
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $14


Best things about this cover:

• "Each Lost Dignity"
• That Cathy, always egging on the drinks. "Go drinks! You can do it! Be cold and tasty!"
• I'm pretty sure that "veteran impersonators" do not get drunk, wrap themselves in bed sheets, and do impressions of gay lobsters.
• The dude in the middle with the blush and the ear injury appears to be wearing a burlap sack. He also appears to be floating.
• Florine prepares to do what any sensible person would do in her position: drink herself into a stupor.
• Don't look for that wall paint color at your local hardware store. It's available only in hell.

Best things about this back cover:

• Kandinsky strikes again!
• "Florine, Cathy, and Jim — names?" Uh, yes. "Not when you mix them up." Hmm, let's see ... nope, still names.
• I love how there is no way in hell you could possibly have any idea what this book is about despite the fact that the description is lengthy — 3 paragraphs! And no there there at all. "Things ... it ..." Dear god, just tell me what they're doing!

Page 123~

The minute I'd finished, her eyes told me that she knew I had asked a question for which I already had an answer. But I had to know, hear it from her mouth, hear her admit something I'd for some time suspected.

~RP

Paperback 252: Decisive Years / Marsha Bates (Fabian Z-100)

Paperback 252: Fabian Z-100 (PBO?, 1959?)

Title: Decisive Years
Author: Marsha Bates
Cover artist: uncredited (same guy did a LOT of the Fabian stuff — don't know his name)

Yours for: unavailable (property of "Paperback 250" Contest winner)


Best things about this cover:

• Check out their matching cigarette-holding stances, wrist baubles, and broken left ankles! Double your pleasure!
• "Just don't tell our dad, OK? The runny eggs have caused him disappointment enough for one morning. I mean ... well, just look at him."
• This title is Terrible — like a bad coming-of-age dramedy. "M*A*S*H" : "AfterM*A*S*H" :: "Wonder Years" : "Decisive Years"

Best things about this back cover:

• "Stop! Depression Time!"
• Those girls on the cover are 12 and 13 on what planet?
• AUDYNE = newest entry into "Laughable Names" Hall of Fame
• Oh, man, I can't wait to show you "EACH WON TWO": if you love clownish tales of drunk men dancing in drag at their wives' behest, then yes, "EACH WON TWO" "promises to be a story you'll want to read."
• I've just decided to move "EACH WON TWO" to the top of the list. Look for it as Paperback 253.

Page 123~

"Fine!" Charley said, angering me more. "Now, there's one other little item to take up here. It's about the relationship between Audyne and me. I'm only a foster uncle to her, and my responsibility's been only verbal and charitable."

Yuck. This book is starting to make "Lolita" look family-friendly.

~RP

Paperback 70: Our Flesh Was Cheap / Eve Linkletter (Fabian Z-128)

Paperback 70: Fabian Z-128 (PBO, 1959)

Title: Our Flesh Was Cheap
Author: Eve Linkletter
Cover artist: Uncredited


Best things about this cover:

• "Are you depressed? Is your apartment a dank, run-down hovel? Is your flesh, well, cheap? Then why not join the movement that's sweeping the nation - Knit Your Way to Happiness!"
• This cover is decidedly unsexy. Coverless bed, cracked walls, naked lightbulb, portrait of Dear Old Grandma (or Man With Enormous Beard). And yet some kind of Cézanne-esque still life appears to have broken out on the book's western border...
• "Our Flesh was Cheap" - starring Illeana Douglas!

Best things about this back cover:

It's the same as the last back cover - clearly the country was in the grip of Eve-mania.

RP

Paperback 69: The Gay Ones / Eve Linkletter (Fabian Z-124)

Paperback 69: Fabian Z-124 (PBO, 1958)

Title: The Gay Ones
Author: Eve Linkletter
Cover artist: "Chuck"

Yours for: SOLD! (4-28-08)


Best things about this cover:

• Absolutely nothing about this cover screams "Gay" except the text. Am I supposed to believe that dancer is a man? No way. Am I supposed to believe that female spectator is turned on? Come on. What I see is Captain Smoky Bowtie ogling the gam of a rather voluptuous female dancer. "Where is the gay?," I ask. Is the hazy shade of purple supposed to suggest gayness? I have a right to know.
• "The third sex" was a not-uncommon way to refer to homosexual folk in the mid 20th century. "Pranks of nature," however, is a new phrase to me.
• I can only hope that Eve Linkletter has some relation to Art "Kids Say the Darnedest Things" Linkletter.

Best things about this back cover:

• I've just ... never seen anything like this. So ahead of its time - using the back cover not to provide information about the book, but to market the image of the author. Nice faux signature at the bottom, too. "Eve ... just Eve."

RP

PS Check out G's site - its banner is basically a collage of images from this site. It's so beautiful that I want to steal it (and / or hire her to make me one like it).

Paperback 68: High Pillow / Betty Short (Fabian Z-122)

Paperback 68: Fabian Z-122 (PBO, 1958)

Title: High Pillow
Author: Betty Short
Cover artist: Uncredited ["Chuck?"]

"Uh, hi, we're here to judge the Joan Crawford look-alike contest..."

Best things about this cover:

• "High Pillow!" Like there's a caste system or pack hierarchy in a whore house, HA ha.
• We are now getting into the creamy center of my collection: the sleazy publications of Sanford Aday's Fresno-based publishing empire: Fabian Books, Vega Books, and Saber Books. These books are so low-rent that I can't believe they really exist. They are produced on the cheapest of paper, with covers as frail as magazine pages. The cover paintings are uniformly hilarious - ditto the back and front cover copy. And the content is as wide-rangingly sexual as anything published in this time period. Aday is the first mass-market publisher I know of to go into the realm of transvestism, bisexuality, and other forms of, let's say "non-normative" sexuality, and to do so in an astonishingly sympathetic fashion. Aday was an outsider in his industry, and he specialized in books about outsiders - sexual outsiders in particular. He was at the forefront of the pro-gay movement in the 50's and 60's - a major figure (along with his partner Wallace de Ortega Maxey) in the Mattachine Society, and ultimately the object of an obscenity lawsuit that got him sent to federal prison. After the trial, his imprints went south very quickly, losing their overtly political edge (which included pleas to the reader, reprints of Supreme Court cases, etc. in the backs of his books) and degenerating into mere porn. I aspire to write a book about this guy - that's how interesting and important I think he is in the history of publishing and civil rights. But for now, I will just admire the beautiful badness of his publishing output.
• This artist did a Lot of Sanford Aday-published books. I have another book with a visible signature, "Chuck," so that's what I'm going to call ... him?
  
• I should add that the quality of these books - mostly horrible. I mean ... Horrible. Sometimes laugh-out-loud horrible. The back cover copy should give you some indication:

Best things about this back cover:

• Mid-century modern abstract art meets middle-school-level prose.
• I love how the underlines make absolutely no sense.
• "Figuratively speaking" - HA ha. Good to know she wasn't chewing on an actual red light.
• "She was firmly racket" is actually a very original, tantalizing sentence.

RP