Thursday, February 12, 2009

Paperback 198: Tombolo / Nicholas Fersen (Popular Library - Eagle Books EB36X)

Paperback 198: Popular Library - Eagle Books EB36X (2nd ptg, 1955)

Title: Tombolo
Author: Nicholas Fersen
Cover artist: That guy who does all the Popular Library covers whose name I just don't know

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

  • "See you later, lady. Thanks for all the sex. We enjoyed it."
  • Least comfortable sex location ever. By a longshot. Rocky, dirty, uneven ground, surrounded by bombed out ruins. "Let's put some rebar in the foreground!" "Genius!"
  • Her hand ... it's astonishingly suggestive. Is it just resting there? Going somewhere? Pulling dress down? Hiking it up? Write your own narrative.
  • I love how the jolly fat guy is waving and she's got this look like "Yeah, @#$ you, you putz." Akimbo arm helps establish the defiance.
  • "Not for the weak-stomached," i.e. "This book will make you barf!" Thanks, St. Louis Globe Democrat!

Best things about this back cover:
  • The full akimbo!
  • She has her own boy harem. Awesome.
  • If you like degeneracy, this is the book for you. "Sinkhole!" "Sex and savagery!" "Thundering tide of passion and violence!" And, of course, what would a book about Italian degeneracy be without a "vicious Negro" (!?)

Page 123~

He's gon' listen to me, Emmanuel thought, and rejoiced, knowing nothing about the gin and what had happened a few hours before in the heat, in the filigree of sunshine and the strident sound-layers of insects.


If the writer is trying to make the reader feel the pain of his characters, he seems to be doing a good job. If I had to read 150 pages of writing like that, I'd be begging for mercy from God and repenting all my sins.

~RP

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Weak stomached" is as awkward a modifier as I've heard all day.

Full akimbo? Hell, she's the Jolly Green Giant!

That vicious Negro is keeping an awfully low profile... where is he?

I want... I want... I think I really want to read this book.

Anonymous said...

Maybe she has bloomer crickets and needs to scratch.

Anonymous said...

Holy cow -- "bloomer crickets"?

Man, you learn something new every day...

Anonymous said...

What's with that dude on the left in the front cover? Is he jumping off the truck? Did the truck back in to where it is now?

Keri said...

I want to know what's wrong with her right leg on the front cover. There's a weird highlight on the underside of the thigh and knee, kind of? it's like "oh, crap, ran out of time to paint this cover, gotta turn it in anyway"

Belvoir said...

That Columbus Citizen reviewer writing about things "slammed out in sledge hammer strokes"- um, ew?

I love the frantic tone of his quote. Vice! Degeneracy! Anarchy! Sex! Savagery! And of course, societal collapse from all the sins he's just thoroughly enjoyed describing. Too fun.