Friday, February 13, 2009

Paperback 199: Don't You Weep, Don't You Moan / Richard Coleman (Lion Library LL28)

Paperback 199: Lion Library LL28 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: Don't You Weep, Don't You Moan
Author: Richard Coleman
Cover artist: Samson Pollen

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

  • "We'll make our first incision ... here."
  • "I'm just putting the final touches on my remarkably realistic head sculpture. . . there. Done."
  • "Do those shoes look shined to you, you incompetent !@#@#!"
  • Can you tell I'm just trying to think of captions that don't involve her demanding oral sex.
  • This woman could be the slightly classier sister of Tombolo lady. Derisive sneer. Half akimbo stance. Tramptacular outfit. Etc.
  • I love the abrasion and fraying on this cover - really drives home the "raw desire"
  • The song is "Don't You Weep, Don't You Mourn" - it's a Negro spiritual about delivery from oppression - which makes this title ... man, I don't know. I want to say "sacrilicious."
  • Wait, is this lady black? Oh, dear lord, one of the interior blurbs discusses "the power of Negro emotions ... the raw, primitive passions, the splendid crudity ..." So the Charlotte Observer observes. The New York Times approaches the topic in characteristically elliptical and ironic fashion, mentioning the novel's "great color and variety."
  • This novel's approach to coding / masking race is freaking me out, frankly. Check out the back cover:

Best things about this back cover:

  • "swamp girl!"
  • "seething b(l)ack streets!"
  • OK, Washington Times, let me get this straight: Barbarity is at the top of the arc and brutality is at the bottom? "Sorry, blacks, you may go only as high as barbarity. At least it's beautiful barbarity. Be grateful."

Page 123~

"Dis sho is good fish," he said


~RP

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for clearing up the barbarity/brutality thing; I was confused.

If that woman is black, so am I. Which is to say, nuh-uh.

Anonymous said...

She must have left her riding crop somewhere.

"Don't you weep, don't you moan!"
"No, mistress."
*SMACK* "I didn't give you permission to speak! Get down there and finish polishing my boots!"

Larry said...

Wow, all of this and Uncle Remus dialect too!

Alix: The cover girl is much like the black girl who passes in the 1959 Lana Turner weepie: Imitation of Life. Of course that part was played by a partially Mexican actress, Susan Kohner.

Hey a new clue, Dee's darkie doppleganger: KOHNER.

Corey Wilde said...

I think she's more like Yvonne DeCarlo in 'Band of Angels.' Wait, is that Clark Gable with his back to us?

Anonymous said...

Considering you said you were trying to come up with "captions that don't involve her demanding oral sex", following it up with "Dis sho is good fish" kinda defeated the purpose.

Michael5000 said...

Dat sho' is revealin' excerpt.

Anonymous said...

Haha, that is some page 123.