Friday, July 10, 2009

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

14 comments:

Nutcracker Whoever said...

The back cover's a bit blurry. Does it say the author weaves a special kind of yams?

Katie said...

This is, without a doubt, the best book ever written.

Rex Parker said...

Yes, yams.

Katie, I just LOL'd so hard I scared my dog. Seriously, you guys have been killin' it in the Comments lately. I should run contests more often. It seems to have inspired something.

rp

Erik said...

1. "...Jim - and Jim alone - would never be the answer to her needs."

Any other human on the planet, yes - but not Jim. Yay for ambiguity?

2. "Again we see a great amount of fortitude in Marsha..."

Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. How much fortitude does it actually take to write soft-core strokers for the perv market?

3. One word - "Clide"?!? And why didn't he rate a mention in the back matter?

Kevin said...

Sooo, things happen and someone wants answers. Well, that's all the hook I need!

Jake Kesinger said...

I like that they had to hy-phenate the title on the back cover.

JamiSings said...

I'm so confused as to what this book's about.

Tulse said...

Do all Fabian novels have the same back cover design?

Nutcracker, I too read it as "yams", and was very confused. Why yams? Perhaps only Cathy has the answer...

And what about poor Clide? He doesn't even get a mention on the back blurb?

This is a particularly hideous cover, although it looks like it is set in a particularly hideous room. As best I can make out, Clide is reclining on some kind of park bench (or the world's most non-Euclidian bed), which is sitting on atrocious green striped carpet, in a room with urine-stained walls. I think if I lived there I'd be driven to cross-dressing, or worse.

Alix said...

No doubt the author needs fortitude to come up with this sophisticated level of crap. But what of the fortitude needed to try and read it???

Dirt Diggler said...

Appears to be the East German female shot-put team of the 72' Olympics celebrating their medal sweep back at the village. Florine herself has a Jane Mansfield-massive rack that disconcertingly dips about 18" too low the pectoral line.

Alas, special yarn-weaving DOES build strength! Literally, just imagine how well developed Marsha Bates is!

Note to self: Be wary of mysterious stains (lower right of Florine's mouth) on paperback covers!

Nicole "Gidget" Kalstein said...

I cannot even figure out - from the front cover art or the back cover blurb - which characters are men and which are women.

beggar1015 said...

Dirt Diggler... I also thought there was something unproportional about Florine's upper body.

Actually, as I was waiting for the picture to load (I have an extremely slow connection) and all I could see was the head on the right, I had a moment to wonder if it was the head of a woman or a man.

I'm still kind of wondering. Maybe this is one of the "answers" the book is supposed to give us. I want the answer to that horrible dress Jim (?) is wearing. Are we supposed to believe that any self-respecting drag queen let alone woman would ever wear that atrocity, even in the privacy of their Hell-inspired home?

The Vicar of VHS said...

I really think that the guy on the left is secretly the Frankenstein Monster in drag. I mean, he's about to flip his lid!

Love your blog--discovered it recently and it's now a daily stop!

Sandy said...

another possibility for your book blogger portfolio