Title: Youth Against Obscenity
Author: Sharron Michelle as told to [!!!?] Rex Nevins
Cover artist: Uncredited
Yours for: $25
Best things about this cover:
- All this female flesh and I'm somehow obsessed with the driftwood (!?)
- These ... I'm gonna say 'triplets' ... have very nice bodies but scary alien faces.
- Love the cross-legged guy—just havin' a cig, checkin' out the view...
- "As told to" is perhaps the richest, awesomest thing about this cover. "Mmm, authenticish."
Best things about this back cover:
- If you made it through that second sentence (let alone the whole description) with even a fingernail still clinging to the main idea, you're a better (wo)man than I am.
- How is this description simultaneously massively detailed and exceedingly vague?: Crusading against "something?" Selling photos to "a segment of the public?"
- "Of whom..." It's like an earnest 14-yr-old wrote this.
Page 123~
Danny looked at Betty again, only this time his eyes took in her hair, breasts, legs, and buttocks, all at once.
It's an well-seasoned leerer who can take in breasts *and* buttocks "at once."
~RP
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]
10 comments:
I think the best part of the back cover is PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!! (Pointing drunken Amuriken exceptionalist finger) WHADDYA GONNA DO ABOUT IT?!!
"It's a well-seasoned leerer who can take in breasts *and* buttocks 'at once.'"
As a retired leerer (married), I can reveal that it's all done with mirrors.
Back cover - I hung on until I got to "head crusader Mark" then it was all over.
Was the back copy written by a non-native English speaker? And does anyone want to take a stab at diagramming the second sentence?
As for the driftwood, at first glance I thought it was a beached whale...which could be taken as a phallic symbol. Not a good phallic symbol, but a symbol all the same.
Yeah, that back cover lost me after the first sentence.
For a second, before my eyeballs focused, I thought the title was "Youth Against Obesity". Were that the case, the cover would be a lot less sexy.
For those of you railing against the impenetrability of the back cover blurb - I'm sure the publishers knew the target audience was only ever going to glance at the back cover to confirm the presence or absence of illustrated boobage.
Bearing in mind that 1966 was likely before breast implants those are some mighty fine fun bags.
Of course, the back cover tries to establish that the paperback appeals to more than just prurient interest.
Who thinks "REX NEVINS" is a pseudonym?
I was guessing it was an anagram for something more interesting but can't come up with anything. Any ideas?
Christ! Now we know why Mary Whitehouse was so keen on moral crusading and endlessly preaching to the BBC about obscenity!
...I feel like I've led such a sheltered life...
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