Wednesday, December 21, 2011

The P. Morrison Donations #1: A Good Year For Dwarfs? / Carter Brown (Signet 4320)

Title: A Good Year for Dwarfs?
Author: Carter Brown
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

Reader P. Morrison sent me a stack of books. They are beat up and cheesy, just like I like 'em. First up ... this.


Sig4320.Dwarfs

Best things about this cover:
  • Evocative painting. Who knew that extras in a "Conan" movie experienced such depths of ennui?
  • Is that lady a. calming her pet Pekingese, who lives in her hair; b. physically supporting her 50 lbs of hair because he neck has simply given out; or c. shaking her head in disbelief at the idea that Carter Brown has sold over 25 million books?
  • I thought "A Good Year for Dwarfs" was the tagline at first, and had no idea what that could possibly mean. Then I realized that was the title. Puzzlement remained.
  • If my students ever used a hyphen that way, there's no way they'd be getting better than a C.


Sig4320bc.Dwarfs

Best things about this back cover:
  • Rimmel and Holman? As porn names go ... subtle.
  • I want business cards that read simply "Davis Davis, Movie Dwarf"
  • "Twilight world" normally (in paperbackese) means "homosexual."  I'm doubtful that that is the case here.

Page 123~

Any moment now, I thought frantically, I'm about to make whimpering noises out loud! "Do you play Scrabble?" I gurgled.

Man, it gets Freaky on an early '70s porn set.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Man, just when you think you know all the slang terms for penis, along comes a new one. However, income? Is that some porn industry inside slang?

D.A. Trappert said...

Chicly clothed or buckly naked would have been more poetic....

Baron d'Ormesan said...

I join the consensus on the fact that your blog is clearly one of those summits of cultural achievement by which our civilisation will be judged by generations as yet unborn, but I must say that I do not understand what your complaint is about a hyphen on the front cover. The hyphen 'porno-flick' looks to me pretty standard; between 'is' and 'murder' is an em-rule, not a hyphen, and using it like that is also quite normal (at least in BrE).

Rex Parker said...

Yes, em dash not hyphen. My bad. Problem here is that it's not doing anything except, I suppose, creating dramatic pause. Take it out, sentence is perfectly grammatical. Never seen it used to indicate dramatic pause *with no other grammatical use*. The em dash is highly versatile—I use it all the time—but I do not think it's being used correctly here. After the "is?" Thought needs to be complete on one side of the em dash, or picked up on the other side of the em dash. Here, I think an ellipsis is in order.

But I'm going to ask grammarian friends because I do see that the em dash can be used "for emphasis" (vague, but intriguing). Thanks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#Em_dash

rp