Saturday, March 31, 2012

Paperback 513: Flying High / Eve Linkletter (Nite-Time Books 3001)

Paperback 513: Nite-Time Books (???) 3001 (PBO, 1964)

Title: Flying High  
Author: Eve Linkletter
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: Not for Sale (gift to the collection from Doug Peterson)


NT3001.FlyingHigh

Best things about this cover:
  • About the unsexiest naked lady I've ever seen on one of these covers. It's like she rolled around in charcoal. The GIGANTIC smirking floating head isn't making things any sexier.
  • She's got a vaguely Bettie Page look, but nothing of Page's charm or allure. First you're gonna have to clean her off. Then give her context. then maybe a slightly less art-school-modely position. Then take a bat to that bloated piñata hovering over her left shoulder.
  • That dude's hat is jiffy popping past captain's hat toward chef's toque.
  • This is the lowest-rent paperback publisher I've ever seen. I actually don't know what the publisher's name is. GSN??? NT (Nite-Time)??? The publication page says "Fitz Publications." I think it's homemade / Canadian.


NT3001bc.FlyingHigh

Best things about this back cover:
  • Yeah, that's how you usually spell "Bob."
  • "... a doll who turned out to be one of the boys..." OK, now I'm intrigued.
  • Semicolon? Really? Come on. That just hurts.
  • Eve Linkletter wrote some queer (in both senses of the word) stuff for Fabian or Saber or one of those cheap Fresno outfits run by Sanford Aday in the late '50s / early '60s. I've never seen her name elsewhere. 

Page 123~

The bar was almost deserted except for about nine people.

So ... not deserted at all. Gotcha.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

6 comments:

Tulse said...

There are some things that cannot be fully justified...like that second line of the back cover. The type gods weep at such spacing.

And maybe it was a really big bar.

DemetriosX said...

That head is just terrible. It's totally asymmetrical. The eyes are pointing in different directions; the left cheekbone is pronounced, the right isn't; he has a cleft chin, but only on the left; and the left ear sticks out way more than the right. Not to mention that his eyebrows are penciled in and his "aviator's" cap looks like he stole it from a milkman and clipped some wings to it (off-center, of course).

Deniz Bevan said...

What're you insinuating with that 'Canadian'? :-)

Random White Guy said...

Her left foot looks so odd. Not that her right one is all that normal, but the left foot is just freaky.

Pete said...

I don't get "almost deserted except for about nine people". If there were, say, five people there, would it be "almost deserted", but the fact that there were 14 people there ruined its "almost deserted" quality? How does one know which nine of the fourteen ruined its "almost deserted" quality?

I've wondered about the 'art' quality of most of these covers but the past few, the Swedish Sounding Doug additions, certainly highlight the differences.

R. McGeddon said...

almost deserted except for about nine people

Was this ghostwritten by Yogi Berra?

And what's with the 40s-style hair in 1964?

The 3001 makes me suspect this is the first book published by this outfit. And very possibly the last.