Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Paperback 707: Portrait of a Sadist / Paull Hill (Avon T-514)

Paperback 707: Avon T-514 (1st US ed., 1960)

Title: Portrait of a Sadist
Author: Paull Hill
Cover artist: Uncredited

Gift to the collection from reader "Stacy" (Thanks!)

AvonT514

Best things about this cover:
  • This cover won the "Least Sexy Bondage Painting" contest of 1959.
  • Seriously, stare at that foot for a few moments. It just gets creepier.
  • You have to admire a sadist whose bondage technique involves colorful ascots.
  • Curlicues on the "R"s make the "T" look like it has a fancy mustache.

AvonT514bc

Best things about this back cover:
  • I like the jagged black-and-white electricity that engirds this cover copy. High voltage!
  • I like books that express the dark confusion between horror and titillation. "This man sex was sex a hot dirty sex monster sex whose sex story should serve as a sex cautionary sex tale and definitely not masturbation material sex."
  • You say "perverted psychopathic lusts," I say "sexual irregularities," let's call the whole thing off.

Page 123~

His whip was at that moment reposing in his suitcase at Bournemouth West railway station, but once again he had his supply of handkerchiefs.

OMG I love that sentence so much. Not sure which is my favorite part: "whip," "reposing" (so genteel), "handkerchiefs" (!!!), or "once again" (!!!!?).

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

5 comments:

Zichao said...

Not for sale?

Jean said...

Wait, so *he's* the sadist? Is he also the one tied up? Because that is a man's foot. No way is that a lady foot.

Karl said...

The "sexual irregularities" of the back-cover quote is a howler. That writer should have been George Neville Heath's defense attorney! "Yes, yes, my client may have killed two people, but that was just his sexual irregularity, and don't we all have one or two of those?"

And the page 123 quote makes it sound like the protagonist considers a "supply of handkerchiefs" to be a workable substitute for a whip. I'm dying to know how that works out for him.

MarkP said...

Wow, that is one super narrow foot. Good luck finding shoes that fit... though perhaps that isn't this person's most pressing problem at present.

FA Neophyte said...

It was absolutely my pleasure, good sir. I *knew* I would get more mileage out of sending you this book than I would by keeping it in my collection. The addition of "sexual irregularities" to my vocabulary absolutely proves me right.

And then, over on Tumblr, Nevver linked to this! Consider my day made.