Friday, June 6, 2014

Paperback 786: The Celebrity / Laura Z. Hobson (Perma Books P190)

Paperback 786: Perma Books P190 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: The Celebrity
Author: Laura Z. Hobson
Cover artist: Owen Kampen

Yours for: $8

Perma190

Best things about this cover:

  • That is some grade-A bitch-glance. Not that she's a bitch, but that she appears to be thinking, "Pfft, bitches" and/or "Bitch, please. Fawning high school groupies ain't shit."
  • And the winner of "Best Middle Initial" goes to …
  • Surely the greatest painterly representation of folding chairs since Monet's "Folding Chairs sûr le Pont D'Argenteuil"


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Best things about this back cover:

  • Thornton Johns—Folding chair magnate!
  • I don't know if his wife was a "loud-mouthed bitch," but those other questions don't seem very rhetorical. "Was he living with Jill Goodwyn?" Well, he either was or he wasn't. "Was he 6'2"!? Or 5'11", as his license indicated? READ AND FIND OUT!"
  • Damn, "blunt" just isn't "frank." I like "blunt." But mainly it makes me miss "frank."


Page 123~

A larger life, a larger Thornton Johns. The persisting fear that something might again reduce him to the lesser Thornton Johns was a nightmare, to put it politely, of amputation.

I.e. plastic surgeons gave him a substantial penis extension and he was *not* giving it back.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

2 comments:

Graham Powell said...

Best Middle Initial was a tie with Poppy Z. Brite.

A said...

Folding chair guy looks like he's missing the entire right side of his torso and his right arm. Could that be the amputation referred to :)