Paperback 1135: The Twilight Lust / Val Arden (Royal Line 105)

Paperback 1135: Royal Line 105 (PBO, 1965)

Title: The Twilight Lust

Author: Val Arden

Cover artist: [photo cover]

Condition: 7/10

Value: $25

[Newest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection]

Best things about this cover: 

• "Adults Only may see my nipples. Yes, I'm serious, those are the rules. I'm crossing my arms defiantly, so you know that I am serious."
• I want one of you to dress as This Lady for Halloween, insane wig, chainmail underwear, "Adults Only" sign and all. Dying decorative houseplant optional.
• "Twilight" is code for gay/lesbian/queer. Always. Such a great code word. My favorite cover copy word, right up there with "frank" (as euphemism for "dirty")
• There should be more condition ratings for old paperbacks than just Good, Very Good, Fine, etc. There needs to be a word that gets to the specific quality of a book like this, which is unread, square, perfect, but also aged to hell and scuffed and notched by a saw at the top, maybe sun damaged. It's like "Excellent/Poor"

Best things about this back cover: 

• Wow. Wow. . . yeah, wow.
• Who can forget the first stirrings of "girhood?" Not me, that's for sure.
• "Satisfaction in treir seeking." "Treir seeking" was a lesbian spiritual/sexual practice. No one remembers what it was anymore. This book is the only record of its existence. Did they ever find the treir they were seeking? You'll have to get your own copy to find out. 
• It's like someone found a "rejected cover copy" text-file dump and just filed it as final copy. Like, on a dare. "Surely an editor will clean this up." And yet here we are. 
• Somehow the most disturbing thing to me about this back cover is how horribly off-center the copy is. That, and the grime. Oh, and the sad, misaligned final word. Poor "body."

Page 123~

She saw the irritation darkening his face and knew his pride had risen to overrun them. He could not let himself be concerned. He had never come to her with questions. Only with orders. And, certainly, he wasn't about to start now. Especially not now. Finish.

That first sentence starts out great ("She saw the irritation darkening his face") and then just falls off a cliff and never stops falling. This paragraph is like "Notes Toward a Paragraph." I can't stop laughing at "Finish." It's like an annotation or an editor's note that was never supposed to make it to print. Like, "Remember to come back and finish this paragraph because dear lord it is a mess."

~RP

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Paperback 1134: Call Boy / Tony Calvin (Ember Books EB 907)

Paperback 1134: Ember Books EB 907 (PBO, 1963)

Title: Call Boy

Author: Tony Calvin (pseud. of Thomas P. Ramirez)

Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 9.5/10

Value: $40

[Newest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection]

Best things about this cover: 

• "Hi, I know you only called for a single boy, but I brought back-up, just in case. We don't have nipples, I hope that's OK. What we lack in nipples, we make up for in sheer Wonder-Twin enthusiasm, I promise!"
• The cover copy wants me to think this is all very tawdry, but look at how happy they look. It almost seems wholesome, honestly.
• I wish I could properly explain how immaculate this book is. Obviously unread, bright as the sun, with only some superficial edgewear between it and a perfect 10 condition rating.
• Love her modesty hair, and modesty cash, but I wouldn't look too hard at the cash if I were you. It's like some early version of A.I. made it. Wonky and wrong in every way. Looks like it was issued by the country of "Reptilia"

Best things about this back cover: 

• Ember Books ... is yet another imprint in what is clearly a sleaze empire of the '60s. Nightstand Books, Ember Library, Companion Books, Sundown Reader, and on and on, there's a uniformity to the size and color scheme and artwork and ludicrousness, but it's this back cover copy that really feels the same across imprints—again, it's as if some early version of A.I. was asked to write cover copy for a '60s sleaze paperback and it just churned out a bunch of words that individually feel right ("strange," "twisted," "secret," "stud-mistress," "lust," "flesh," "bondage," "shame," "sin," etc.), but together add up to empty (and particularly unsexy) nonsense.
• I don't see anything like "shame" or "degradation" on the front cover. What I see is a mostly naked sleepover party. With Monopoly money.
• The wages of sin!? The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Whereas the Wages of Fear is a classic 1953 thriller by the great French director Henri-Georges Clouzot, which was the basis for William Friedkin's fantastic Sorcerer (1977).

Page 123~

His surprise, as he opened the door to find the portly, medium-tall man standing there, left him totally speechless for at least thirty seconds. The doorknob seemingly froze in his fingers. This must be some kind of a joke. A man? Certainly Odile doesn't expect me to ... There's a damn limit, after all.

First: is there a limit, Stark Campion? Is there? I guess we'll see. 

Second: This paragraph works a lot better if you think of "the doorknob" as, well, a metaphor

~RP

P.S. I had to turn comments moderation on because of creeps. Please feel free to comment (I love hearing from people who love these books the way I do), but just know that publication of your comment will be delayed for a bit. And if your comments are Trumpist or homophobic or in any way hateful, they're never getting through. Please find another blog to pollute. Thank you!

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Paperback 1133: Seduction Campaign / Bruce Shelly (Merit Books 681)

Paperback 1133: Merit Books 681 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Seduction Campaign

Author: Bruce Shelly

Cover artist: photo (?)

Condition: 8/10    

Value: $40

[newest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection]

Best things about this cover: 

• Help me, Seduction Campaign girl! Your nymphomania is my only hope! (this is a Star Wars reference)
• For a really effective seduction, try taking the Chinese lantern or birdhouse or whatever that is away from your face
• Not a fan of photo covers, esp. when the photos seem to have been weirdly artificially colored (her Ronald McDonald hair color is implausible). But I actually really love her sassy, casual get-up. I guess the unbuttoned top button of the pants is supposed to be part of the seduction campaign? I just assume she ate a little too much at breakfast. 
• I like to think that she's in a western, and signaling to some gunslinger in the road, "Four..." Four what, I don't know. Maybe pancakes she had at breakfast?

Best things about this back cover: 

• As seduction campaigns go, this one seems pretty low-budget. SEDUCTION CAMPAIGN feels less like cover copy and more like a placeholder. It's like "future site of Seduction Campaign" or "Seduction Campaign, Coming 1963"
• "You ever think about anything else besides bed?" "Well, sure. There's, uh, seduction. Oh, and campaigning. Ronald McDonald. Bralessness. Lots of things."
• "Like to see?" is a weird line. "Wanna see?" tracks, but "Like to see?" sounds like she's threatening to put his eyes out. "Like to see? Then you better stop bugging me pal. Be a shame if anything happened to them peepers of yours."

Page 123~

    "Here's some pants, Davey." It was Bunny. All dressed and standing demurely in the living room. "Nice of you to call on us, Mrs. Kelly. It was time for us to get up anyway."

    Bunny was back in character. She flounced around Janet and handed me my slacks. "Don't mind us, Davey," she said. 

    "Oh, no!" said Janet. "Don't mind us at all!" She stalked into the living room and I followed just as soon as I was trousered.

This is basically an episode of “Three's Company.” Two girls and a guy. A landlady (probably). I mean, there's even a character named "Janet." 🎶"Come and knock on our door / Nymphomania reigns / Where the flouncing is hers and hers and his, / It's the Seduction Campaign!"🎶

~RP

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Paperback 1132: Mercedes / Carl Demarco (Midwood 33-714)

 Paperback 1132: Midwood 33-714 (PBO, 1966)

Title: Mercedes

Author: Carl Demarco

Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 6/10

Value: $11

[Newest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection]

Best things about this cover: 

• The long-awaited sequel to Hyundai.
• So ... she discovered that there was a staircase as well as an elevator? Exciting.
• I wish she filled more of the frame—so much more of the frame that the dope who's looking at her got pushed right out. There is a long tradition of "cardboard-cutout dude who is there only to ogle the hot woman" in paperback art, but this guy may be the cardboard-cutoutiest. She's so bored by him that she's turned to us for help.
• Her hair is perfect. The rest of her is pretty good too. I know I'm meant to look at her ass, but I kinda wish I could see the whole dress.
• I would lose my fucking mind if I spent more than three minutes in a room this color. So relentlessly This Color.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Just a B&W version of the cover?? The look and tone of both the art and the cover copy are so weary and half-hearted that I feel like that final line should read "[Sigh] Yet Another Midwood Original (We're Out Of Ideas)"
• I keep looking at her right hand to see if it has the correct number of fingers. There's something slightly ... mangled about it.
• "Penetrating"? OK, easy there, copy guy.
• "With whom"? Well, la-di-dah, copy guy.

Page 123~

    With a strange urgency, she passed her hands over her body—nude beneath the sheets—as if to reassure herself that she was all there, intact [!], that she hadn't left a part of herself with the sensuous Suzanne!

"My left kneecap ... Where's My Left Kneecap!? Curse your lesbian witchery, Suzanne!"

~RP

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Paperback 1131: The Company She Keeps / Mary McCarthy (Dell 824)

Paperback 1131: Dell 824 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Company She Keeps

Author: Mary McCarthy

Cover artist: Robert Maguire

Condition: 7/10

Value: $10

[Newest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection]

Best things about this cover: 

• I took one look at this and said "Maguire" so fast, I surprised even myself. Utter certainty. The guy had a style, and that style was Quintessential GGA (Great Girl Art). Robert McGinnis has probably the most recognizable style of all paperback cover artists, but for me, Bob Maguire is undefeated. Best of the best. He doesn't even have a lot of room to do his magic here, and yet that face, those lips, those (perfect) hands—unmistakable.
• Every time I look at this cover—every single time—I see an empty coupe glass in her right hand. And then I see that it's just an illusion created by the corner of the train (?) window behind her—an illusion reinforced by the bottle of booze on the ledge behind her.
• Just put some a cigarette, some booze, and a world-weary dame on your cover and I am happy. If she's on a train, even better.
• I love how paperbacks sexed up everything by the mid-50s, even "literary" fiction like this. Mary McCarthy is not exactly slinging sleaze, but there's no reason she can't look like she is. There are very few books that could be improved, looks-wise, by The Maguire Treatment.

Best things about this back cover: 

• She's like the antithesis of the woman on the cover, all brightness and smiles. She seems lovely, but I yearn for the down-and-outness of the flip side of this book.
• "Writes like a man"—ugh, these midcentury critics who are still startled to find a woman writer who is good and also frank about sex. Speaking of frank ...
• "Frank!" My favorite cover copy adjective. Feels like it's been a long time since I've seen "frank." I have a "Frank" tag for this blog and everything. Welcome back, old friend. I love "frank" because it's like the book's winking at you, like "psst ... it's dirty, c'mon, read it! You know you wanna..."

Page 123~

He made you think of Boy Scouts and starting a fire without matches and Wesley Barry and skinning the cat and Our Gang comedies and Huckleberry Finn. If he had ever been hard up, he could have been a photographic model, and one could have seen his pleasant, vaguely troubled face more often in The Saturday Evening Post than in Esquire. He might have done well as the young man who is worried about his life insurance, the young man who is worried about dandruff, the young man whose shirts won't fit him, the young man who looks up happily from his plate of Crunchies, saying, "Gee, honey, I didn't know breakfast food could taste so good!"

Frankly, this is great. It goes on like this (the chapter is called "Portrait of the Intellectual as a Yale Man"), and it doesn't get worse. I've never read McCarthy before, but I might have to give her a try.

~RP

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Paperback 1130: Wild Spree / Jay Davis (Scorpion Books 101)

Paperback 1130: Scorpion Books 101 (PBO, 1964)

Title: Wild Spree

Author: Jay Davis

Cover artist: Gus Albet

Condition: 9/10 (yeah, it's got that sticker (38¢!!) ... sigh ... but otherwise ... mwah)

Value: $25-30

[Newest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection]

Best things about this cover: 

• L.A. pilates classes go hard.
• It's been two weeks since my last post! But vacation time is over! Let sleaze time commence!
• Bisexual visibility! You don't see "bisexuality" mentioned explicitly very often, but this one's got it right in the tagline on the teaser page, before the title page: "HER BISEXUAL ROOMMATE SEDUCED HER!" And sure, enough, page 1, they get right to it. "Juanita's lips found Susan's breasts." Not hard to do. Turns out they weren't exactly hiding.

• My friend Doug Peterson frequently brings me smutty paperbacks whenever we happen to see each other, and this time, when we met at the Huntington Museum near Pasadena, he did not disappoint. I've got something like a dozen gems for you in the coming weeks, starting with this top-shelf stuff.
• Scorpion Books ("... the book with a sting!")—this imprint is new to my collection (there appear to have been something like 8 Scorpion Books total (this is 101 and I can find them numbered only as high as 108)).

Best things about this back cover: 

• Look, if you're gonna be lesbian, I think you gotta go "all out." No part-time lesbians, no half-ass lesbians. Just ... all out. Like Maxine. Maxine gets it.
• OK where the fuck are we here? Like, in physical space, where are we? I just realized that this is a wraparound cover. Usually, wraparound covers are kinda ostentatious about the fact that they're wraparounds, so you get this cool continuous-picture effect as you turn the book over. But this ... this is some kind of grimy shack with no electricity. The folks on the front seem very well lit, but over here, in front of this framed picture of, I'm gonna say, garbage, with a shabby day bed that features an old wooden barrel for a pillow, there is no light. Only sadness. 
• One thing I love about this book is the amount of credit the artist is getting. There is a painting within the painting, which the actual artist (of the entire cover) has signed ("ALBET"), and somebody made sure that signature stayed visible and unobscured. Then you open the book up and the artist doesn't just get a credit—he gets a whole damn page! More books should treat their cover artists like this! As a collector, it absolutely sucks how hard-to-impossible it is to track down a simple artist credit when the book doesn't simply provide it. But here: hey, hey, hey, it's Gusssssss Albet!

Page 123~

    Without thinking, without awareness, she walked to the door, opened it, and then gasped in surprise to find Maxine Hensen standing there. 

"Somebody order an all-out lesbian?" Maxine chortled suggestively. Susan gasped, dropped to her knees, and threw her blue blouse over her head as the night exploded in a wild spree of desperate bisexual passions. Amen.

~RP

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Paperback 1129: The Postman Always Rings Twice / James M. Cain (Pocket Books 443)

 Paperback 1129: Pocket Books 443 (11th ptg., 1953)

Title: The Postman Always Rings Twice

Author: James M. Cain

Cover artist: Tom Dunn

Condition: 7/10

Value: $8

Best things about this cover: 

• Love their faces! "Fraaank ... you thinking what I'm thinking?" "Oh yeah, baby, it's murder city for hubby there. I got a foolproof plan..."
• This cover really gets across the idea that her husband is dragging her down. Physically, literally down. He's like a horny aging hell-imp come to besmirch the pure white maiden (that white is about to become superironic). Anyway, big diagonal energy in this one (from the glass on the table through the handsy Greek up through Miss Innocent and smack into Frank's cigarette-stuffed mug).
• Look at Frank there. He's like a tree. Just a straight up-and-down piece of solid wood. Actually, he seems to be emerging from a block of granite. He's got meaty hands, strangler's hands. But that t-shirt ... that's kinda jaunty. What is that, mint green? Snazzy.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Meh, this book's trying too hard to be highbrow. Quotes from Important Sources and whatnot. Where's my florid, sleazy cover copy!? Do you think I really care what [squints] Herbert Bayard Swope has to say? I do not.
• I can't believe no one calls this story "Frank," as it literally has a "Frank" in it.
• What is "the metal of an automatic?" Is he trying to say "gun?" The "bullets?" Which part of the automatic isn't metal? And can you really not lay a gun down? Sorry, Saturday Review of Literature, you're not up to the task here. Maybe go back to reviewing Louis Bromfield or John P. Marquand or whatever.

Page 123~ (actually, p. 23 ... there's only 121 pages total in this thing!)

    "Even if we had gone through with it they would have guessed it. They always guess it. They guess it anyway, just from habit. Because look how quick that cop knew something was wrong. That's what makes my blood run cold. Soon as he saw me standing there he knew it. If he could tumble to it all that easy, how much chance would we have had if the Greek had died?"

    "I guess I'm not really a hell cat, Frank."

It's a sad day when a girl has to give up on her childhood dreams of being a hell cat. But we all have to grow up sometime, I guess. 

~RP

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