Title: Texas by the Tail
Author: Jim Thompson
Cover artist: Unknown
Yours for: $50
Best things about this cover:- Are you kidding me? Look at it! There's a naked redhead toweling off in a giant cocktail glass! That's pretty much the paperback cover jackpot.
- I love how TAIL is right by her TAIL - saucy.
- This cover is too texty, with too many different font sizes and color changes, but I do like how the text sort of tumbles down the side of the girl and the glass.
- Is she supposed to be standing in champagne? Wine? Beer? I wish I knew. She seems to be enjoying it.
This is the first Jim Thompson original that I ever owned. You can see that it's in pretty sorry condition, mainly from grime and overall dinginess (plus someone drew some weird symbol just underneath the bowl of the glass). Still, it cost me almost $50, which I happily paid. At the time, I was just happy to have my hands (finally) on a real, honest-to-goodness Jim Thompson PBO. Now, I wouldn't spend that much money on something this beat up. But I still love the book, even if it is a late-career Thompson with less-than-stellar cover design. The naked-woman-in-giant-glass thing makes it so easy to overlook all the negatives.
RP
2 comments:
The naked redhead might be more alluring to me if she didn't look like a member of The Cure, circa 1987.
It is true that her hair is ... unfortunate. I think it's just tied up, 'cause she's been in the "bath," but there a spiky and irregular and angular quality to it that does have New Wave overtones.
rp
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