Title: A Chosen World
Author: Carl Corley
Cover artist: uncredited
Yours for: $75 (you heard me!)
Best things about this cover:
- What the hell is GSN? Gay Studies Network? Good Sex News? I have been over this book inside and out, and I can't find the publisher info. They must have been really afraid of hate mail or something.
- Looking around on-line, I see that the publisher is "Pad Library" — that name is not nearly as satisfying as my "GSN" guesses, above.
- I love (and I mean love) that their logo is a guy riding bareback. Or maybe there's a saddle on there. Who can tell? Either way, ride 'em, cowboy!
- "Twilight world" — my favorite code word for gay land
- In case you were wondering if homosexuality is a choice — now you know. Definitively. Thanks, "Carl."
Best things about this back cover:
- Yes, I believe that that guy is gay. And has had a lot of work done on his face. And possibly is genetically related to lizards.
- "Hmmm, let's see, what's another word for 'throbbing'...?"
- "He bares the hidden recesses of..." - oh dear lord stop right there.
- I want that typewriter. For real.
- Aside from some general, low-grade fading and scuffing, this "classic tome" is in !@#ing perfect condition.
Page 123~
Then I went to the house, my mind whirling like a treadmill's, my ambitions soaring.
Treadmills being notorious for their whirling minds.
~RP
10 comments:
Doesn't make much sense to use a code world for homosexuality when you're screaming the word on the book cover.
Tragic... misuse of... ellipses...
I note that Corley also wrote a novel called Saddle Studs, for which he evidently compiled a lexicon of cowboy lingo. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the cowboy logo....
If you can't get enough Corley, you can find more--lots more--at Duke University (http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/rbmscl/corley/inv/).
P.S. Best thing about the Duke Library collection link: the biographical note that he worked for a couple of states' highway departments as an illustrator. I want to give him bonus points just for that.
I SO agree with you about the typewriter - I've been trying to get my hands on one for years, but 1)I'm a poor college student and therefore can't afford one, and 2)I don't know where one would get the ink for it.
I also must agree with Alix: there are WAY to effing many ellipses.
"...AS A HOMOSEXUAL!" Gosh, a little louder. I think there might have been a deaf man in Moldova who didn't catch that.
Does anybody else find it baffling trying to figure out how old this dude is? He has kind of a baby face, and yet his eyes and forehead are hella wrinkled.
He's "enslaved" and "trapped by tormenting emotions", but he's made a "choice"?
And there's at least one too many commas in the back cover blurb, although the writer seemed generally enamored of textual pauses.
"In his desperate search for understanding and to be understood..." --- he couldn't understand his standing under the stigma of standing in his underwear while taking a stand in his chosen underworld!
Understand?
Ah, yes, the multifaceted Carl Corley, author of both Today and Tomorrow: An Engineering Analysis of the Highway Transportation System in Mississippi and (1949) Satin Chaps (1968).
I note that A Chosen World is written in lavender type. Safe to say that lavender is to colour what 'twilight' is to words... so much so that writing 'twilight' in lavender is redundant.
So why exactly is it $75 again? Are you hoping David Geffen might buy it?
After '68, gay pulps were a thriving industry:
http://www.gayontherange.com/
There's actually tons of these books you can still take out on loan from the SF public library.
But I respect your decision to gouge the the people who might be interested with such an astronomical markup compared to your other books. Talk about a sin tax.
First, $75 is a reasonable price for a Carl Corley in good condition. Corley was one of the better known writers in the early days of the gay publishing revolution, unusual in that, as I recall, he put his own name on the books - dangerous in those days. You might want to check with Bolerium Books in S.F., or Lynn Munroe in So. Cal, or Tony Jacobs at vintagesleaze.com to confirm price.
Victor J. Banis (also collectible)
Thanks, Victor. It should also be noted that all prices contain a "pry it out of my unwilling hands" tax. That is, if I were really truly looking to unload all my books, the prices would be lower. I love my books, but I also love the idea of their having other lives with other people. So prices are "reasonable," as you say, but not bargain basement. They're also flexible, frankly.
Best,
RP
Corley provided his own illustrations. And $75 is right for the book. There's a marvelous website which has compiled his history, illustrations and books... https://www.carlcorley.com/ I support the website with a monthly donation. It's really quite marvelous and you can read the books!
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