Paperback 283: Adventures of a Young Man / John Dos Passos (Lion Library 42)

Paperback 283: Lion Library LL42 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: Adventures of a Young Man
Author: John Dos Passos
Cover artist: Clark Hulings

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• "Steve approached trench warfare with an air of whimsy, never letting a silly helmet ruin his perfectly coiffed blond mane."
• "Steve, how come when you hug me it feels like you're killing Germans?"
• Let's play: What's Steve Doing With His Mouth!? Choices a. gnawing on Gillian's brains, zombie-style, b. licking the chocolate out of her hair (don't ask), c. laughing at his own inability to find the bra strap, or d. Steve has no mouth — he lost it in the war.
• Hey, it's Clark Hulings Week this week at "Pop Sensation" — not because of any particularly burning desire on my part to write about him, but because I've had a request from Illustration magazine for some hi-res scans of Hulings covers, and so I've moved all his work to the front of the queue.
  

Best things about this back cover:

• "Gillian, your father and I strongly disapprove of your sleeping in the nude. Also, as you can see by our presence in your room, security in this apartment is terrible. You could at least get a dead bolt."
• Steve is doing his "going bowling" dance. Step slide, step slide ...
• If that is a train he's grabbing, and it is moving, he is about to be dragged to his bloody death. So ironic — surviving WWI only to be needlessly dragged to death on his way to a bowling engagement.
• Front cover scanned at 400dpi, back cover scanned at 200dpi. Can you see the difference?

Page 123~

Sometimes he wished he was a rolling stone like Glenn; but if you were going to raise stuff, corn or stock or babies, you just had to stay put.

~RP

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Paperback 282: If the Coffin Fits / Day Keene (Graphic 43)

Paperback 282: Graphic 43 (PBO, 1952)

Title: If the Coffin Fits
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $50


Best things about this cover:

• One of the greatest hypo covers of all time (yes, "hypo covers" is a thing — very collectible)
• And the award for "Most Realistic Depiction of Hand Hair" goes to ...
• God that spike is glorious. I almost want to start doing heroin just to experience the feel of something so elegantly designed.
• Joe Shirtless does Not want to shoot up, but stone-faced blond guy can't wait. He has that barely-contained psycho-sadistic look about him. I think it's the posture, plus the intent stare: [Trembling ever-so-slightly] "This is going to be @#$#ing awesome!" Maybe he's a hypo connoisseur. Or just likes handling terrified man flesh.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ugh, small type. Less is More!
• This book should be called "Badger Game" — I'd read it just to figure out what the hell that phrase meant.
• Why is "Jail Bait" capitalized and italicized? Is it a novel? (actually, it is, and I own it, but I don't think the book is what's meant here).
• "Mr. Big" — Ouch. One million points off for lack of originality.

Page 123~

I said that was a lot of heifer dust. He was inclined to argue.

I believe "heifer dust" = "bullshit," but it would be a great street name for some drug ... something way, way worse than "angel dust." "We cut the PCP with cow shit ... try it!"

~RP

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Paperback 281: Dead Pigeon / Robert P. Hansen (Bantam 1188)

Paperback 281: Bantam 1188 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Dead Pigeon
Author: Robert P. Hansen
Cover artist: Charles Binger

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• Step 1: shred my shirt and stun her with my awesome torso. Step 2: beat her to death with a dead pigeon
• Am I supposed to believe that that is an ordinary white dress shirt. Because I do not believe that that is an ordinary white dress shirt. On his left side, it all looks normal enough, but on his right ... where's the sleeve? Is it a vest? Some kind of crazy modern Swedish Eurovest?
• I normally find smoking girls with guns and cleavage and gams to be quite hot. Not so this one. She looks bored. Or spellbound by the torsal grandeur of her captive.
• Something weird is going on behind her head. There's a lamp ... but it sort of disappears somewhere around the "B" in "Robert," as if its right half is invisible.

Best things about this back cover:

• Words cannot describe how much I love the iconic "Hand of Guy in Suit Holding Pistol" — I want a T-shirt with that image and that image alone on it.
• The original cover image of this book pictured here is goofy but clever — a reader's POV depiction of a pigeon-shooting carnival game.
• The cover copy — front and back — is terrible. Pure cliche, and not even superawesomeshameless cliche. Just yawn. Like it was written by the Hardboiled PatterBot 3000.

Page 123~

"[...] Parker was the cruelest man I've ever known, a sadist in an extremely controlled way. He's done several things to me that are unbelievable. [...]"

~RP

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Paperback 280: The Female Man / Joanna Russ (Bantam Q8765)

Paperback 280: Bantam Q8765 (PBO, 1975)

Title: The Female Man
Author: Joanna Russ
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• "See, you thought I was a woman, but under these boobs ... no, wait, under these boobs ..."
• You decide: crazy red hair that conveniently hides her (apparently faux) vagina? or monstrous red pubic hair that is attempting to eat her head?
• "Dad, this stripper is scaring me. Can we go home now?"

Best things about this back cover:

• "Reality Times 3" — sounds like a very bad educational / religious rap act.
• Passive voice cavalcade in that fourth sentence is setting my teeth on edge.
• Apparently a reference to Philip Wylie's "The Disappearance" meant something to someone at some point.

Page 123~

I want love. (she dropped her paper cup of lemonade and covered her face with her hands.)

Wow, they really screwed up her order.

~RP

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Paperback 279: The Angry Mountain / Hammond Innes (Bantam 1058)

Paperback 279: Bantam 1058 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: The Angry Mountain
Author: Hammond Innes
Cover artist: Mitchell Hooks

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• He put his ear to the door. "Shhh. Be quiet, naked Sonia Braga. I think hear the mountain ... and it sounds angry."
• Sonia Braga: The Crappy Casting Couch Years
• Does anyone even know who Sonia Braga is any more? "Kiss of the Spider Woman?" Anyone?
• "A smashing story..." As in, "We smashed one of the louvered blind panels out of the window to enhance your lava-viewing pleasure."
• There are so many folds in that sheet. It's mesmerizing if you look at it for too long...

Best things about this back cover:

• I love the quaint explanation of why this paperback book exists. "See, we published a book in hardback, and it did really well, so we decided hey, we can probably sell enough in softcover to realize a robust profit, even with the smaller margins." The fifties were so earnest and friendly.
• I don't love the repro of the original cover. Book should be called "The Angry Hand."
• "Zina murmured sleepily and sat up, showing me her nakedness." Pardon me while I throw up in my mouth a little. I think you mean "I could see her boobs. Oh man, boobs. Awesome."
• Love love love the Orwellian announcement of the forthcoming Huxley novel. "Brave New World is coming! You will submit to its laws! Resistance is Futile!"

Page 123~

"Do you think I don't know what the man is? That last night in Milan—I lay in bed in the dark and felt his hands on my leg. I knew those hands. I'd known them [sic] if a thousand hands were touching my leg."

"A thousand!?" Seriously, Sonia Braga had to do some terrible shit to get her career underway.

~RP

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P.S. I need your help. Some entity calling itself "Book Blogger Appreciation Week" (BBAW) has notified me that my blog, this blog, has been nominated for one of its annual awards in the category of ... BEST WRITING. Really? Of all the categories (including Funniest Blog, hello) this is the one I'm nominated for? The Big One? Well, OK. Thank you. I'm flattered, even if my nomination is really just the voice of one crank crying in the wilderness (or my mom). I can tell you there is no way I have a chance of even being shortlisted. First, those book blogger ladies are mobbed up tight. They read and write like crazy and all seem to know each other (if the Twitter back-and-forths I see from time to time are any indication). Second, they actually read the books they talk about, whereas yours truly hasn't read a book in years; I can barely get through my Batman comics week to week. Third, my audience, while brilliant and loyal, is still relatively small. But in the interest of ... whaddya call it ... gratitude? Yeah, gratitude, as well as bloggerly community, I'm going to play ball. Here's what I have to do (and how you can help). The following is verbatim from the notification email:

In order to help our panels fairly evaluate your blog, we ask that you submit permalinks (direct links to individual blog posts) for 5 blog posts per category that you consider to be the best representation of your blog. [...] Of the 5 posts submitted please include a minimum of one book review/recommendation/or spotlight post.

So, please help me, if you would, by suggesting (in comments, or by email) which write-ups you think I should submit. I have no perspective. I think even my ugliest children are awesome.

Thank you.

~RP

Paperback 278: Savage Bride / Cornell Woolrich (Gold Medal 719)

Paperback 278: Gold Medal 719 (3rd ptg, 1957)

Title: Savage Bride
Author: Cornell Woolrich
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• "Rowrrr! Tigress care not for clothing, or for bed sheets. Tigress eat new husband and leave only giant skull behind!"
• "Uh, honey, when I asked you if you wanted to play a little 'stroke the totem pole,' I didn't mean that literally..."
• This cover has all the "savage" iconography: nudity, writhing ritualistic dance, mysterious carvings, evidence of cannibalism, and miniature tribal elders with flamboyant headwear presiding over it all.

Best things about this back cover:

• Let it be known that I wrote "writhing" re: the front cover before I read this back cover blurb. Prescience!
• Nothing says random exotica like "an ancient tribe." "Which one? Who cares!? It's got human sacrifice and pagan altars, and that's all you need to know. Now writhe!"

Page 123~

They were fed liberally, if monotonously, on an unvarying diet of baked maize cakes [ed. "You call it corn..."], and water was given them to drink from a brackish-tasting pottery bowl.

I like Cornell Woolrich's writing. Rendezvous in Black is one of my favorite noir novels of all time. But this bit from "Savage Bride" is horrible. Liberal use of passive voice ... "they were fed [...] monotonously?" Unless you're at Medieval Times or Applebee's on your birthday, what do you expect? ... and why are they tasting the "bowl?" You're supposed to drink what's *inside*.

~RP

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Paperback 277: The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse / Mike Avallone (Gold Medal 718)

Paperback 277: Gold Medal 718 (PBO, 1957)
Title: The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse
Author: Mike Avallone
Cover artist: Jack Floherty

Yours for: $19


Best things about this cover:

• Peek-a-boo nighties are a staple of vintage paperback covers, but you rarely see the women in said nighties *actually* playing peek-a-boo.
• Or maybe she's just sad. Or performing some odd modern dance routine. Whatever she's doing, she appears to be doing it while wrapped in the kind of cellophane they use to cover fruit baskets.
• "Oh, what's a corpse to do!? [sob sob, toe point]"

Best things about this back cover:

• "Flounced" is a fabulous word.
• Nice contemporary hot-chick references in the opening sentences. I like how the writer is on a first name / first name / last name basis with these legendary lookers.
• "She wore clothes nakedly" = Avallone at his Hammettiest.
• Second paragraph reads like a tagline discard pile. "You put those on the cover!? Those were just notes!"
• Rarely, upon taking candy from a baby, do you demand that it take off its clothes.

Page 123~

He dug a thick fold of something from his pocket, fanned it out. Checked it the same way you do a map. It was a map.

Sometimes, you gotta stay literal. Keeps readers on their toes.

~RP

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Glick!

R.I.P. Budd Schulberg (1914-2009)

Here's a British paperback of Schulberg's best-known (and probably best) novel:

[A hot cover of a hot book, sent to me by a reader with a good eye and good taste]

Click here to see Budd Schulberg's The Disenchanted ("Pop Sensation" Paperback 246)

~RP

Paperback 276: The Hunger and the Hate / H. Vernor Dixon (Gold Medal 454)

Paperback 276: Gold Medal 454 (PBO, 1955)

Title: The Hunger and the Hate
Author: H. Vernor Dixon
Cover artist: James Meese

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• "I'm hungry." "Well, I hate you." The End.
• His hat is fabulous but his tie looks like something he ripped off an early-80s New Wave keyboard player.
• "The world was his and conquered" has to be one of the most inelegant and awkward opening gambits in mainstream paperback cover copy history. "The world was his ... and then a woman took it all a way" would work. So would "He conquered the world ... but then a woman took it all away." So would "He was a traveling salesman with a hankering for Mexican restaurant waitresses..."

Best things about this back cover:

• Crop. Zoom. Reverse image. Change to B&W. There. Now you can really feel the Hunger. And the Hate.
• Jeez, it's a whole frickin' short story back here. Concision!
• What's his name again? I forgot ... you only said it four times.
• "Hey, ya know what a good place for a paragraph break would be? The middle of a sentence." (see last two "paragraphs")

Page 123~

He thought of Truly and dissected her in his mind and liked little of what he found and wondered why he had been such a damned fool as to accept her invitation.

Strangely, the part of this sentence I hate most is "as to."

~RP

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Paperback 275: Lovers Are Losers / Howard Hunt (Gold Medal 297)

Paperback 275: Gold Medal 297 (PBO, 1953)

Title: Lovers Are Losers
Author: Howard Hunt
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: I forget — I'm blogging from CO and forgot to record the $$$ information before I left



Best things about this cover:

• Steve wondered why he'd ever agreed to marry the Bride of Frankenstein.
• Steve became despondent when his new magician's assistant-bride refused to let him have his favorite pillow. "You have to earn it, Steve. Pillows are for closers."
• Sucker Slouch (TM)!
• Her dress is hot from the bow up. From the thighs down, I have no idea what the hell is going on.

Best things about this back cover:

• The head of the monstrous she-bandit bobbed menacingly in the brook.
• That's your "fog of evil?" Really? Looks like a poorly rendered tree trunk.
• The back cover appears to have nothing to do with the front cover, and neither cover appears to want to tell you what the book is really about. Marketing!

Page 123~

"Are we going somewhere?"

"Acapulco, I suppose. Doesn't everyone?"

~RP

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Paperback 274: Man Divided / Dean Douglas (Gold Medal 407)

Paperback 274: Gold Medal 407 (PBO, 1954)

Title: Man Divided
Author: Dean Douglas
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: SOLD! (Aug '09)


Best things about this cover:

• In case it's not clear, "half world" = gay gay gay. See also "twilight world."
• "He had to choose — a half world or a world of woman's love" — if his posture's any indication, that decision has already been made.
• The guy in the chair displays the classic "Sucker Slouch" (TM). It's common on noir/hardboiled covers. We will see a variation of this pose again on Sunday.
• You can almost hear the guy deflate: "ohhhh ... fuck." He can't even look at ... her? Wait, how do I know the seated guy is the "Man Divided" in this scenario? Why do I have a feeling that the "woman" in the pale green has a voice like Jack Palance?

Best things about this back cover:

• See, I told you. "Twilight world." Right on cue.
• "Then the contest began." I hope it's a baton-twirling contest. I love a good baton-twirling novel.
• "The problems of our times" = worst euphemism for homosexuality ever. I'll take outright offensive over this hazy blandness. Hell, I'd take "baton twirling" over this.

Page 123~

The next morning there was the mute evidence on the floor, the broken glasses and the pool of water from the melted ice cubes. Cromer had been furious about something. She had not asked. She had waited curiously to see.

Bi-curiously, that is.

~RP

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Paperback 273: Danger in Paradise / A.S. Fleischman (Gold Medal 295)

Paperback 273: Gold Medal 295 (PBO, 1953)

Title: Danger in Paradise
Author: A.S. Fleischman
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• Is she trying to crawl under some kind of tarp? What's that huge dark area above her right hand supposed to be? Pan back!
• Seriously, pan back. This woman was not meant to be appreciated at this distance. She looks scared. And smeary.
• "Her love was an invitation to death ... but first she needs to change her car's oil" (my new explanation for what she's doing on her back on the ground about to go under some dark object)
• I only just got the fact that the title is a play on the phrase "Stranger in Paradise."
• The right hand doesn't quite look like it belongs to her. And those talons are freaking me out.

Best things about this back cover:

• Oh, "Look Behind You, Lady"'s got a comma now, eh? Well, la-di-dah.
• Apollo Fry, the lost Fry Guy.
• "I flicked her chin with my knuckles" is a great euphemism for "I punched her in the face."
• "When we came out of the trance..." Wait, what? What happened between paragraphs. One second he's playfully abusing her, and the next, they're coming out of a trance?
• "... set in the troubled East." i.e. exotic downtown Trenton, NJ.
  

Page 123~

"She wouldn't be hard to fall in love with, would she?"

I clamped my jaws.

Well, that's an awkward sentence. All I can picture is him with his lower face in a vise.

~RP

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Paperback 272: Home Is The Sailor / Day Keene (Gold Medal 225)

Paperback 272: Gold Medal 225 (PBO, 1952)

Title: Home is the Sailor
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $25


Best thing about this cover:

• Someone needs to tell him that a captain's hat really does not go with pajama bottoms.
• She is hot in a tawdry bar slut kind of way. The upthrust boobs and hand-on-ass are particularly nice touches.
• I worry that his aggressive and thorny-looking patch of chest hair is going to chafe her delicate boob skin (I am now giggling aloud at the phrase "boob skin")
• She looks lusty, while he looks like he's going to vomit his last daiquiri right in her face.

Best things about this back cover:

• Why aren't guys named "Swede" anymore? Maybe because being named Swede has been shown to cause a remarkable increase in the likelihood that you will die in some miserable, noirish fashion (see Hemingway's "The Killers," for instance).
• Copy writer here is clearly a graduate of the Crappy Metaphor Institute. He seems to have minored in Redundancy (when you've already called her a "tempest," "hurricane" should not be your next go-to image).

Page 123~

That had been in the bar, in a booth, with Corliss sitting opposite me, looking cool and fresh and virginal in white, eating prime ribs au jus, urging me to eat; me unable to eat, nursing a fresh bottle of Bacardi.

Nothing more virginal than a white-clad lady daintily slurping her blood-red meat.

~RP

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Paperback 271: The Killer Inside Me / Jim Thompson (Gold Medal 1522)

Paperback 271: Gold Medal k1522 (1st thus, 1965)

Title: The Killer Inside Me
Author: Jim Thompson
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• The most famous novel by the king of paperback originals. Book is tight and square as the day it came off the shelf. Very faint reading crease and horrible scuffing in bottom right corner are about the only defects.
• This cover is a good example of how paperbacks start to suck, design-wise, beginning in the 60s. Art gets minimized, text takes over. Further, the cover copy is no longer interesting, imaginative, lurid tag lines, but turgid quotes from highbrow folks telling you what great literature this book is. Well, they aren't lying. The book is fantastic. But this reaching after seriousness by crowding the cover with critical acclaim really chafes my aesthetic hide.
• Pink glasses? Really?
• I actually love the reflection of the screaming dame in the lenses, but she's too small to be very interesting. Ten years earlier, she'd have been five times bigger.
• Lou Ford Does Not Look Like This Guy. At least not in my head he doesn't.

Best things about this back cover:

• Booooooooo!
  
• How quaint: the real book critic goes slumming and finds a gem among the 'originals' (books so untouchable he can't even refer to them without first putting on scare quotes).
• If the French like it, it must be good.
• Among those on this comparison list, only McCoy is remotely comparable to Thompson. The other guys (both masters) write P.I. novels with P.I. heroes and an entirely different sensibility. If Sam Spade were a murdering sadist, then there'd be some basis for comparison.

Page 123~

Howard kept his seat. His face looked like a blob of reddish dough, but he shook his head at Jeff and kept his seat. Howard was really trying hard.

~RP

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