Donations to the Collection: Lust Lodge

Title: Lust Lodge (Nightstand Books NB1621, 1962)
Author: Don Holliday
Cover artist: that guy who did so many of their covers ... whatsisname!

Happy Halloween! You're welcome.

• The Hand!! "Nice to meet you Mrs. ... I ... uh ..."
• X marks the spot, dang!
• Did they even plan to draw a guy into this shot originally? His sliver of head and Random Hand look like total (awesome) afterthoughts.
• I like her underwears. I choose to ignore the fact that she has Ronald McDonald hair.

• Yet another classic from the Absurd Two-Word Intro .../... Outro school of back cover writing.
• To say this is bad writing is really to give bad writing a worse name than it already has.
• Three "wantons" (counting front and back)! Plural, adjectival, possessive. That's gotta be a record.

Page 123~ (brace yourselves ...)

"Don't be melodramatic," she said, blowing smoke once more. It hung in a grey cloud above her, as though prognosticating a storm at the cloud. How symbolic I've become, Beverly thought, looking at the cloud.

As though doing a what at the where now?

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Donations to the Collection: Ringside Sex (PEC N122)

Several times since I started writing about vintage paperbacks, people have offered to send me books. Not just scans of covers, but actual books. For free. Just ... because. And the cover-loving world rejoices. Allow me to share my latest acquisitions with you. Actually, I'll give you one today, and one this weekend. These books come to me courtesy of a generous reader, Gabrielle Bucci. Hey, the former mayor of Binghamton is named Bucci. Any relation? No. Oh well.

Title: Ringside Sex (PBO, 1966)

Author: Ray Wilde

Cover artist: Hasty McCreeperson

• "You put your right boob in, you keep your left boob out ..."
• This title is pretty blunt. "Are you the RINGSIDE SEX I ordered ...?"
• Something about her position is phenomenally unsexy. Boxer man, however, is one hunky slab of man meat. My favorite part of this cover = his shoes.

• This is from the "Lull Them Into a False Sense of Calm With Ellipses and then SHOUT AT THEM WITH ALL CAPS" School of cover copy writing
• "Lady Fight Promoter" = Prince's never-released follow-up to "Lady Cab Driver"

Page 123~

I sat for about a half hour, sunk in thought, trying to untangle my thoughts and emotions [though mostly trying to think of another word for "thought"]. There was little Gay, back in Los Angeles ... and I suddenly realized that Gay didn't have a chance.

That's too bad, because I'm pretty sure Gay would love a chance at Captain ManMeat there.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 3

Title: The Green Wound Contract (PBO, 1963)

Author: Philip Atlee

Cover artist: Well it hardly matters...

Yours for: best offer

• "Black magic! White Slavery! And blue diamonds!"
• "Green Wound" has to be about the grossest phrase you can put in your title
• "Formerly The Green Wound" — whoa, bold title change!

• I do love the many faces of Joe Gall
• Probably the only place you'll find the phrase "a pornographic book in Trinidad"
• "... the Streets of Laredo ..." — hey, I know that song
• Rock me Uncle Tom Asmodeus!

Page 123~

Sitting up, I touched the knot on my forehead gingerly and winced; it was a beauty. I had never known a nun could swing a blackjack that hard.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

57 books from the University Book Sale: Book 2

Title: Episode of the Wandering Knife
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover artist: Rafael de Soto

Yours for: best offer

• Cover copy as internal monologue! Never seen that before.
• So you're hiding the knife in the fishpool ... you know water is transparent, right?
• Jane continued to wage her secret, one-woman battle against kitschy statuary...

• Should I feel bad / worried that I can't interpret this map? "His Breakfast" (!?!?) is out back on the lawn? In some pink Phantom Zone? And "The Secret" is ... maybe under the hedge? In the downspout of the gutters? Meanwhile, "The Knife" wanders lazily up the road ...
• "Experience the thrills and chills and the infamous horrors that await you at ... Larry's House!?"

Page 123~

"Maud," said young Townsend succinctly, "is a cheap Chicago tart. He had no business bringing her here."

Mmmm, cheap Chicago tart ...

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

57 books from the University Book Sale: Book 1

Title: The Confession + Sight Unseen
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover artist: Victor Kalin

Yours for: best offer

"Mrrowr"
"Hello?"
"Meow?"
"Uh, I'm calling about the antique phone you advertised in the paper?"
"[purrrr]"
"Is this Rinehart?"

[My wife thought this was a book about a cat named "Rinehart," by a woman named Mary Roberts — a reasonable inference, I say]

Page 123~ (from "Sight Unseen")

Of Elinor Wells I have only my wife's verdict, and I have found that, as is the way with many good women, her judgments of her own sex are rather merciless.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 303: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter / Carson McCullers (Bantam F1762)

Paperback 303: Bantam F1762 (1st thus, 1958)

Title: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Author: Carson McCullers
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• I'm going to go with "the font." I don't really like this cover.
• Why does this cover make me think the story takes place in China. I fell like this should be the cover of a Pearl S. Buck novel.
• Orange rules, as a color.
• That red drawing of a carnival is so incredibly tiny that I can hardly believe anyone OK'd its inclusion on the cover. What's it supposed to signify? It's too small to create much visual interest, and it bears no clear (or unclear) relation to the main painting. Just weird.

Best things about this back cover:

• "I am Carson McCullers and I am looking at you. Yes I am."
• "... an enduring masterpiece that will live on" — yeah, that's what "enduring" things tend to do. Ugh.
• What is "savage tenderness?" Is that when a native boy gently pats your brow? Or ... what? Was the design of this book (incl. decisions about cover copy) just given over to some intern? The whole thing feels ... not laughably bad, but just off.

Page 123~

Grandpa scratched his ear with a matchstick. 'Somebody got to stay home.'

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

P.S. Tomorrow begins the University Book Sale. I will be there when it starts and will not leave until I have acquired much goodness. I may have to bring helper monkeys to make sure nothing sweet gets by me. Look for the fruits of my labor beginning Sunday.

Paperback 302: Behold This Woman / David Goodis (Bantam 407)

Paperback 302: Bantam 407 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: Behold This Woman
Author: David Goodis
Cover artist: William Shoyer

Yours for: $40


Best things about this cover:

• Only four?
• Behold these boobs!
• Love the guy's hand: "... must ... not ... fondle ..."
• Notice how often woman is front and center on pb covers while man is off to side, lopped off, seen from behind, kind of in shadows, etc. Woman is meant to be a very particular dish, while man is usu. a kind of Everyman. Or Anysap, I guess.
• Now that I look more closely at the picture, I think that the guy is an interior decorator who is having a coronary after witnessing the pink rococo orgasm that is this room.

Best things about this back cover:

• I'm going to go with ... the knife jammed into the window sill. Yes, that's the best thing.
• Actually, I'm loving the little blue and pink Yes / Buts.
• Wow, the original cover girl for "Behold This Woman" was all kinds of ugly.

Page 123~

The gray-haired man was annoyed. "What do you mean, help you?" he said. "What do you take me for, an ignoramus?"

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 301: Behind Every Door / Julius Horowitz (Belmont L522)

Paperback 301: Belmont L522 (1st ptg, 1961)

Title: Behind Every Door
Author: Julius Horowitz
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Wow, the cover painting looks cool. If they'd bother to make it bigger than a !@#$ing postage stamp, maybe I could appreciate it a little more.
• "Hey, baby, we're two tall, thin, cool people standing in the middle of the street ... the world is our oyster! What say we ..." / "I said 'twenty dollars,' mister"
• Remade 11 years later as "Behind the Green Door"
• Really, you're going to asterisk "The Way Between the Sexes" as something the N.Y. Times said. That's not a blurb, that's an arbitrary phrase capture.

Best things about this back cover:

• What's that title again? I forgot.
• "Guys who want to buy your pants ..." — I did not see that coming.
• "The real test is when you come up against your problem." — Words to live by, if your goal is to live as vaguely as possible.

Page 123~

He saw that these kids, the oldest of them only ten, had a vocabulary of definite opinions and many of their inculcated ideas were quite opposed to his own.

Two things — one, this is a very odd, very creepy thought for a grown man to have about children; and two, I can tell from this one sentence that this guy is a terrible, terrible writer. The phrases "vocabulary of definite opinions" and "their inculcated ideas" make me wince. Editor!

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 300: The Winds of Fear / Hodding Carter (Popular Library 300)

Paperback 300: Popular Library 300 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: The Winds of Fear
Author: Hodding Carter
Cover artist: Rudolph "Creamy Skin" Belarski

Yours for: $23


Best things about this cover:

• "The Winds of Fear hurt my ears."
• That is the rackiest rack I've seen in a while. Those boobs look oddly fake for 50s boobs. Braless boobs of that magnitude should not do what those are doing, i.e. remaining perfectly taut and nearly perfectly spherical, defying gravity, etc.
• Not enough people are named "Hodding" these days. Damn shame.
• I can't tell if the sheriff is assaulting the poor black man with his heat vision, or if the black man shoots fire out his ears when he gets real angry.
• I usually avoid things that are both angry and probing...
• Complete and utter (and eerie) coincidence that "Paperback 300" is actually numbered 300.

Best things about this back cover:

• "KICKED OPEN," I say.
• "Cancy!" The absurd name train just won't stop runnin'.
• "A scheming honkytonk girl" — now we're talking.
• "Decent people protested ..." Why do I have a feeling I won't find them "decent"?

Page 123~

Colored boys from Carvell City and from near Carvell City were complaining of mistreatment and humiliation, or boasting from overseas of another world where white girls and sort of white girls in England and North Africa looked favorably on soldiers with dark skin.

"Sort of white girls" is a new category to me.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 299: Ward 20 / James Warner Bellah (Popular Library 195)

Paperback 299: Popular Library 195 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: Ward 20
Author: James Warner Bellah
Cover artist: Rudolph Belarski

Yours for: $16


Best things about this cover:

• "I know my breasts are soft and ripe and possibly delicious but let's just keep your hand right here, mkay?"
• Most pristine Army Hospital ever. Look at that bandage! Those sheets! Her uniform! His pajamas! Immaculate.
• Everyone in a Rudolph Belarski painting always has the smoothest, most luscious, buttery skin. These folks are angelic, bordering on cherubic.

Best things about this back cover:

• Love the way "LOVELY LEGS" springs up tall.
• "Meneilly" joins the growing roster of "Absurd Names from the world of Vintage Paperbacks" — I don't even know if that's a first or last name. I'm praying last.
• Awesome line break near the bottom: "... their need for women — so hard / To fill"; you had me at "hard."

Page 123~

"Let me go now," she whispered.
"You don't want me to."
"You've got to, Joe!"
"Who says so? You don't. You want me to hold onto you until you can't breathe — until you can't think or —"

This was later turned into the very unpopular movie, "What Women Don't Want"

~RP

Bonus material: opening blurb from one A.Q. Maisel of The Saturday Review of Books suggests that "there are many who will gag" when they read this book. Best come-on since, well, "The Macabre Wife Swapping Escapades Will Make You Vomit!.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 298: Call Me Deadly / Hal Braham (Graphic 152)

Paperback 298: Graphic 152 (PBO, 1957)
Title: Call Me Deadly
Author: Hal Braham
Cover artist: Walter Popp

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• Nearly everything — this is late 50s paperback gold. Love the weird cropping provided by the ornate frame, and then again by the beaded curtain! Then there's Fabulous Girl Art (killer dress), jazz guitar, mystery hand w/ gun, Broderick Crawford lookalike with fat cigar ... all in a tight, barely read paperback.
• The title is awesome in inverse proportion to the cover painting's awesomeness, i.e. the title is a sad, unimaginative rip-off of a Mickey Spillane title (movie version of which came out just a couple years before this novel). Paint brush font on "Deadly" is kind of cool, though.
• Love Graphic Novels for their (frequent) crediting of the cover artist on the publishing info page, though here you can actually see the artist's signature (right under "25c").
• Gun/vagina proximity here is oddly common. Here's a variation. There will be more. Maybe I should make "guncrotch" a label... oh, wait, it already is.

Best things about this back cover:

• See that red dot separating the paragraphs? It's like it was drilled into the cover with a bore. Deeply embossed. Weird as it sounds, it's the first thing about this cover that caught my eye.
• Love their dockside dancing! Put any energetic music on your iTunes and then look at this painting. They are totally dancing. Nothing else can explain what she's doing with her left hand (mysterious hand gestures ... seems like a recurrent theme).
• I love how the cover copy starts out campy and ends up in nearly incoherent lunacy.
• "... between them, an unholy shadow murmured: 'There's no way you can tightrope walk in that dress, Gini ... Go on, I dare you ...'"

Page 123~

She said finally, "So this is the lion's den. What do you do with your spare time, Dillon?"

I shrugged. "I have the television for sport, there are books and records. It depends."

"Gets a bit monotonous, doesn't it?"

"It does," I admitted.

This is like the "Don't" column from a 1950's "How To Pick Up Hot Chicks" manual.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 297: Here Come Joe Mungin / Chalmers S. Murray (Bantam A1193)

Paperback 297: Bantam Giant A1193 (1st ptg, 1954)

Title: Here Come Joe Mungin
Author: Chalmers S. Murray
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $50


Best things about this cover:

• Only a guy that big could get away with wearing something that ... let's say, flamboyant. "Yeah, I'm wearing a speckled salmon V-neck with a pink sash for a belt and pin-striped trousers. You wanna make somethin' of it?"
• Why is this book so pricey? It's a total mystery. Found one going for cheapish, but most are going $40-$90. "Rare in any condition." Why???
• "Chalmers" is a funny name. "Seymour!" (that's for "Simpsons" fans)
• I am disturbed by how long this guy is. I mean, from bottom of the V-neck to top of the head is an Eternity.

Best things about this back cover:

• Apparently what "Sea Island Negroes" like to do is get drunk and fight. Perhaps also have sex and play the barrel-drum. Nice.
• Again, I await the historian who can tell me why this book is 5-10 times more valuable than your average mid-50s Bantam.

Page 123~

"Joe Mungin, I 'most mad 'nough to knock you."
"Oh, don't tarrigate yourself. Here, take a drink. Too hot for fight, too hot for quarrel."

"Don't tarrigate yourself" is officially my new catchphrase.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 296: The Dreadful Night / Ben Ames Williams (Popular Library 155)

Paperback 296: Popular Library 155 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: The Dreadful Night
Author: Ben Ames Williams
Cover artist: Rudolph Belarski

Yours for: $16


Best things about this cover:

• "Hello, police, I'm being pursued by ... hello? ... damn, this isn't my phone!"
• Rudolph Belarski: Master of DramaticHands (TM)
• That look is not fear. It is sadistic glee. And the man with the hands is not coming after her. He's about to keel over backwards. See, she has just plucked his heart from his chest with one vicious, kungfu strike. "Ha, take that, you bastard! Hey, I can hear the ocean in this thing..."
• "A Novel of Love, Hate and Death" — yep, that pretty much covers it.
• That's some structured swimwear, that is.
• Why is she at the seashore during a thunderstorm?

Best things about this back cover:

• Text me!
• "Adah Capello!" — no offense to all the ADAHs out there, but come on!
• God, these Popular Library back cover write-ups are dreadful. It's like a 9-yr-old kind of sort of recounting what happens in a book he's just read.

Page 123~

Marco the dog was there [I want to stop the quote right there], swimming this way and that, barking incessantly in a frenzied and pitiful fashion; behind his head a wide ripple spread as he quested to and fro..."

Uh ... "quested?" Is he a knight-dog?

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 295: The Three Coffins / John Dickson Carr (Popular Library 174)

Paperback 295: Popular Library 174 (1st ptg, 1949)
Title: The Three Coffins
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Rudolph Belarski

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• "Lady in Peril" week continues with another Lady in Peril — and another Rudolph Belarski cover with serious hand action! Can't decide which hand is better, the blood-soaked one or the ... what the hell is that other hand doing? Signing? Is it clutching something? If she were that horrified, would she really have gotten down on her knees and plunged her hand into the red stuff oozing from under the door? I doubt it.
• This makes me not want to see "Behind the Green Door"
• What is with the NYT syntax? Subject at the end ... no verb ...
• CARR is a common crossword answer. If you solve crosswords, it is good to know who created Dr. Gideon Fell.
• Belarski clearly prefers distressed women in solid, bold colors, and with ultra-expressive, super-plastic hands.

Best things about this back cover:

• More text-only dreck.
• Oooh, a locked room mystery. That should be zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
• This back cover sounds like a "Twilight Zone" plot ad-libbed by someone very drunk or very high. (Happy 50th birthday to "The Twilight Zone," by the way — I live in Rod Serling's home town, so there are "Twilight Zone" city buses driving around town and everything)

Page 123~

"Well, sir, there's blood, for one thing," replied Somers. "And also a very queer sort of rope ..."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]