Title: Yesterday's Love
Author: James T. Farrell
Cover artist: Uncredited
Yours for: $17
Best things about this cover:
- You know what they say: "Yesterday's Love, Today's Floating Head"
- Marion celebrates her victory in the "Ornamented Boobs" contest by ordering up a pizza for her and the floating head of her recently deceased boyfriend: "Oh, and get extra anchovies. I can't taste for shit since I became incorporeal."
- "Yes, hello, Home Depot? My wallpaper seems to have grown a head. Also, it's astonishingly ugly. Can you help?"
- "Studs Lonigan" always struck me as a great porn name. "Long Studsigan" might be better, though perhaps too spot-on.
Best things about this back cover:
- Yes, I knew it. "Frankness!" I was just perusing this back cover going "come on, some form of the word 'frank.'" — "These stories will sear you with their frankness!" Then they will put you in the oven of "brutal awareness" and gently roast you until you are cooked through.
- Is James T. Farrell the reason so many writers and hipster affect a scroungey "I could give a fuck" look. This guy's got it down pat. He's like the original. "Hair-combing's for squares! Fuck ties! Where are my cigarettes?"
Page 123~
She went to Sonny. Harry looked at her with utter contempt. His eyes were full of hatred. He got up and turned on the radio. He could hear the child babbling and gaily talking to its mother as she washed him. He turned off the radio and sat there waiting until they would take their walk. Then they would eat their supper, see another moving picture, and come back to the hotel. [final paragraph of "The Sport of Kings"]
~RP
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7 comments:
Fuck photo studios, too. Looks like the photographer had to sneak a shot as Farrell was waiting for a bus.
SHE gets a physical description; HE gets a bio. What the hey.
Personally, I love the floating head of Frankie Avalon!
That's not Frankie Avalon. It's James Darren!
How might the story have turned out differently if she had been pasty, tall, skin oily as bacon grease, with a figure that resembled a sack of potatoes and he a duty-free graduate assistant hipster instead?
What every woman wants to hear is that she's "clear-skinned." "Look, you can see my bones!"
The author inspired Mailer and Studs Terkel took his name from this trilogy, pulp fiction has mad powers.
[Pardon the comment thread necromancy]
Best part of the back: the surly guy in the yellow Avon logo seen here.
I had to zoom in to see who it was, and instead of it being a hobo, it looks like a hobo-esque Shakespeare...!? What's even better is this Shakespeare is doing a Spock-ish "one eyebrow raised inquisitively," as if to shame the reader for reading this instead of Shakespeare's own work. "What tripe hast thou brought before thine eyes?!"
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