Paperback 466: Spring Fire / Vin Packer (Gold Medal 222)

Paperback 466: Gold Medal 222 (PBO, 1952)

Title: Spring Fire
Author: Vin Packer (aka Marijane Meaker)
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: [not for sale]

Best things about this cover:

• I wish the cover depicted whatever that blonde is looking at, because it must be Amazing (unlike this cover).
• "Frank(ly)!"
• Brunette: "Why do you always leave your nylons on the floor?" Blonde: "Whoa ... look at that pigeon on the windowsill. He looks just like James Mason ..."
• I like how this book treads Very Very Lightly on the whole lesbian issue. Art director: "Two women ... in a room together ... sitting on what is probably a bed ... that's far enough, boys. Make their negligees look like party dresses, have them look away from each other, and leave the door ajar so we can always say they're just two girls waiting for their dates to arrive. Their big, male dates."
• That is one imposing head of blond hair. It appears to be giving off solar flares.

Best things about this back cover:

• "A girl called Mitch"—how is that not the title?!
• "... a theme too important to keep from the light ... but not important enough to be mentioned directly on this cover." 
• "Vin Packer" is another alias of Marijane Meaker. You may remember her from such classics as "Take a Lesbian to Lunch" (which she wrote as "Ann Aldrich"). "Vin Packer" is probably my favorite paperback author name. If Rex Parker had an alias, it would be Vin Packer.
• The very first thing my eyes lit on when I opened the book: "Dripping and curious, Mitch hovered in a wide towel as she took the call in the booth outside the bathroom." This made me change my mind about what the book's title should be...

I'm replacing Page 123 today with Page 136. Too good to pass up:

The ticking of the tin clock on the dresser sounded frantic and Mitch made the ticks come in three beats in her mind—Les-bi-an, Les-bi-an, tick-tick-tick.

Yet another great potential title that was passed up. And now clocks will never sound the same again.

Bonus: Page 126~

It was different when I could say it wasn't this way, that I was bisexual and all that rot. Bisexual—that's sort of like succotash, isn't it? Only this succotash hasn't got any corn in it. It's straight beans!

Without question, the single greatest metaphor in literary history.

~RP

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