Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Paperback 530: The Gay World / Martin Hoffman (Bantam Q4492)

Paperback 530: Bantam Q4492 (1st ptg, 1969)

Title: The Gay World
Author: Martin Hoffman
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: $7

Bant4492.GayW
Best things about this cover:
  • Look! Tiny, tiny gays! So cute.
  • That's how you contain the dangerous lure of the handsome gays—keep their pics thumbnail size.
  • Also, this is how the "homosexual scene" stays so well hidden from the mainstream—strategic miniaturization!
  • That looks like the wedding photograph from the first gay wedding, circa 1884. "Leopold and Jasper went on to run the most successful dry goods business in the greater Lansing area."


Bant4492bc.GayW

Best things about this back cover:
  • "Occult!" That's a new one.
  • I read "closest" as "closet."
  • "Why do men become homosexual? Well, if you could actually *see* Leopold and Jasper there, you would *totally* understand. Trust me."

Page 123~

Since we know that as we ascend the mammalian scale, learning factors become more important the higher we go, we can postulate that if these factors are true for monkeys, it would seem they are true for humans.

Scienceish! I give this assertion a 7 out of 10 on the mammalian scale.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

5 comments:

Brian Busby said...

Groundbreaking cover design in that it doesn't use he colour lavender or the word "strange".

Chip said...

"Occult" technically just means "hidden," which is probably what the blurb was aiming for. Odd phrasing, nonetheless.

Not Curious Anymore said...

I don't know exactly what Vance Packard did for the "more conventional areas", but I can tell you story after steamy story what his alter-ego, Lance Packer, did for my unconventional areas!

DemetriosX said...

I'm stunned. Nowhere on these two wordy covers does the word "frank" appear. I thought that was mandatory.

Doug Brunell said...

How about this: "A frank discussion about what two tiny men do behind tiny doors. How they do it. Where they do it. What they do with it when they are finished. Where did they put it?"