Paperback 802: The Man With a Certain Talent / Pierre Sichel (Signet T1977)

Paperback 802: Signet T1977 (1st ptg, 1961)

Title: The Man With a Certain Talent
Author: Pierre Sichel
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Perhaps the giantest, most ill-defined floating head in my collection.
• Cover design is truly poor. The fonts are not making me feel the emotions I'm supposed to be feeling, and nothing about wispy blue smoke-face there is jibing with "shock-powered" (whatever that means) and "joy-ride." Maybe "hell," but only in the sense that the Head looks like he has returned therefrom, perhaps as a warning. "Rural poet," however, I buy.
• Title is also bad / nondescript. Ditto sleepy New England village down there.
• The lady is sad that they have relegated her to such a tiny piece of cover real estate. "I had my hair done and wore my nice gloves and everything … [sob] …"

Best things about this back cover: 

• Ugh, text.
• Please, I beg you, do not use "the sodden tragedy of his life" in my obit. Thanks.
• "Pierre Sichel bares the forces that skyrocket…" Nice metaphoring!
• Williams College!? Screw those guys. [Rejected in 1987 and Never Forgetting!]
• The dumbest editorial decision By Far where this book is concerned was changing the title from the original, awesome, "The Sapbucket Genius." That title has layers. *This* title just lies there, vaguely, pointlessly, so devoid of specific meaning that, like the Giant Head (ironically), it's barely there. I mean, he clearly has at least two talents. Come on, man.

Page 123~

Here was the ideal promising, provocative, compromising situation and, while she knew I wouldn't try a Flodge, I knew she at least expected me to make the most of it. Not behave like a stick.

You have no idea how disappointed I was to learn that "Flodge" was just another character in the book. I wanted it to be the Greatest Idiom Ever (meaning what, I don't know).

~RP

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