Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Paperback 1030: Damon Runyon Favorites / Damon Runyon (Pocket Books 158)

Paperback 1030: Pocket Books 158 (1st ptg, 1942)

Title: Damon Runyon Favorites
Author: Damon Runyon
Cover artist: criminally uncredited [Frank J. Lieberman]

Condition: 8.5/10
Estimated value: $20

PB158
Best things about this cover:

  • You guys it's just so beautiful. I don't really have much to say. It just evokes a whole era, a magical place and time, as seen through the haze of nostalgia. It's So Soft.
  • The orange is wonderfully bright. These early Pocket Books are rarely this nice, with the colors unfaded and the Permagloss largely intact (just the tiniest bits of pull-away on some of the edges). Not perfectly square, but perfectly tight. Pages are practically bone white. Not sure it's been read at all.
  • That cab!
  • I want to go to Mindy's *right now*.

PB158bc
Best things about this back cover:

  • Master Of The Main Stem! (!) (!?) (!!??)
  • I wonder when "according to Walter Winchell" stopped working.
  • Runyon is such an important popularizer of the colloquial speech and lowbrow slang that dominated mid-century crime fiction. Colorful New York characters. Big False Face! BFF!

Page 123~ (from "Sense of Humor")
"Why," he says, "do not you hear the news about Rosa? She takes the wind on me a couple of months ago for my friend Frankie Ferocious, and is living in an apartment over in Brooklyn, right near his house, although," Joe says, "of course you understand I am telling you this only to answer your question, and not to holler copper on Rosa."
Joe the Joker doesn't want to holler copper because Rosa spends money like nobody's business and Frankie is about to find out how expensive she is. Dames!

~RP

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6 comments:

  1. ukemonJuly 18, 2018 at 3:14 PM

    Damon Runyon - Favorites
    Pocket Books 158
    Cover Artist: Frank J. Lieberman

    ReplyDelete
  2. Patrick MurthaJuly 18, 2018 at 4:16 PM

    I'm loving it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rex ParkerJuly 18, 2018 at 4:17 PM

    Thanks, ukemon

    where's the info from?

    ReplyDelete
  4. ukemonJuly 18, 2018 at 4:52 PM

    It's signed by him! Last name runs vertical up just to the right of the the spine to the left of the Gertrude kangaroo colophon (also designed by Lieberman). Visible on your scan, too.

    Cheers,

    Steve

    ReplyDelete
  5. VictoriaJanuary 30, 2026 at 8:11 AM

    So evidently, people in 1942, when the decade still had eight years to go, thought that the 1940s were going to be known to posterity as "The Roaring Forties". They were wrong,.

    ReplyDelete
  6. ukemonFebruary 10, 2026 at 7:33 PM

    Damon Runyon wrote most of his famous short stories during the late 1920s and early 1930s, particularly after 1929. This collection was published in 1942

    ReplyDelete