Title: Laughsville, U.S.A.
Author: Uncredited
Cover artist: George Wilde
Illustrated by: George Wilde
Condition: 6/10
Value: $6
Best things about this cover:
- So much to recoil at here, but tooth asymmetry is haunting me more than I would've expected. That's an odd number of teeth, with one central Tooth. It's very disconcerting.
- "Can you make it look like he has sort of stubby penis growing out of his forehead?" "I ... can, but ..." "And sort of pube-y little tufts of hair, but only above his ears?" "I don't under-..." "Also his eyes should be beady soulless little things." "[Sigh]. And his ears?" "Filthy."
- "Gulps" and "Gags" really giving this book a vibe I'm not sure it's aiming for. Also, wtf is a "gulps" in this context?
- Also, wtf is "pomes" in this context? It's like I'm being asked to imagine a balding middle-aged guy happily choking on small fruit. Truly weird.
Best things about this back cover:
- OMG the faces are somehow more horrific, how, How?
- Dude's face has been forcefully cleaved in two by the Laughsville sign and he's still smiling. Truly demonic.
- I do love a cover that tells you precisely, mathematically, how funny it is. If you're on a low-yuk diet, this book is for you!
Page 123~
I was packing for camp and one pr.Of my socks disappeared 'neath the chr.So I then from my bro.Had to borrow ano.Or my toes and my feet would be br.
Well, I'm making sounds alright, but I'm not sure I'd call them "guffaws."
~RP
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5 comments:
This art feels a good decade older than 1966. I associate this sort of line drawing mostly with commercial art and (oddly) cookbooks of the 50s. It's Scholastic, so they probably weren't paying a whole lot. OTOH, Al Hirschfeld took this style and turned it into something wonderful.
As for "pomes," I think page 123 gave you an example. It's just a hi-larious, knee-slapping way of pronouncing "poem."
I'm thankful that, even at an age when Scholastic Book Club was my primary source of books, I had enough taste to avoid crap like this.
I was much more the Three Investigators and Perplexing Puzzles and Tantalizing Teasers kind of reader.
OMG "poems"!!!!? Would never have considered that.
I wasn't born when this book came out, but 8yo me would probably have liked something like this. Of course then 12yo me would've mocked the hell out of 8yo me, and he would've been right to do it.
RP
I agree, the artwork looks like it's from the fifties, and I strangely love it.
Maybe it's because I have also been collecting old fifties cookbooks and ephemera just for the sketches inside.
Passed on a ton of them before I actually started picking them up....
It's definitely a nostalgia thing, as the current times in which we find ourselves, suck so badly.
Truth be told, it's why I love the old paperbacks as well, and just about everything else I've surrounded myself with.
You know Rex, the thing that most attracted me to this site, was your sardonic take on the covers and content.
You mix sarcasm and wit with a healthy amount of appreciation, while not actually being contemptuous of them.
A fine line indeed.
I believe you are an old soul, born too late, your reverence and veneration for the books attest to that.
Many thanks.
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