Paperback 1111: MacFadden 75-116 (1st, 1964)
Title: Every Girl is Entitled to a Husband
Author: Nina Farewell
Cover artist: Roy Doty
Illustrated by: Roy Doty
Condition: 7
Value: $15
[from a big box of books sent to me by reader "Gail"]
- "If you've got what it takes, but no one takes it" is, I have to admit, a good opening line.
- I also love that Buy is italicized. "Stop thumbing through the book and just buy it already! This is a drug store, lady, not a lending library!"
- You can read this cover as a complex metaphor about marriage being simultaneously exalting and stifling. Or you can read it as "Gladys's avant-garde entry in the Ladies Auxiliary cake-decorating contest."
- The cartooning here is perfect, in its perfectly iconic bland suburban white adult couple-ness. The lady actually looks great, and man that nose is perfectly vertical. Something to behold.
Best things about this back cover:
- Love a good survey. Were women supposed to cut along that dotted line and send the survey ... somewhere? Seems like it would be easier to just tear the whole back cover off and send that in.
- Gonna need to see those other 14 other "Pleasures" first, please, thanks.
- "(the book)"—not sure why this bit from the Hartford Courant is making me laugh, but it is. "Sorry, perhaps the referent of 'it' is not totally clear; I am referring, of course, to the book as a whole, thank you for listening to this parenthetical comment."
- I love that whoever "designed" this back cover has the confidence and courage to just go by one name. Copy editor: "OK, so ... Karol what?" Karol: "Just ... Karol! You know, like 'Gowns by Irene' ... 'Design by ... Karol!'" Copy editor: "Uh ... sure, whatever, sounds good."
The illustrations in this book are funny and fascinating, though an awful lot of them seem to involve women threatening some kind of self-harm—in case you thought snagging a man was going to be all fun and games:
Page 123~
Her prestige seems to diminish if she tries in any way to please him, whereas it is enhanced when she behaves as though she has conferred an extraordinary favor by granting him the honor of her company.
Ooh, there's a picture that goes with this one, in case you're wondering what such a couple might look like:
~RP
1 comment:
Looks like an excellent example of tail-end, mid-century cartooning.
It's astonishing how quickly everything about this book would go out of style, both the illustrations and the content. I'd give the art maybe two years, before it would be considered old-fashioned. The subject matter would have its adherents for a good decade, but most of the target audience would probably find it laughable by the end of the 60s.
Post a Comment