Paperback 1144: Gold Medal 544 (2nd ptg, 1955)
Title: Cassidy's Girl
Author: David Goodis
Cover artist: Uncredited [Owen Kampen]
Condition: 7/10
Value: $40
[The Book Den, Santa Barbara, CA, Aug. 2025]
- "Do these pants make my ass look fat?," Cassidy wondered aloud. Cassidy's girl grunted noncommitally, too absorbed in her blank book to care about her boyfriend's sullen insecurity.
- Everyone here is too rounded and ... globular to be sexy. This includes his shoulder blades and her hair. Her arm looks like it contains no bones. That cannot be a comfortable reading position.
- Did the pagans collide head on with life? Is that why they went extinct?
Best things about this back cover:
- Black on dark green is hard to read. Also, the green makes it look like Cassidy's girl is lying on a billiards table.
- Why bother to do a completely new sketch that is so close to the cover image? Maybe this was the original sketch that formed the basis for the cover painting. Still, they could've done something different here. Without the bed for context, she just looks like she's taken an awkward fall. On a billiards table.
- "Powerful, salty, elemental." Like mussels, or Cassidy's armpit after a night of fighting and drinking and loving.
Page 123~
There was the sound of a chair scraping. Cassidy opened his eyes and saw Spann rising and Pauline rising also. Spann aimed the heel of his palm at Pauline's face and Pauline leaned far back to get away, then came in very fast to collect a handful of Spann's hair. She pulled hard, and Spann opened his mouth wide and screamed without making a sound.
Oh, pagan. I get it now. (I don't get it)
~RP
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Letterboxd]
There's this really weird "secret vertical line" thing going on with the cover of the book that makes it seem like it has a crease in it even though it doesn't. Look down from the I in "Cassidy's Girl", through the I in Goodis, then the weird color-shift swatch on the wall, then the, uh, breast-hip gap on her shift. It all lines up in a way that I find unsettling, and moreso the longer I look at it.
ReplyDeleteOr is my brain just insane?
I didn't see the line until Phil pointed it out, but it's really obvious once you look for it. There's kind of another one with the window frame, his spine and the seam of his pants.
ReplyDeleteHer hair is like Playmobil or Lego hair. His too. Like you could just pop it off and stick it on somebody else.
The sketch on the back is actually a lot better than the finished painting on the front.
ReplyDeleteAlso: THIS IS A GOLD MEDAL BOOK -- and don't you forget it!
How do you "scream without making a sound"? This is especially confusing because the scream apparently happens after the opening of the mouth so there must be some additional (soundless) scream-conveying behavior
ReplyDelete