Paperback 1168: Pocket Books 385 (2nd ptg, 1946)
Title: The Red Right Hand
Author: Joel Townsley
Cover artist: Uncredited
Condition: 6/10
Value: $4-5
- The "thumb" ... it ... it just ... look, that's not a thumb, is what I'm saying. Look at it in total isolation. It is astonishingly, in every way, not a thumb. The more you look, the more obscene it gets.
- That hand does not look particularly red. Perhaps it is Communist.
- This looks like someone got buried alive in a granary, like in Frank Norris's The Octopus. How did he get buried? Like the cover says, it's "A Mystery."
Best things about this back cover:
- "There was a little man—who got away"—well that's the worst nursery rhyme of all time. Did the little man go to market at least? Come on, give me something.
- St. Erme!? Really? St. [hesitation noise]!? Do you pronounce it "ERMIE?" Forget what the little man did with St. Erme's right hand, what did he do with the rest of the letters in Erme's name?!
- The writing here is terrible. Choppy, awkward. Who are these people? Why do I care? Why is the book talking to me!!? "You'll keep going on excitedly..." Well now I definitely won't. Just to show you that you're not the boss of me.
Page 123~
"You live around here, Dr. Ridder?" he asked me, making coffee.
"Riddle," I said. "No, I live in New York. I'm on my way down from Vermont. I wonder when that car passed me."
"You saw it passing you?"
"No," I said. "I didn't see it."
"And you say you're the Riddler, is that right?" "Just Riddle." "Justin Griddle?" It goes on like this.
~RP
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4 comments:
Okay, I'm just going to say it without attempting to be coy or clever: The thumb looks like a penis. Okay, a slightly deformed penis. Okay, a slightly deformed penis after its owner sat in the bathtub for too long. But a penis nonetheless.
You're right, that's definitely not a thumb.
The rest of the hand is off, too. Try to position your fingers like that. It's impossible. Even if that isn't a thumb.
I know it's come up before, but I just can't figure out what Pocket thought they were doing with those numbers. Were they sequentially numbering every single book that came off the press? It's like a hyper-detailed version of the old McDonald's signs that said "X million sold."
Wow, it's been a while since you've shared a book with such charmless writing. This doesn't even sound like it would be fun to read just for the purpose of mocking it.
"The Red Right Hand" averages four stars on Goodreads, and four stars on Amazon, and appears to have been continually in print since its original publication in 1945. So I believe that we shouldn't judge the book itself from the poor back cover copy of this edition.
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