Paperback 1054: The Raft / Robert Trumbull (Dell 26)

Paperback 1054: Dell 26 (1st ptg, 1944)

Title: The Raft
Author: Robert Trumbull
Cover artist: George Frederiksen
Back cover artist: Gerald Gregg

Condition: 6.5/10
Estimated value: $10

Best things about this cover:

• Everything above the author's name seems very pleasant. Serene, even. Perhaps, as your eyes move down the page, you can even maintain the illusion that these fellows are just out for a weekend jaunt of fun & sun. But that "DELL WAR BOOK" (a kind of book I can't remember seeing before) drives the more dire context home pretty thoroughly.
• I like early Dell covers, and early covers in general, which are far more tied to abstract expressionism than later, more naturalistic covers (which I also love, obviously)
• I also like the early Dell EYEBALL IN THE KEYHOLE logo. "You don't read Dell Books, Dell Books read you!"

Best things about this back cover:

• What is happening here? Why are they spaced so far apart? Why have their arms fused together? Does the dude in the middle need propping up? Is this some kind of Weekend at Bernie's situation?
• The italicizing concept here is ill-conceived. I know alliteration has its charms, but choose parallel construction every time. 
• War bond ads appeared inside early paperbacks with a great deal of regularity. On the outside of early paperbacks?? Far less so.

Page 123~

He seemed more interested in the boat than in his natural prey.

~RP

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Paperback 914: Enter the Saint / Leslie Charteris (Pocket Books 257)

Paperback 914: Pocket Books 257 (1st ptg, 1944)

Title: Enter the Saint
Author: Leslie Charteris
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $8-12

Best things about this cover:

• Strike a pose.
• The Pocket Books logo went through a lot of versions in the early years. This is one of the more adorable variants.
• I know remarkably little about the Saint, except he was played by Roger Moore on television. There were reruns in syndication on TV when I was a kid. I don't remember a damn thing about them. I had no idea he was known as "The Robin Hood of Modern Crime." I just thought he was a charming cut-rate Bond.

Best things about this back cover.

• It's weird how (relatively) quickly "gay" lost its non-sexual connotation. I was reading "Cotton Comes to Harlem" this week, and Cotton Ed and Grave Digger talk about wanting to get gay, i.e. go out, drink, have fun ... you know: have a gay old time. I wonder when that meaning essentially died, because it has died hard.
• Meet Snake Ganning ... Jane, his wife!
• Piratical!
• This is a war-time book (1944). Pocket Books' whole "Send this book to a boy in the armed forces" thing was a genius marketing strategy. Together with the Armed Services Editions of cheap books, Pocket Books was helping cultivate a huge paperback-buying market for the post-war era.

Page 123~

The removal of the "dope bird" to a quiet cellar where a ruthless interrogation could proceed without interruption.

A sentence ominous in its incompleteness as well as its all-too-common anti-avian rhetoric.

~RP

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Paperback 675: The Lodger / Mrs. Belloc Lowndes (Pocket Books 43)

Paperback 675: Pocket Books 43 (8th ptg, 1944)

Title: The Lodger
Author: Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Love! Wall-to-wall painting, fantastic composition, creepy miasmic haze, exciting font! Creepy over-the-shoulder look, purposeful walk, murder-hand! It's all here in a bright, simple package.
• Love the quaint "Mrs." Look, a lady writer!
• I read this book (this very book) many years ago and enjoyed it. Remarkably modern-feeling, especially for a book that turns 100 this year.

Best things about this back cover:

• See. "Why?" rather than "Who?" None of this whodunnit crap for Mrs. Belloc. This puts the book more in the tradition of noir, and a lot of good contemporary crime fiction, which explores the qualities of criminality and darkness rather than merely offering a puzzle to solve.

Page 123~

"Hark to her now!" Bunting looked at his Ellen with amusement. "Contrary isn't the word for her! But there, I've noticed the last few days that she seemed to be taking that monster's part. That's what comes of being a born total abstainer."

Ellen: Hard on Liquor, Soft on Crime, Wrong for England.

~RP

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Paperback 644: The Talking Clock / Frank Gruber (Penguin 545)

Paperback 644: Penguin 545 (1st ptg, 1944)

Title: The Talking Clock
Author: Frank Gruber
Cover artist: H. Lawrence Hoffman

Yours for: $14


Best things about this cover:

• Very early Penguin. More woodcut than painting. Not terribly exciting, but interesting as a historical curiosity. 
• That's a 'stache variety you rarely see anymore. I'm gonna call it the "Germanic shopkeep."
• This book is really well made. Spine lean and reading crease, but tight as hell, with perfectly even (and white pages). I think production quality might've dipped in future years.
• According to interior inscription, this book was once owned by Laura Burns of 14642 Bringard Drive, Somewhere, U.S.A.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Blurb, schmurb—buy some more of our damned books!"

Page 123~

"Hello, Madigan," he said. "I see the punk's talked to you."
Punk?" exclaimed Johnny. "Why the Lieutenant and I are practically pals. I help him solve his case. The tough ones."
Lieutenant Madigan grunted. "You know what happened in Hillcrest? And you, Mrs. Quisenberry?"
Bonita Quisenberry's face was like old ivory, yellow and hard.

I don't know what's happening here, but I do know this book has a woman named Bonita Quisenberry in it, which is more than enough for me. If I ever met a woman named Bonita Quisenberry, I would immediately ask her to run away with me. Or bake me a pie.

~RP

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Paperback 642: Experiment Perilous / Margaret Carpenter (Pocket Books 278)

Paperback 642: Pocket Books 278 (1st ptg, 1944)

Title: Experiment Perilous
Author: Margaret Carpenter
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• "No. No, I don't approve of these young people at all. Decidedly not."
• Seriously, this is one of the greatest photobombs of all time.
• Experiment Perilous. Old Man Angry. Noun Adjective! Grrrr.

Best things about this back cover:

• 4 cents!? It used to be 3!? I blame Obama.
• Be sure to send the book to a boy, because of course girls can't read so what're they gonna do with it, origami?
• Publishers still working out the kinks in their blurb presentation strategy. "How 'bout one big undifferentiated mass of quotes?" "Sounds good. Run with it!"

Page 123~

She cried as if her heart would break this afternoon, and confessed to me the most extraordinary thing: she is being followed by a man she has never seen before. This has been going on for three months, she said. Nick pooh-poohs the whole thing, and says every pretty girl learns how to manage that sort of thing in her teens. 

"I've stalked pretty girls my whole life," Nick added, "so believe me, I know."

~RP

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Paperback 580: The Black Angel / Cornell Woolrich (Avon Murder Mystery Monthly 27)

Paperback 580: Avon Murder Mystery Monthly 27 (1st ptg, 1944)

Title: The Black Angel
Author: Cornell Woolrich
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $30

Best things about this cover:

• She-Bat!
• I do love Skeleton Warhol.
• This book's kind of beat up, but it's complete, it's intact, and a 1944 Woolrich is a 1944 Woolrich (this was part of a stash of books I pulled out of a coastal Oregon bookstore this past summer—the rest of the stash to be covered in the books that follow)

Best things about this back cover:

• That's a pretty rare Chandler right there. I don't really have anything else to say about this back cover. You can see the foxing and tanning near the spine there ("foxing" and "tanning" being fun words I learned in the process of collecting).

Page 123~

"Don't ever call me that name," I said shakily. "Don't even say it over a second time now to remind yourself what ti was. Don't use it again, Ladd, or I'll — you'll never see me again. Call me any other name, anything you want. Anything but that."

Rejected lyrics from Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al."

~RP

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Paperback 379: How To Win Friends and Influence People / Dale Carnegie (PB 68)

Paperback 378: Pocket Books 68 (26th ptg, 1944)

Title: How to Win Friends and Influence People
Author: Dale Carnegie
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• LOVE the individualized book count number up top (in red). You can see that my copy (beat to hell) is the 26th printing–first printing was just three years earlier.
• This guy looks like a tool. A smug tool. Also, how are his glasses staying on his face?

Best things about this back cover:

• Sorry about the (considerable) soilage.
• This book apparently succeeded by preying on people's (massive) insecurities. There should be some caveat somewhere indicating exceptions for people who are just plain assholes. No amount of book is gonna get that out.
• I love how unrepentantly practical this book is—as if success were simply a recipe.

Also, time, or perhaps a small rodent, has eaten away the corners of the book, giving them a jagged yet neatly rounded appearance.

Page 123~

While we have been waiting for you, Mr. Eastman, I have been admiring your office. I wouldn't mind working myself if I had a room like this to work in. You know I am in the interior-woodworking business myself, and I never saw a more beautiful office in all my life.

This is evidently from the section on Advanced Ass-Kissing.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 6

Title: The Official AAF Guide Book (Pocket Books, 1944)
Author: Uncredited (Forward by H.H. Arnold, Commanding General, Army Air Forces)
Cover artist: Uncredited (tiniest signature ever, but I can't make it out — back cover, right where the clouds meet the clear sky on the left...)

This was published in the summer of '44, when the War was still in full swing, so everything about the war is written in present tense. Tons of photos of war footage, of plane types, of insignias, of shoulder patches, etc. If you are into military history — of if you are the "Ralph" or "Theresa" whose names are written in cursive on the cover— let me know and I'll send this to you. It's kind of fantastic.

Publisher info page indicates that it is a "War Time Book" (strict restrictions on paper usage during the war)

Cover:



Back cover:



Endpapers!:



Title page! (I wonder if "Mother" and "Dad" have anything to do with the "Ralph" and "Theresa" of the cover)



Page 123~

In the AAF, we enter into a partnership with our machines and instruments.

~RP

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Paperback 291: The Maltese Falcon / Dashiell Hammett (Pocket Books 268)

Paperback 291: Pocket Books 268 (1st ptg, 1944)

Title: The Maltese Falcon
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Cover artist: Leo Manso / Stanley Meltzoff

Yours for: Hell no

The following is so self-evidently awesome that I refuse to sully it with my usual commentary:

Here's the original 1944 cover:



And now here's the cover of the DUST JACKET (you heard me) they issued several years later (this image went on to grace the cover of a later Permabooks edition)



Page 123:

"Morning, Sam. Set down and bite an egg." The hotel-detective stared at Spade's temple. "By God, somebody maced you plenty!"

~RP

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