Paperback 834: The Lying Days / Nadine Gordimer (Signet D1237)

Paperback 834: Signet D1237 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Lying Days
Author: Nadine Gordimer
Cover artist: James Avati

Estimated value: No idea (only one copy listed at abebooks, and it's a laughable $276.58) (Real value probably closer to $20)


Best things about this cover:

• Everything I don't like about Avati rolled into a neat, boring ball. Still. Inert. Dull.
• This one is so inert that you are encouraged to see it as a photo, and not a real woman. The flowers laid over the top are a nice touch, but the overall effect of this cover is still snoresville.
• "More Exciting" is not a convincing direct quote.
• OK, her shoulder's kind of hot. And that is generally the best thing I can ever say about an Avati cover: "Kinda hot." He's an artist that likes to paint vaguely sexy situations, but emphasis on "vaguely."

Best things about this back cover:

• Nadine Gordimer would go on to win the Nobel Prize. I believe this is her first novel.
• Her author photo is fantastic.
• I read the first few pages of this just now. Deeply concerned about race, as you might expect from someone writing from deep inside Apartheid-riven South Africa.

Page 123~

Joel, from whose book and whose talk I was even beginning to see that the houses we lived in in Atherton and on the Mine did not make use of space and brightness and air, but, like a woman with bad features and a poor complexion who seeks to distract with curls and paint, had their defects smothered in lace curtains and their dark corners filled with strands of straggling plants which existed for these awkward angles between wall and wall, as one evil exists simply for another.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 21

Title: Too Late the Phalarope (Signet S1290, 1956)
Author: Alan Paton
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: Whatever

• The "phalarope" is a wading bird, and not, as it sounds, a rope made out of penis.
• The background of this cover is an abstract horror show. Total fail.

• Well, N.Y. Herald Tribune, you were half right.
• Publishing imperative: do not, under any circumstances, mention "race" on the cover. "Instead of 'white,' why not try 'most respected'? And for 'black,' consider some version of 'forbidden.'"

Page 123~

And he would not eat in the sun, but in the house; and he would not eat at all, but drank many cups of coffee, and smoked the cigarettes. And again he said, what's the talk amongst the black people, Johannes? But the boy could tell him nothing of account.

~RP

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