Paperback 1152: Murder on the Links / Agatha Christie (Dell 454)

Paperback 1152: Dell 454 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: Murder on the Links

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Al Brulé

Condition: 7/10    

Value: $10

Best things about this cover: 

• I'm sorry but the freakiest thing about this cover isn't Poirot standing in the doorway, it's whatever that get-up is that she's got on, holy cow.
• Carhop? Ballerina? Working as a waitress in a cocktail bar?
• Those are the gapingest fishnets I ever did see. Reasonable-sized fish could escape through those holes.
• Classic Fear Hand! Or else she's telling Poirot, "Just give me five minutes, you impatient Walloon!"
• In other news, I think 2026 might be My Christie Year. I know a year isn't nearly enough to read all her novels, but I'm hoping maybe I can polish off a dozen, at least.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Mapback!! Paperback design peaked with the mapback. All downhill since then. Every book should have a map on the back. If I started a publishing co., this would be the one and possibly only thing I cared about.
• Look at the detail. Tiny cabanas and beach chairs and umbrellas and everything.
• LOL "Bench." Thanks, map!
• Love the perspective on this one, with Calais visible in the far distance. And clouds! It's lovely, really.
• "Copes" is a weird word to describe what Poirot does. He's solving a case, not surviving a week-end with his in-laws.

Page 123~

    But at that moment a stir and bustle was heard outside, and our old friend, the examining magistrate, accompanied by his clerk and M. Bex, with the doctor behind them, came bustling in.

OK, a couple things. First, M. Bex, cool name. Second, was there no editor to say "absolutely not" to the repetition of "bustle"? "Bustling" almost seems like an intentional comical callback to "stir and bustle," but if that were so, I'd expect all the people to come "stirring and bustling in." "Bustling" on its own gives the appearance of laziness (both authorial and editorial).

~RP

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Paperback 1091: A Hasty Bunch / Robert McAlmon (Popular 445-04314)

 Paperback 1091: Popular 445-04314 (1st, ~1977)

Title: A Hasty Bunch    

Author: Robert McAlmon

Cover artist: [Uncredited]

Condition: 9

Value: $20

Best things about this cover: 

• Look, full disclosure, I have never done acid, but this is what I imagine the world looks like. Kind of a pleasant psychedelic jumble with rainbow streaks. Love the horizontal lines coming out the back of the main guy's head, and then running through the entire middle of the painting. Completely unnaturalistic and Of The Time (the '70s). My favorite figure is the guy on the far right, who looks kinda like if the Joker were a cruise director.
• The typewriter, equally great, but equally disorienting, in its own way. The keyboard makes sense to a point but somewhere east of the "F" key things start to buckle and by the time you get all the way to the right its a monstrous free-for-all. Oh, I'm not realizing that what I'm seeing is a hand hovering over the keys on the right side. Who Types Like That!?
• I got this book solely because of the cover. I didn't start out collecting anything from the '70s, but, well, time has passed (30 years next year since I started my collection), and the '70s are now fair game, especially when a book is in near-perfect condition and just sitting there on the $1 shelf.
• Sometime in the '70s, Southern Illinois UP reprinted some long out-of-print American books, and then ended up partnering with Popular Library here to release a number of them as mass-market paperbacks: their Lost American Fiction Series. This book is part of that series. There are 15 other books listed, with intriguing titles like THE PROFESSORS LIKE VODKA, CUBICAL CITY, and THEY DON'T DANCE MUCH. I am ... curious. This particular book has an afterword by writer Kay Boyle. Here's the full list of everything Southern Illinois Press brought back.
• I'm also curious about this cover artist, whom I love, and whose name I don't know. I believe he's also the artist on this early-'70s Bantam cover:

[You can see the resemblance, I hope. If you know who it is, kindly holler.]

And now the back cover...

Best things about this back cover: 

• Telling it how it really is and especially "sexual candor" are always big selling points for paperbacks. Not just truth, but (as the front cover says) "naked truth." What fun is the truth if it's wearing clothes. People want stuff that's sexily truthful. Hornily honest. In a word: frank. (I wish that word were somewhere on these book covers—my favorite cover copy euphemism; been a while since I've seen it)
• This book was originally published in 1922, and even then it was barely published at all: "Reprint of a Contact Press edition privately printed by the author in Dijon, 1922."
• This books is a collection of short stories by an ex-pat who apparently hung with Hemingway and Joyce. "Prophetic genius"? That is a big claim. Let's see what p. 123 has to say: 

Page 123~ (from "A Business Family")

"It doesn't do a place any good to have a person die in it. We ought to have insisted on her being taken to a sanatorium."

Mrs. Sturgeon runs the "Rest an Hour Kosher yearround hotel," and one of her guests, Mrs. Davis, has just done her the great disservice of dying in her establishment. Hugely inconvenient, the dead.

~RP

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Paperbacks 705 and 706: Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand / La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque / by Anatole France (Livres de Poche 873 and 481)

Don't really have anything to say about these, but they're technically in my collection, and the illustrations are quite beautiful in their way (esp. the "Cyrano" cover), so, here you go—

Paperback 705: Livre de Poche 873 (n.d.) (ca. mid-60s)

Title: Cyrano de Bergerac
Author: Edmond Rostand
Cover artist: Uncredited (signature not legible to me)

Yours for: $12

***

Paperback 706: Livre de Poche 481 (n.d.) (ca. mid-60s)

Title: La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque
Author: Anatole France
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $10



~RP

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Paperback 527: Arch of Triumph / Erich Maria Remarque (Signet S796)

Paperback 527: Signet S796 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: Arch of Triumph
Author: Erich Maria Remarque
Cover artist: James Avati

Yours for: $6

Best things about this cover:

• Now *this* is what an Avati cover typically looks like. A set piece. Still life with moody people. There's something almost religious about the tone of the paintings. This one is a very miniature Last Supper, if the Last Supper had consisted of wine, coffee, cigarettes, moody introspection, and distant staring.
• Figures even have very faint haloes of light—grime-colored haloes.
• What's happening beneath the table? Is he on pillows? Sitting crosslegged? Perspective seems slightly off to me.

Best things about this back cover:

• NOBODY CROSSES ERICH MARIA REMARQUE! NOBODY!
• ERICH MARIA REMARQUE WILL HAVE HIS REVENGE!
• ERICH MARIA REMARQUE CAN READ YOUR MIND!
• Seriously, that is one freaky author photo.

Page 123~

He got up and began to dress. One must remain independent. Everything began with small dependencies. One did not notice them much. And suddenly one was entangled in the net of habit. Habit for which many names existed—love was one of them. One should not grow accustomed to anything. Not even to a body.

Not a fan of the long sentences. I like. I'm mentally underlining "entangled in the net of habit," which is a useful and elegant metaphor.

~RP

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Paperback 486: Falcons of France / Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall (Monarch 141)

Paperback 486: Monarch Books 141 (1st ptg, 1959)

Title: Falcons of France
Author: Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $8

Best things about this cover:

• Is this guy going to shoot down the enemy plane or make love to it? Dude is primping. He just needs a bottle of Courvoisier: "Ma chérie, you are about to feel my love guns ..."
• Some of Target's early marketing campaigns were more successful than others.

Best things about this back cover:

• Fokkers!
• Spads!
• Atlantic Bookshelf writes the kind of criticism that sounds profound but is actually completely empty. "Living and consequently better?" "Better ..." than? Than what!? Fokkers!

Page 123~

"Who's Papa Gouraud going to kiss?"

"Oh, quite a lot of you. Here's the list; you can read it for yourselves."

I don't even want to know.

~RP

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Paperback 467: Women's Barracks / Tereska Torres (Gold Medal 132)

Paperback 467: Gold Medal 132 (PBO, 1950)

Title: Women's Barracks
Author: Tereska Torres
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: $20

Best things about this cover:

• Ah, the standard military-issue pink bra. Classic.
• Hell yeah "FRANK!"
• This book is pretty famous. Per wikipedia: "The first paperback to address a lesbian relationship was published as early as 1950 with Women's Barracks by Tereska Torres, published by Gold Medal Books. The story was fictionalized account of Torres' experiences in the Free French Forces in London during World War II. Women's Barracks sold 4 million copies and was selected in 1952 to become an example of how paperback books were promoting moral degeneracy, by the House Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials."
• I'm kind of in love with the blonde in the dead center background. She looks tough as hell. Doesn't even bother taking the cigarette out of her mouth to put her clothes on. No time for googly eyes in the locker room — those Krauts aren't going to kill themselves, ladies!
• I also love the lady in uniform, sizing up her prey: "I'm gonna eat you like an after-dinner mint, sweetheart."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Where are the *normal* emotional outlets? All I see are these weird European jobs. Anybody got a converter?"
• "Revealment" is a real word, but it still hurts.

Page 123~

Mickey tried to give the men the eye, as though to reassure them that she was a real woman; but Petit had installed herself directly in front of us, at a little table, so there could be no side flirtation.

"Eyes front, bitches!"

~RP

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Paperback 424: K.O. Technique / Peter Randa (Editions Fleuve Noir 424)

Paperback 424: Editions "Fleuve Noir" 424 (PBO? 1964?)

Title: K.O. Technique
Author: Peter Randa
Cover artist: [Michel Gourdon]

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• "My K.O. Technique, c'est Magnifique!"
• Took me a while to realize "technique" here was "technical," as in "TKO"
• Randa was an exceedingly prolific French crime and sci-fi writer of the mid-20th century. There is apparently an illustrated edition of this book out there ... somewhere.
• Despite its lack of boobs and guns, I kinda like this cover. Unusually soft tones. Old-timey boxing glove and old-timey money. It's pretty, dark, and retro all at the same time.
• "Fleuve Noir" = "black river"

Best things about this back cover:

• I can't believe that by the mid-60s, the French weren't better at back-cover come-ons than this. It's so ... polite. And formal. Why In The World Should I Read "Pascaline," Frenchy? What's it about!? Try harder!

Page 123~

Je comprends maintenant pourquoi on a tiré sur toi.

[Now I understand why they shot at you.]

"I mean, I've only known you two minutes and I already want to strangle you a little."

~RP

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Paperback 343: The Mesh / Lucie Marchal (Bantam A1923)

Paperback 323: Bantam A1923 (1st new Bantam ptg, 1959)

Title: The Mesh
Author: Lucie Marchal
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: Not for sale (one of three 'new' books I got from Doug Peterson this past weekend)

Best things about this cover:

• "Strange," "hidden," "forbidden" ... there's a reason it won the "LES Lettres Françaises" prize!
• Love the title font. Ambivalent about the colors. Also, why aren't these telegenic French lesbians wearing mesh? I was promised the mesh, I want to see the mesh.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Inbred!?"—jeez, nice metaphor.
• There's nothing lesbians like more than a good "psychological probing." Oh, and "Balzac."

Page 123~

As long as I live I shall never forget the sight I beheld when I opened the bathroom door, a sight which even today I do not know whether to call obscene or pathetic, but which I know was the start of the subsequent profound change in my whole outlook and my life.

The "sight" involves a topless woman washing a dog. Dum dum DUM!

~RP

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Paperback 220: Frenchie / Aaron Bell (Kozy Books K171)

Make-Your-Own-Commentary Experiment, Part IV - add your thoughts on this book in the "Comments" section (man, I am so jealous of you guys right now - you have no idea how hard it is to hold off from commenting right now)
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Paperback 220: Kozy Books K171 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Frenchie
Author: Aaron Bell
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $18



Page 123~

"There are no others, John. Just you, and I, and my fiance [sic]."

"Your fiance [sic]?" said Robertson, stunned at the news.

"Why not? I have no romantic ties with anyone else. That is. [sic] I don't think I have."

~RP