Paperback 985: Runyon First and Last / Damon Runyon (Graphic 30)

Paperback 985: Graphic 30 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: Runyon First and Last
Author: Damon Runyon
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $10-15
Condition: 7/10

Best things about this cover:

• I oppose fur but that is a magnificent fur. That is an ostentatious, almost comically elongated sleeve. And shoulder pad.
• I love how she seems to be admiring Runyon's name while poor Slats pleads spectrally in the background.
• Runyon is a really important early 20c. American newspaperman and short story writer. He records and cultivates a certain hardboiled, slangy, colloquial style that ends up being very influential. You may know him from such things as "Guy & Dolls."

Best things about this back cover:

• Runyonese. I like my ham on rye with extra Runyonese.
• The titles of these stories alone are worth the price of admission. Soupbone Pew!
• "Informal Execution" is such a menacing phrase. I'm guessing that one wasn't made into a musical.

Page 123~ (from "Old New Year's")

On this day everybody swears off doing something or other, generally drinking, which is very easy for most people to swear off on New Year's Day, because generally they feel so tough from welcoming in the New Year that they never wish to see another drink again as long as they live, or anyway until they feel better.

I like that usage of "tough." So much more delicately ambiguous than the straight jab of "hungover."

~RP

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Paperback 652: Mystery on Graveyard Head / Edith Dorian (Berkley Books G-176)

Paperback 652: Berkley Books G-176 (1st ptg, 1958)

Title: Mystery on Graveyard Head
Author: Edith Dorian
Cover artist: Sternberg (?) (sig. not totally legible)

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• I don't know what these kids were doing, but I'm guessing it has something to do with "graveyard head."
• Fear hand! Or "I'm choking" hand, not sure. (see "graveyard head" joke, above)
• You are *terrible* at hiding, Red.
• Look, if you're gonna make out in a freshly-dug gave, maybe wear shoes?
• The tree behind stalker-man is comically evil.

Best things about this back cover:

• Wow, whatever 5th-grader wrote this cover copy is very talented. 
• I used to perform magic under the name "The Mysterious Wiggins."
• "A feeling of tense excitement mounts"! (see "graveyard head" joke, above)

Page 123~

The three on the steps grinned at them cheerfully. "Sit right down," Bart said heartily. "Kick off your shoes and take down your hair. Grab yourself a fistful of brownies. This is 'refugee hall'; a fat lady tramped on Sal's instep."

I was with you there til that bit at the end about the fat lady. Maybe ease up on the fistfuls of brownies, Bart.

~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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