Paperback 654: Virginia Woolf / Monique Nathan (Grove/Evergreen P34)

Paperback 654: Evergreen Profile Book P34 (PBO, 1961) (trans. from Fr.)

Title: Virginia Woolf
Author: Monique Nathan (trans. Herma Briffault)
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $14


Best things about this cover:

• I got this only because it seemed so unusual—a picture-heavy mass-market paperback bio of a major English author (and not a more likely subject for such a book, such as, say, Shaun Cassidy or Justin Bieber).
• Then again, Grove Press was doing experimental, off-beat stuff all the time.
• "Endpapers" are photos of waves.
• There really are a shit-ton of b&w photos, and a short anthology of Woolf's work at the back.
• Inscription: "For Kay from Mrs. Watson / 1964"; there's a whole novel right there.

Best things about this back cover:

• Bah!

Page 123~

To find it good, lacking fame, to cloak oneself in proud solitude is not always merely a theatrical attitude. 

~RP

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Paperback 561: GI Rights and Army Justice: The Draftee's Guide to Military Life and Law / Robert S. Rivkin (Grove B-258)

Paperback 561: Grove B-258 (1st ptg, 1970)

Title: GI Rights and Army Justice: The Draftee's Guide to Military Life and Law
Author: Robert S. Rivkin
Cover artist: Jules Feiffer

Yours for: $11
Best things about this cover:

• I hope the resolution on this image is good enough for you to see the G.I. being crushed by the title. Huddled up and anxious. What a great Vietnam-era, counterculture book this is.
• Love the Red White and Blue *on black* color scheme—it essentially says "your country is great because it has laws that will protect you even though your country is doing Terrible things in southeast Asia."
• Jules Feiffer! I probably got this book just because the art was by him.
• Grove Press fought really important legal battles against censorship in the '50s and '60s after publishing banned books like "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and "Tropic of Cancer," among others. For more info, see the entertaining 2008 documentary "Obscene."

Best things about this back cover:

• A.C.L.U.—the renegade publisher's best friend.
• "Minus Its Couth" is a strange, fantastic phrase.
• The black cat logo is so super-awesome that I want it on a t-shirt, like, right now.

Page 123~

However, treason may be committed only in time of a declared war and must involve something more than merely expression.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]