Paperback 853: Anna Becker / Max White (Bantam 830)

Paperback 853: Bantam 830 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: Anna Becker
Author: Max White
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $8-12

Donation to the collection from The Second Reader Bookshop (Buffalo, NY)


Best things about this cover:

• Who can forget Anna Becker's great novel, "Max White"? Or vice versa, I forget.
• This cover raises one (and only one) very important question: Where Can I Get That Lamp!?
• Anna had vowed to protect the Jesus Chair at all costs! ALL COSTS!
• Ew, what is he doing with his right thumb?
• Ew, "torn between fright and desire" is rapist talk, man. "She was shaking and resisting, but … ya know." Gross.

Best things about this back cover:

• So basically it's an exposé of the sexy librarian.
• A "FRANK" exposé! Hell yeah, "frank"!
• Sometimes I think paperbacks came to exist because hardback dust jacket cover art was just So Bad.

Page 123~

So when Harrison said he liked Anna better now, she was not prepared to see what he meant.

I understand, Anna. We all understand. P.S. run.

~RP

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Paperback 598: Mingo Dabney / James Street (Pocket Books 819)

Paperback 598: Pocket Books 819 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: Mingo Dabney
Author: James Street
Cover artist: Harvey Kidder

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• And Mingo was his name. O.
• I believe this is the pose for which the expression "Huzzah!" was invented.
• "Who the hell took my castanets?!? I can't do this dance without my castanets!!!"
• Who's the cat who makes all the hijab-wearin' ladies freak out and the grizzled Hemingway impersonators nod in silent admiration ...? — hint: it's not Shaft.

Best things about this back cover:

• Actor Dabney Coleman was famous for getting drunk at wrap parties and insisting that everyone call him "El Dabney."
• "MINGO DABNEY so fly he turn a saint All Woman."—lost '90s rap lyric
• I would like to thank Pocket Books for (fairly) consistently crediting cover artists.

Page 123~

"Listen, Mr. Carson." Mingo ran his fingers through his hair and his fingers were sticky with sweat. "I'm damn near crazy."

Furthermore, in case you missed it: fingers.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

P.S. Bonus illustration ... author beefcake!

[Street's ahead]

Paperback 401: Louisville Saturday / Margaret Long (Bantam 931)

Paperback 401: Bantam 931 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: Louisville Saturday
Author: Margaret Long
Cover artist: Robert Skemp

Yours for: not for sale


Best things about this cover:

• "Louisville Saturday" being regional slang for a three-way. Not to be confused with a "Louisville Sunday," which is a decidedly sex- and alcohol-free evening of potroast and Lawrence Welk at your in-laws.
• This is the first vintage paperback I ever bought. I walked into a used bookstore in Ann Arbor after having read Robert Polito's "Savage Art" (a bio of Jim Thompson) looking for books that looked like the Amazing paperback originals reproduced in the book. It was somehow a revelation to realize that although I couldn't afford Thompson paperbacks, I could afford thousands and thousands of other books that had what I'd admired in the Thompson books—lurid cover art and sensational cover copy. Addiction set in almost immediately.
• Best thing about this cover—better than the young Robert Mitchum stopping dead in his tracks and double-taking on the we-might-be-hookers/friends/lesbians/sisters duo—is Mitchum's primly hatted lady companion, whose face is cut in half but who still has that unmistakable look of "well, I never" and "hussies!" written all over her (half) face.
• ... In An Army Town?!!! Nooooooo! Not that! (seriously, wtf? Replace "Army" with "Zombie," and maybe the drama would seem called for)
• "Frank!" I opened to a random page and was treated to an extended and oddly detailed description of breast-feeding. . . which is frank. Frankish, anyway.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Sort of," HA ha. High praise! "In that she uses words and writes about human beings, she is Totally Hemingwayesque!"
• Look at Sterling North, getting his early male feminist on!
• If this book was ever "burned" (for any reason other than keeping warm in an emergency), I'll eat my hat.

Page 123~

She was now repelled and hotly attracted by memories of swimming parties [1] and the embarrassing, rough nakedness of gross, coarse bodies suddenly exposed in swimming suits. She wondered that the familiar faces were still the same, with the alarming bodies so bare [2], that these men she knew were so shameless and unaware of their disgusting and appealing ugliness. [3]

1. "Memories of swimming parties"=not where I thought that sentence was going.
2. An allusion, of course, to the phrase that was originally *supposed* to rhyme with "rockets' red glare."
3. Wow ... she is, as they say in Louisville, messed up.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 52: Popular Library G517

Paperback 52: Popular Library G517 (1st ptg, 1961)

Title: A Race of Rebels
Author: Andrew Tully
Cover artist: Mitchell Hooks

Yours For: $8 (SOLD - 4/18/08)


Best things about this cover:

• She has the most orgasmic mouth in (non-porn) paperback history; that, or she is singing.
• Some blurbs are prescient - others ... not so much. "Good as Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms" must surely have been the last think Robert Ruark ever said as a literary critic, or generally credible human being.
• "A Race of Rebels" - Which race? "You know ... brown folks ... live where it's hot ... always getting riled up and killing people ... that race!"
• I like how the rebels are basically ornamentation for our giant, white-hot white couple.
  

Orgasm Mouth: "Honey, we're surrounded by a race of rebels. I'm scared."
Burt Lancaster: "It's OK, we're like giant white gods to them - shut up and kiss me!"

I'm telling you, Nothing on the front or back cover tells you much of anything about where these so-called "rebels" are rebelling. Palm trees suggest the tropics. Maybe Central America. It's like the publishers don't want you to know? I mean ... check out the ambiguity on the back cover copy. It's like Location: Exotic!

• Again, I have to ask: Where Are We?* It's like the publishers know Americans hate politics and can't find countries on maps anyway. Apparently, all the reader wants to know is: will it be "frank"? (where "frank" = "loin-stirring")
• "Frank, blunt, toughly tender" = that's what she said

RP

*Answer: Cuba