Paperback 1019: The Primitive / Chester Himes (Signet 1264)

Paperback 1019: Signet 1264 (PBO, 1956)

Title: The Primitive
Author: Chester Himes
Cover artist: [Tony Kokinos] (signature top left)

Condition: 6.5/10
Estimated value: $30

Best things about this cover:

• White lady trying hard not to think about centuries of brutal racism and her own complicity therein ... I assume.
• There's drunk, there's very drunk, and then there's "I only made it half way through taking my shoes off" drunk
• The red of the red shoes is very red against the non-color of everything else. Echoes the title font color. I like.
• This novel was heavily cut for the US audience, which, like, couldn't deal, I guess. It was published right before Himes made the turn into hardboiled crime fiction with his Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones series (so great)

Best things about this back cover:

• The End of a Primitive was the original title of the book (the title used when the book was finally published in unexpurgated versions, 40+ years later)
• So the white woman is just white but the "Negro man" is "embittered"? Normally I don't beg for more adjectives, but come on.
• Van Vechten tryna get cute with that "white heat" shit, I bet. He's a white dude who wrote a book called Ni**er Heaven. A key figure in white people's "discovering" Harlem. I highly recommend Mat Johnson's current comic, Incognegro: Renaissance, which is set in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance and features a Van Vechten-like figure in the first issue. Good stuff.

Page 123~

"Oh, sure," he said, thinking, "I like de big gut, do you like de big gut?"

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 842: The Captive Women / Walter D. Edmonds (Bantam 708)

Paperback 842: Bantam 708 (3rd ptg, 1950)

Title: The Captive Women
Author: Walter D. Edmonds
Cover artist: Denver Gillen

Estimated Value: $8


Best things about this cover:

• Something about "Squat-o" there gives the whole cover a wacky feel. Like this is going to be some kind of domestic comedy. I'm pretty sure he's saying "What is it with dames these days, Fred!?"
• Fred is nodding knowingly. "I know, man. My captive woman keeps maxing out my credit card. I'm like, 'Damn, babe, how many damn pairs of moccasins do you need?'"
• What is Fred gripping? Is it a gun? If so, follow-up: how long were guns back then?

Best things about this back cover:

• $8.64 with tax.
• This is called "The Captive Women" because "Delia's Gone" was taken.
• Does the relative handsomeness of the "buck" mitigate the slavery somehow? I would've guessed 'no.'

Page 123~

While they slept the woman and the girl went through their packs, exclaiming at the worn out moccasins and the mending to be done and showing each other the best pelts.

Fred was right, man. These broads are crazy for moccasins.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 804: The Grass is Singing / Doris Lessing (Bantam 1045)

Paperback 804: Bantam 1045 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: The Grass Is Singing
Author: Doris Lessing
Cover artist: Fletcher Martin

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• OK, there are several remarkable things about this cover, but I'm somehow most struck by the "Painted by" credit! Attribution! Credit! So useful! Why aren't all paperback covers like this!?
• If you want an iconic picture for "The White Gaze," Here You Go!
• Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature, so I assume the writing quality here is a grade or two above "Mandingo."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Mounting tensions" WINK WINK
• "The one sin no white woman in Africa dares" … based on the cover, I'm betting on "Sloth."
• Technically "Brave New World" had already come, twenty years earlier. Still, I love how excited this book is.

Page 123~

Then followed a time of dull misery: not the sharp bouts of unhappiness that were what had attacked her earlier. Now she felt as if she were going soft inside at the core, as if a soft rottenness was attacking her bones.

The horrible days before Boniva.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 567: The Whipping Boy / S.E. Pfoutz (Popular Library 821)

Paperback 567: Popular Library 821 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: The Whipping Boy
Author: S.E. Pfoutz
Cover artist: that guy that did a lot of Popular Library covers in the '50s ... always wore a shirt ...

Yours for: $9

Best things about this cover:

• The tragic stair-falling scene from Mickey Spillane's final novel: "Mike Hammer: The Big Knee Replacement"
• Meanwhile, in the background: "I'd like to cross your color line, baby." "I ... don't know what that means. Please leave." "Oh, alright. Hey, do you think I'm OK to drive? Here, smell my breath, haaaaaaaaaaaah..."
• I feel like the author's name is some kind of code I'm supposed to break.
• This is the most unracial racial cover ever. "Did we say 'color line'? We meant big, bold primary colors—the blue THE, the red WHIPPING ... it's about a boy who likes to make whipped cream. Why do you have to make everything about race?"

Best things about this back cover:

• "I ... I can't decide. Do I stay with midget Vulcan or run off with black Jerry Seinfeld?"
• "A talented young Negro," HA ha. "Wow, you are really good at being Negro."
• Why would you go with "piercingly honest" when "frank" is so much more concise? "Frank" novels should just call themselves "frank" and quit hiding behind these flowery euphemisms. This message brought to you by Proud Frank Americans for Frankness. Thank you.

Page 123~

"Don't get funny with me, lover boy," said the creature, leering. "I know your kind from way back."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 357: Night Train / Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald) (Lion Library LL40)

Paperback 357: Lion Library LL40 (2nd ptg / 1st thus, 1955)

Title: Night Train
Author: Kenneth Millar
Cover artist: Samson Pollen

Yours for: $22


Best things about this cover:

• I think there is a single scene in this book that is set in a jazz club. Why they have completely de-crime-fictionized this cover, I don't know ("A Bold Story of Fierce Desire"??), but I'm glad they did—the painting is fantastic: vibrant and chaotic. You rarely see a black woman in the position of sexy dame on these covers—very nice.
• I like the guy right behind her—the guy you are very likely to miss if you're sucked into either the playing/dancing or the steamy glance between Ms. Bar Lady and Mr. Ne'er-Do-Well. The guy behind her—he's the one I want to know. He's either tailing that guy, or he's just thinking "Really? That guy? She must be working some angle..."
• Love the guy in the foreground with the cigar! He is sooo happy to have that cigar!
• What is up with the letter spacing on the tagline? Letters get closer together as title moves left to right. It's like a 3rd grader wrote it by hand and ran out of room as she approached the right margin
  

Best things about this back cover:

• This is (pretty much) the cover of the original Lion edition of this book (which I own ... hey, wait, I've already blogged it—it's here! Check out the art parallels)
• Ross Macdonald was (understandably) saddled with the "Chandler/Hammett" mantle early on in his career, and despite a period of phenomenal fame (peaking around 1970), he just wasn't the artist either Hammett or Chandler was, and hasn't had their longevity. I know I am in the minority here, but I'm not a big Macdonald fan; I especially don't care for the Lew Archer stuff. Archer's just a smarmy, dull, self-righteous Marlowe. A Not-Marlowe. A Marl-faux. Sadly, he's also the model for virtually every P.I. that came after him.
• There is more than a "trace" of Freud in Macdonald's work; when reading Macdonald, I often feel like I'm reading a novel whose sole purpose is to illustrate some concept from Psychology 101. If I remember correctly, though, this pre-Lew Archer stuff is pretty tight and entertaining.

Page 123~

Mrs. Tessinger was extraordinarily vivacious. Her bosom seemed higher than ever, and her waist tighter.

That's a nice, lecherous eye the narrator has there.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 352: Me An' You / Jay Thomas Caldwell (Lion 220)

Paperback 352: Lion 220 (PBO, 1954)

Title: Me An' You
Author: Jay Thomas Caldwell
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $30


Best things about this front cover:

• "Grrr, Hulk hate ordinary kitchen chair. Prefer mid-century modern aesthetic. Grrrrrr... Hulk crush chair!"
• They promise a "two-fisted Negro," but I can see just the one fist. Rip-off.
• I think the white t-shirt was a late decision. Pretty sure he was originally depicted shirtless, but then censors were like "Dude, we're already pushing the interracial envelope on this one—put some clothes on the guy." Anyway, late-add would explain somewhat the remarkable definition visible even through the shirt.
• I love her bored expression: "What's shaking my chair? Oh, it's you ... I don't suppose you're a big shot yet?"
• Lots of telling details in this one—the liquor, the news headline, the pile of dirty dishes, and of course, the pervading aura of grime.
• I think I remember Robert Polito saying (in his Thompson bio) that Jay Thomas Caldwell was a black writer who died young, possibly in a bank hold-up. But I could be misremembering my details.

Best things about this back cover:

• Why in the world would you even get *on* "the long ladder of bitterness and bleak despair?" I imagine any direction on that thing is a bad one.
• I am a little worried about Irma.

Page 123~ (four pages from end of book)

"People I used to know in the fight game stop me on the street an' say, 'Tommy, I hear you're a preacher now.' Yes, I tell them. I'm workin' for the Lord now."

"AAAAmen!"

"Praise the LOOOrd!"

Well, I did not see that coming.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]