Paperback 1010: Georgia Boy / Erskine Caldwell (Signet 760)

Paperback 1010: Signet 760 (5th ptg, 1957)

Title: Georgia Boy
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Cover artist: James Avati (signed, not attributed)
Interior illustrations: Birger Lundquist (attributed on copyright page)

Condition: 8.5/10
Estimated value: $8-12

Best things about this cover:

• Great Girl Art. Godawful Goon Art. I want to CGI that guy off of the cover.
• "Check under your hood, ma'am? [snort]" Seriously make him go away.
• That guy is not a "boy." In fact, I don't see any boys here at all. False advertising!
• Caldwell was the king of "earthy" "bawdy" midcentury rural near-porn. Country folks are freer with their bodies—more like animals—dontcha know. I never got the appeal.
• It's actually quite good art. I'm just not buying the guy at all. He looks uninterested—like he has a tire rotation to get back to.

Best things about this back cover:

• No alloys here! Looking for alloys? Well, keep moving, buster!
• "This reviewer" LOL. "It was a dark time ... personal pronouns were Forbidden!"
• Ah, who could forget PA STROUP? Everyone? Oh, OK.
• "Yardboy"

The best part of this book by far is the interior illustrations. From the copyright page: "The line drawings by Birger Lundquist are reproduced from the Swedish edition of Georgia Boy (Son av Georgia) by permission of the Forum Publishing Company, Stockholm, Sweden." Here are a couple examples (there's one on about every third page!):

 [better...]

[whoa, racy]

Page 123~

"He told me he wasn't married," Lucy told Ma. "He said he was a single man all the time."

"Single man!" Ma yelled.

She got red in the face again and ran to the fireplace for the poker.

Ah, good ole fire poker: a harried Ma's best friend.

~RP

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Paperback 1007: Tragic Ground / Erskine Caldwell (Signet 661)

Paperback 1007: Signet 661 (27th ptg, 1957)

Title: Tragic Ground
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Cover artist: James Avati

Condition: 8/10
Estimated value: $8-10 (weirdly couldn't find this 1957 printing at abebooks)

Best things about this cover:

• That's a hell of a face-mash. And embrace. And wino.
• "Oh, the juvenile delinquents and their dungarees and heavy petting, why, in my day... [glug glug glug] [pass out]"
• I sincerely love her capri pants. And the title font.
• This cover is close to immaculate.

Best things about this back cover:

• [sniff sniff] What's that smell? .... oh, I see you're reading Caldwell. My, that's pungent.
• "Casual ribaldry and haphazard lovemaking" is my new lifestyle ideal.
• What is this, the Adjective Olympics? You can't get past a single damn noun without some adjective going, "Hey, look at me!" I'm surprised it doesn't end with "over 35,000,000 frank and febrile copies."
• LOL that Saturday Review blurb. "Tired of cooked sex? Well have I got the book for you..."

Page 123~

Spence lay partly awake holding his knees against his stomach for warmth and wondering where his pants were.

Pantsless pungency!

~RP

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Paperback 993: The Farm / Louis Bromfield (Signet D1260)

Paperback 993: Signet D1260 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Farm
Author: Louis Bromfield
Cover artist: James Avati

Condition: 8/10
Estimated value: $15-20

Best things about this cover:

• Hay rides have always sounded like hell to me, but this doesn't look so bad.
• This is probably the single hottest Avati cover of all time. Note that 99% of all Avati covers involve people standing motionless and looking sad.
• It really is exquisite as a piece of figurative art—those heads, arms, calves, feet!—and all the peripheral details are rendered with keen-eyed precision as well.

Best things about this back cover:

• Jeez, Omaha World-Herald. Dial it back a notch.
• I'm here for the hot rural action, not "Indian massacres." Come on, Bromfield!
• He looks like Mickey Spillane's yokel cousin.

Page 123~

And for days Johnny was haunted by a vision of Greataunt (sic) Jane clad in a pink union suit with a corset cover of passementerie.

When you don't have internet porn, you make do.

~RP

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Paperback 863: Father and Son / James T. Farrell (Signet D1066)

Paperback 863: Signet D1066 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Father and Son
Author: James T. Farrell
Cover artist: James Avati

Estimated value: $8-10

Best things about this cover:

• This is as dynamic as Avati gets. This is Avati tripping balls. This is Avati's dark twisted fantasy. This is porno-vati. I mean, that one guy's hand is adjacent to that woman's ass. Ass-adjacent! Call the censors.
• Why would you name your kid "A. Stormy Adolescence?" That's just cruel.
• "Hey, lady. Lady! I come bearing snakes … it's a metaphor."
• All main people in Avati paintings are lit like religious figures. Beatific. Haloed in light.
• I do (sort of!) like the way this pictures is posted and pillared into three parts, a triptych, with the salacious stuff happening on the ends, but our primaries still framed in a place of relative innocence in the center.

Best things about this back cover:

• We get it. One's old, one's young. It's called Father and Son, for god's sake. Move along.
• I really want this to be a 500pp. novel (!) about a guy who stops trying to understand his son and just takes him to a whorehouse.
• Unflinching! This novel will not flinch. Tickle it. Pretend you're going to punch it. You'll see.

Page 123~

Father Michael took a cowbell off the window ledge and marched downstairs to ring it.

Sorry, this is all I can think of right now:


~RP

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Paperback 847: The Wine of Astonishment / Martha Gellhorn (Bantam 736)

Paperback 847: Bantam 736 (1st ptg, 1949)

Title: The Wine of Astonishment
Author: Martha Gellhorn
Cover artist: James Avati

Estimated value: $15-20


Best things about this cover:

• Spoiler: he's Jewish. That's "The Secret Within Him."
• "Wine? You served wine, Kathe? How could you? I'm astonished. [portentous 100-yard stare]"
• "Blue chairs … why must the chairs be blue? I'm tired of living my life with blue chairs! Why, when I was a boy, my mother…" "Steve! Oh, Steve, please. I'll paint the chairs. Just … no more stories about your mother, Steve. [sobs]" [end scene].
• Man, Avati drives me nuts. Staid, boring, straining after religiosity. The single most humorless cover artist. Also, sadly one of the most prolific. I associate him more with Signet. Unusual to see him on other imprints (at least in my collection).

Best things about this back cover:

• "Might" (?)
• Wow, that cover copy is straight out of romance novels / two movie promos I saw earlier today. Cheeseball-o-rama.
• Martha Gellhorn was an important war journalist. Also, an ex-Mrs. Hemingway.

Page 123~

"You're a sensible guy, aren't you, Johnny?"
"I'm a good sensible old man."
"Shall I fix you a drink?"
"Sure, let's polish off the bottle and go to bed."

Man. Johnny likes to get to the point.

~RP

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Paperback 834: The Lying Days / Nadine Gordimer (Signet D1237)

Paperback 834: Signet D1237 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Lying Days
Author: Nadine Gordimer
Cover artist: James Avati

Estimated value: No idea (only one copy listed at abebooks, and it's a laughable $276.58) (Real value probably closer to $20)


Best things about this cover:

• Everything I don't like about Avati rolled into a neat, boring ball. Still. Inert. Dull.
• This one is so inert that you are encouraged to see it as a photo, and not a real woman. The flowers laid over the top are a nice touch, but the overall effect of this cover is still snoresville.
• "More Exciting" is not a convincing direct quote.
• OK, her shoulder's kind of hot. And that is generally the best thing I can ever say about an Avati cover: "Kinda hot." He's an artist that likes to paint vaguely sexy situations, but emphasis on "vaguely."

Best things about this back cover:

• Nadine Gordimer would go on to win the Nobel Prize. I believe this is her first novel.
• Her author photo is fantastic.
• I read the first few pages of this just now. Deeply concerned about race, as you might expect from someone writing from deep inside Apartheid-riven South Africa.

Page 123~

Joel, from whose book and whose talk I was even beginning to see that the houses we lived in in Atherton and on the Mine did not make use of space and brightness and air, but, like a woman with bad features and a poor complexion who seeks to distract with curls and paint, had their defects smothered in lace curtains and their dark corners filled with strands of straggling plants which existed for these awkward angles between wall and wall, as one evil exists simply for another.

~RP

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Paperback 756: The Wild Palms and The Old Man / William Faulkner (Signet S1148)

Paperback 756: Signet S1148 (1st ptg, 1954)

Title: The Wild Palms and The Old Man
Author: William Faulkner
Cover artist: James Avati

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• Contemptuous Annette Bening resents your intrusion into her back-porch reveries.
• James Avati is by far the best boring cover artist of all time.
• There are many nice features to this painting—the expression on her face, the color of her shirt, the … let's call it an 'awning,' her bare feet, the grain in the wood … but still, this is pretty dull as covers go. Maybe they dialed it back out of respect for the Nobel Prize?

Best things about this back cover:

• Yawn.
• You can do better than this, Signet Giant!
• The only part of this back cover that I like is the word "drenched."

Page 123~ (from "The Wild Palms")

The yellow eyes were full on him, she released the bitten lip and as he sprang back toward the bed he heard over the chuckling murmur of the wind the two voices at the front door, the porch—the plump-calved doctor's high, almost shrill, almost breaking, that of the gray gorgon wife cold and level, at a baritone pitch a good deal more masculine than the man's voice, the two of them unorientable because of the wind like the voices of two ghosts quarreling about nothing, he (Wilbourne) hearing them and losing them too in the same instant as he bent over the wide yellow stare in the head which had ceased to roll, above the relaxed bleeding lip.

In case you were wondering what "Faulknerian" meant.

~RP

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Paperback 538: Nightmare Alley / William Lindsay Gresham (Signet 1326)

Paperback 538: Signet 1326 (4th ptg, 1956)

Title: Nightmare Alley
Author: William Lindsay Gresham
Cover artist: James Avati

Yours for: $21



Best things about this cover:

• A noir classic. Early editions (Signets, like this one) are pretty rare. New York Review of Books reissued this book a couple years ago.
• "Nightmare Alley, or The Carny's Ennui"
• "I'm so ashamed that Eddie Munster has to see me in this get-up."
• Not just "frank"—"Brutally Frank!" This book is so frank, it hurts my eyeballs.
• No lie, I love her outfit. Pants could be a little lower-waisted, but the bra is a total win.

Best things about this back cover:

Ooh, the rarely seen "Double Frank" paperback. Nice. Whoa, triple ... though that SF Chronicle quote is really just a callback of the front cover copy.

William Lindsay Gresham is not happy with how this photo session is going.

"Magician."

Page 123~

Under that brilliant stare she began to simper and found it difficult to control her hands.

This explains why she's looking away from him and anchoring her hands on the edge of the, let's say, dunk tank.

~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 524: The Farmers Hotel / John O'Hara (Bantam A2203)

Paperback 524: Bantam A2203 (4th ptg [1st thus], 1960)

Title: The Farmers Hotel
Author: John O'Hara
Cover artist: [James Avati]

Yours for: $10

Best things about this cover:

• I love this cover. Specifically, I love the use of text—generously sized and spaced, in gorgeous contrasting white (like the snow it's describing), in a 1/2-cover sized block that abruptly Stops and leaves the lower half quiet as 3am. 
• James Avati is best known for doing Every Damn Cover for Signet for several years, but this is up there with my favorite work of his. I clearly need a "Sexy Staircase" or "Woman Ascending a Staircase" or "Staircase Puts Woman's Ass at Man's Eye-Level" tag. This is not the first. 
• I love how the painting is so still (very Avati), and yet there is subtle motion in both him (rounding the corner) and her (slowly ascending, with a slight but meaningful over-the-shoulder glance).
• The dress is the thing. Magenta pops against the monochromatic brown background, as well as against the creamy V of her upper back. So, to sum up, Love.

Best things about this back cover:

• Less love, though this does make me want to read the book.
• This is the second version of this book that I've featured on this blog.
• "Jerry Mayo and the Pickwick Sisters" would be a Great band name.

Page 23~ (book is only 119pp. long)

The quiet of the room was almost total, but not peaceful.

~RP

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Paperback 383: Sartoris / William Faulkner (Signet Giant S 1032)

Paperback 383: Signet Giant S1032 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Sartoris
Author: William Faulkner
Cover artist: James Avati

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• "God I hate this bomber jacket. Her and her stupid aviator fixation. I keep telling her these went out of style in the late '80s, but ... god if I even look at her I swear I'm going to Snap! And why are those flowers in that stupid round bowl? I distinctly remember putting them in that giant glass pitcher by the bowl of app- ... hey, where are my apples!? My Apples!?"
• I can't believe it's taken over 380 books for me to hit an Avati cover. He's one of the most prolific cover artists of all time. Seems like for about 7 years in there, every Signet cover was his. They are often beautiful, but very stiff and staid. Not dynamic and trashy the way I generally like 'em.

Best things about this back cover:

• His mustache — it's actually the subject of his novel "The Unvanquished." Bet you didn't know that.
• I have read exactly one Faulkner novel in my life: As I Lay Dying. It contained the sentence "My mother is a fish." That is all I remember about that novel. And yet I read every "Simpsons" comic that comes out. Did I mention I have a Ph.D. in literature from a major university?! Erudition!

Page 123~

"Damn ham-handed Hun," he said. "He never could fly anyway. I kept trying to keep him from going up there on that goddam popgun," and he cursed his dead brother savagely. Then he raised his glass again, but halted it halfway to his mouth. "Where in hell did my drink go?"

This actually makes me want to read the book. That so rarely happens with a Page 123.

~RP

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