Paperback 892: Dark Laughter / Sherwood Anderson (Pocket Books 878)

Paperbacks 892: Pocket Books 878 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: Dark Laughter
Author: Sherwood Anderson
Cover artist: Tom Dunn

Estimated value: $15-20

Best things about this cover:

• Her expression is somehow both lascivious and bored. It says "You … sure, you'll do."
• Maybe if you angle your boobs toward him just a little bit more, Lady Chatterley, he'll get the hint.
• The husband … is one of my favorite cover elements of all time. Without him, you've got a pretty typical paperback cover. With him, and his ham-sized pate and his spectacles and his "can't talk, reading" and his vibrant, shlubby boredom, this cover skyrockets to comedy. "What? Sure, fuck him, don't fuck him, whatever. I gotta check my stocks…"
• Reader Michael 5000 sent me this book. Since I hardly ever check my mail at school, I didn't discover this book until very recently. I had, very, very weirdly and coincidentally, checked out Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio that same week. Anyway, Michael sent along a nifty postcard with its own spot-on commentary:

And the back cover:


Best things about this back cover:

• Who wrote that tagline, Douglas Sirk?
• Not "love as few men have ever loved," but "love as few men ever have time to love"—like that's the issue. "Damn my 6pm squash game! I could be LOVING right now, but nooooo…"
• "… when she saw Bruce Dudley  she knew physical desire for the first time." Uh … I challenge. That is simply not a plausible statement.

Page 123~

Being in Rose's apartment that night was, for all the people who had been there, a good deal like walking into a bedroom in which a woman lies naked. They had all felt that.

I really, really wish I … knew what the hell this meant.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 785: O'Mara / Laurence Greene

Paperback 785: Lion 182 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: O'Mara
Author: Laurence Greene
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Drunk guy remembers that one time he was really drunk.
• It is my life's ambition to be a swaggering hellhound. 
• Well that's either "fear hand" or "remembering-breast-feel hand." For womankind's sake, I'm gonna go with "fear hand."
• Any sane cover artist would've shrunk Tipsy McBowtie and blown up the languorous becouched redhead.

Best things about this back cover:

• Fred T. Marsh knows from "unlaydownable." Just ask the ladies.
• Least shocking tagline of all time: "O'MARA WAS A MAN"
• "He was enormous with a woman" — but only with a woman. In the locker room: puny. Hashtag magicpenis.
• FRANK (ly brutal)!!!!! Oh, I've missed you, "frank." It's been a while.

Page 123~

Living in New York through the wettest Prohibition years, she had come to think of intoxication as a generally droll state.

That needs to be a caption underneath a picture of a flapper on the wall of some New York bar. Like, yesterday. Make it happen, NYC!

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 152: Too Many Girls / Don Tracy (Berkley Books G-182)

Paperback 152: Berkley Books G-182 (1st ptg, 1958)
Title: Too Many Girls
Author: Don Tracy
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Her expression! Everything about her face and body language says "I Hate You."
• I believe an oncoming train is about to drive right into this studio
• "OK, you can take five, Ms. Marshall. I'll just lean against the wall here and stare at you creepily while holding my whiskey bottle at a suggestive angle, OK? OK."
• Wait, if he's a newspaper photographer, shouldn't he care "what kind of pictures he took?"

"Steve, can you come in here for a sec."
"Sure boss, what's up?"
"Well, we wanted some shots for the story on the economic crisis..."
"Yeah?"
"Well, this is a photo of two squirrels kissing. And this appears to be a half-eaten sandwich."
"It is ... what's your point?"

Best things about this back cover:

• So he was the guy responsible for the MAGRUDER film ... fascinating.
• This guy is every "hard-boiled" cliché rolled into one, then boiled down to some kind of paste, and then smeared all over the soul of any decent person who comes into contact with him.
• Apparently, you cannot be a "top-notch reporter" and "all woman" simultaneously. You have to do some kind of Clark Kent / Superman switch.
• I like how we're supposed to believe that Elaine turned Ed out instead of vice versa. "You'll be a pimp and like it! [smack!] Take your money, you little bitch! [kick! smack!]"

Page 123~

The girl he'd been with was a tall, dark-haired girl, with a million-dollar build. She was canned-up proper and her eyes were kind of glassy.

She had undoubtedly been reading "The Day the Machines Stopped"

"Canned-up proper" is my new favorite expression

~RP