Paperback 458: Gutter Gang / Jay de Bekker (Beacon Books B108)

Paperback 458: Beacon Books B158 (PBO, 1954)

Title: Gutter Gang
Author: Jay de Bekker
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• "Psst. Hey, Billy, you gonna hit that?" "Shut up, guys, that's my mom!"
• "Billy, you come home right now and do your chores! And take that cigarette out of your mouth this instant!" "Aw, mom...! You're makin' me look uncool in front of the guys..."
• Art director had only one note: "Grimier."
• I love '50s paranoia about JD (Juvenile Delinquency). I don't know who Norman Anthony is (whoa, I've said that before ...), but I'm sure he was hysterical.

Best things about this back cover:

• Well, when you have your midnight orgies in the parking lot of the A&P, that'll happen.
• "Sponsors"=not the word I was expecting. "Hey girls, let's all go to AA!" "Neato!"
• "B- B- B- Benny's name is Lesk!"
• Those poor, poor kids. Getting high, fucking ... I really pity them.
• This book has chapters with titles like "Muggin'," "Chicken," "Hot Gin," and, of course, "Chivalry"

Page 123~ (cheating: p. 122)

I ask him does he live with this folks, and he says he has a mother and a sister but no real father. He said he was a bastard, a real bastard."

I like how she talks about bastards like they were astronauts or yetis.

~RP

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Paperback 372: Male Virgin / Jack Woodford & John B. Thompson (Uni Books 67)

Paperback 372: Uni Books 67 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Male Virgin
Author: Jack Woodford & John B. Thompson
Cover artist: Bernard Safran

Yours for: $14


Best things about this cover:

• "Frank!"
• Who the hell is Norman Anthony and does he think Dr. Kinsey was a softcore novelist?
• I'd like this cover a hell of a lot better without that white strip across the bottom.
• Nothing but nothing about this cover says "Male Virgin." It doesn't say "Male." and it sure doesn't say "Virgin."
• Bernard Safran is an accomplished cover artist. Somehow surprised to see his work on a book from a publisher as marginal as this one.

Best things about this back cover:

• But... "socks" is already plural for "socks."
  
• Shouldn't the ellipsis be on the *other* side of "Until"?
• "With the accent on the sap"—that's actually pretty sweet.
• "MALE VIRGIN is laid in New Orleans..." — well, thanks for giving away the ending.

Page 123~

"In the conventional marriage, there is a lot of mumbo-jumbo ritual which does not in itself constitute a glue binding the principals together. Instead, it provides them both with ammunition which on innumerable occasions has been hurled back and forth in bitterness and recrimination."

This page is actually painfully sincere garbage about what marriage really ought to be about. It's practically the last page of the book. Also, this book has many passages which have been painstakingly underlined, as if someone was actually *studying* it for a test, or wisdom, or something equally improbable / unfathomable.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]