Paperback 1105: Suburban High School / George Savage (Beacon B494F)

 Paperback 1105: Beacon B494F (PBO, 1962)

Title: Suburban High School

Author: George Savage

Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 6/10

Value: $12-15

[The Book Den, Santa Barbara, CA (2024)]

Best things about this cover: 

• Suburban kink is a sizable sleaze paperback niche. Kinsey got everyone interested in the actual sex practices of ordinary people, and nothing shouts "ordinary" quite so strongly as the suburbs. Writers had fun imagining that "upstanding citizens," cultural conformists, and scolding moralists were actually horny hypocrites. And their kids, too!
• Her hair is doing very weird and unnatural things. Either that or she fell on a squirrel.
• "Oh Steve, this dead squirrel makes a terrible pillow. I feel sick. Rub my tummy."
• Seems like a Scandal, Sin and Sex curriculum would involve a lot of redundancy. I'd prefer some outdoor activities and maybe even some philosophy: Sin, Sun and Sartre! (if that's not the tagline of some philosophy conference somewhere, then why even be a philosopher?)
• Aside from her bralessness and semi-brazen side-boob, this cover is pretty tame. At first I thought there was some kind of bacchanalia going on in the background, but they're just dancing and roasting marshmallows, I think.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Does this even qualify as "advice?" And is that someone's idea of a "faculty" pun? 
• Hey, Frank Miller is in this? Exciting to get insight into his life pre-Dark Knight Returns.
• "A new teaching position"—is that also a pun!? 
• "Using women as weapons"—so, like battering rams?
• OK, I'm just gonna assume the whole last paragraph is meant to be SHOUTED.
• There is a catastrophic em dash failure in the last line here. This is the kind of "Scandal" that would bother me as a parent. "Yeah, yeah, the teens are having sex, whatever. Let's talk punctuation."

Page 123~

"Wait," I said. "Let me take off your panties."

I made it a ritual. I made taking her panties off a pagan rite that we would always practice. I drew them down slowly, inch by inch, over her hot buttocks."

Sorry, I wanted to go on, but I can't stop laughing at "hot buttocks." It's like if Hot Pockets were shaped like a butt. "Hot Buttocks!"

~RP

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Paperback 1027: The Needs We Share / Rea Michaels (Domino 72-793)

Paperback 1027: Domino Books 72-793 (PBO, 1965)

Title: The Needs We Share
Author: Rea Michaels
Cover artist: photo cover

Condition: 5/10 (terrible stain on back, else 7/10)
Estimated value: $25-30

[Newest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection]

Best things about this cover:

• This is like a half-step away from the cover of, like, a knitting magazine from the same time period. That font! That font color! Those houseplants! Put her in a cardigan and bam—feel the craft work!
• The divorcee on the couch is giving me life! She's like, "Yep, life without Harry is O, K!"
• Miss Bouffant is also amazing. So fierce. "You wanna watch! I don't care, ya ****ing pervs!" The cheapness of that slip, though, is making me very sad. I can almost hear the crappy thick nylon rubbing against, well, everything.
• I love love LOVE the Kinsey-inspired books (they are a significant subgenre of 50s/60s sleaze). Kinsey's peering behind facade of American sex lives (semi-) legitimized readers' natural voyeurism. "I'm reading this ... for science!"

Best things about this back cover:

• Yep, she's great even in isolation like that.
• Oh man, that stain. I think Dolores the divorcee got her cigarette a little too close to her nighttime reading material...
• FIND THE SINNER is soooo tacked-on. It makes no sense, especially after the dramatic final ellipse on the cover copy. Also, was the sinner hiding? Psst ... she's right there.

Page 123~

As far as the eye could see there was whiteness.

Yep, that *does* sound like suburbia.

~RP

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Paperback 797: Anatomy of Seduction / Jud Blaine (Softcover Library B856X)

Paperback 797: Softcover Library B856X (PBO, 1965)

Title: Anatomy of Seduction
Author: Jud Blaine
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• The angle of his head … is the best thing about this cover. "Uh … hi, Mrs. Boobs, can, uh, boobs come out and, uh ... boobs?"
• THAT. Not THE woman. THAT woman. Oh, suburban scandal, I love you so much.
• "Uh, I like your hair … it's like the cotton candy they got at the midway."
• "Uh … thanks … I think it's called 'Members Only' …"
• This should be called "Anatomy of a doorknob" 'cause that is some nice detail there.
• The phrase "teen-age innocence" is hilarious.
• You can choose any pseudonym and you go with "Jud"? I really hope that's short for "Judy." 

Best things about this back cover:

• That's a lot of weight to put on a word normally reserved nowadays for a leg syndrome.
• The whole "filthy suburbanite" genre amuses me no end. "Behind the veneer of middle-class respectability: orgies."
• "Sudden froth of lust"! That's the textual equivalent of the money shot right there.
• If the book scorches my memory … then … fuck, I forgot what I was going to say.

Page 123~

"You want a drink, baby?"
"No, thank you. Nor do you."
He grinned at her. "You'd make a nice, nagging wife."
"I've been a wife to too many men ever to be foolish enough to tie up with one."

Well if she doesn't want that drink, I'll take it.

~RP

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Paperback 437: Substitute Sinners / John Dexter (Sundown Reader 614)

Paperback 437: Sundown Reader SR614 (PBO, 1966)

Title: Substitute Sinners
Author: John Dexter
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• From the author who brought you the klassic "A Thousand Beds" (1967) comes ... this!
  
• "Your regular sinner is out today. I'm your substitute sinner: Charlene."
• Her hair = mastodon tusks
• Love the admiring grin on Joe Handsome Pool.
• So you just walk around holding that towel in place all day?
• Joe emerges from his private pool forest while Angela executes a perfect head-first slide into third base and Charlene holds a tutorial in obi-tying. This is an eclectic and talented bunch. Who knew Esalen could be such fun?

Best things about this back cover:

• I really want to know whose job it was to tourettically shout out pseudo-sexual nonsense phrases for these BOLD! ital. BOLD! back covers. I should have a special tag just for this type of cover. Too bad there's not a Nobel Prize for Unintentionally Goofy Sex Poetry.
• "No one can outfox me from my sex ambush," bragged Chick, nonsensically.

Page 123~

"Suppose I had you hypnotized, gave you a gun, and told you to shoot George. Ninety-nine times out of one hundred, you would refuse the command and either wake up or remain asleep without any action. But if I told you George was a ravenous grizzly bear about to attack you and you family, you would shoot the hell out of him."

At this point, George, who had come to this retreat solely for the promise of outdoor naked hot-tubbing, became understandably worried.

~RP

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Paperback 427: Adultery in Suburbia / Robert Brooks (Midwood 32-866)

Paperback 427: Midwood 32-866 (PBO, 1967)

Title: Adultery in Suburbia
Author: Robert Brooks
Graphic design: Azzato

Yours for: $17


Best things about this cover:

• This title is crying out, begging for a pictorial cover. Maybe I'm supposed to be seeing some kind of funky intercourse in that bathroom-door symbol shenanigans, but I'm not. NOT, I say.
• I want to be a part of this The Affluent Society. It sounds ... affluent. And sexy.
• Kinsey! Sadly, the word "frank" appears nowhere on this book's front or back covers :(

Best things about this back cover:

• Ah, I see we have the requisite "probing deep" claim ... nice.
• Robert Brooks is ruthlessly honest, I tell you. Ruthlessly! You will say "No, don't tell me about the key parties!" and he will shout "Mwahahaha, you can't stop me! Key parties! Hot tubs! Oh the things I will be honest with you about!"
• I love the logic of this back cover: "You will ask yourself 'Can this be true?' and you will have to say Yes because, after all, someone went to the trouble of printing it on paper, which, as we all know, makes things true."
• "You, the intelligent reader..." Oh, you silver-tongued book. Do go on.

Page 123~ [aargh, book is only 122 pages long!; default to p. 23!]

The Monotony of Suburban Living Acts to Make Both Male and Female Restive

That's the title of Chapter 2. Good thing I live in the city itself, and not one of them fancy *suburbs* of Binghamton. I'd hate to be restive.

~RP

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Paperback 331: 5:45 to Suburbia / Vin Packer (Gold Medal s731)

Paperback 331: Gold Medal s731 (PBO, 1958)

Title: 5:45 to Suburbia
Author: Vin Packer (pseud. of Marijane Meaker)
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $50

This copy is SIGNED


Best things about this cover:

• Douchey salesman by day ... vampire by night.
• That is the color red seen only on 1950s/60s paperbacks. Looks like the work of Barye Phillips, but the book gives no credit.
• Love stories of tawdry goings-on in the suburbs. Post-war pop fiction kind of obsessed with the suburbs, as they were relatively new and probably put on a sanitized, happy air that made writers sick—i.e. easy pickins.

Best things about this back cover:

• One of the few back covers that makes me genuinely want to read the book. The language isn't just descriptive—it bounces: his wife's impeccable tweeds, her wicked martini, their daughter's (!) long legs, the phrase "hatchet man," all great. Even the language of addiction in the second paragraph is compelling, and timely—makes Charlie Gibson sound like a different species of Burroughs' "Junky." Mmm, '50s underbelly. Delicious.
• Despite the obvious opening, I'm finding it hard to make any good jokes about the name "Charlie Gibson" (a onetime prominent morning TV host, in case you didn't know).

Vin Packer is Marijane Meaker (also Ann Aldrich, for her explicitly lesbian writing; M.E. Kerr, for her young adult fiction). She is a really compelling literary figure and a very good writer. I recommend her memoir about her relationship with Patricia Highsmith. In doing some research on the Mattachine Society (for a future writing project on a different pulpy literary figure), I came across a bunch of stuff by and about Meaker—a controversial figure among some gay people. Apparently, not all of Meaker's gay characters (and the lesbians she chronicles in her non-fiction books) were "sympathetic" enough for some. Hurray for someone's caring more about giving a realistic and complex picture of humanity rather than sanitizing and enhaloing her characters in order to push a political agenda. I really want to meet this woman, who (last I checked) is still alive. I own close to a dozen of her books, many of them signed (I can only hope the sigs are authentic, as I didn't get them myself).

Page 123~

"Very simple, boss—the child's in love with you."
"Hogwash!" Bruce Cadence snorted. "I'm old enough to be her father."
"That's the point." Keene laughed.
He waved and went out.

~RP

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Paperback 244: Split-Level Love / Carlton Gibbs (Softcover Library B1057S)

Paperback 244: Softcover Library B1057S (2nd, 1967)

Title: Split-Level Love
Author: Carlton Gibbs
Cover artist: uncredited [Ernest Chiriaka ("Darcy")]

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• "This is a rather odd lap dance ma'am ... ma'am ... why are you looking in my ear, ma'am?"
• I wonder what the pink "V" stands for?
• Her lower leg is scary thin.
• Adoption and abortion ... how topical!?
• Carlton Gibbs ... was that the doorman on "Rhoda" or the cousin of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air?

Best things about this back cover:

• Brig Doncaster? Seriously, my paperback collection is killing me with these names! Tell me "Doncaster" doesn't sound like "Dong-caster."
• There's a whole subset of 60s sex paperbacks about "Suburbia" and the goings-on there. Suburbia is to 60s paperbacks what Juvenile Delinquency is to late-50s paperbacks.

Page 123~

She let him divest her, just the same, of the flimsy fluffs he had given her. She trembled at his touch. His was the kind of diabolical male charm a woman could hate and yet become heedlessly intoxicated with. She could stand there loathing the fact that he had taken hundreds of bras off scores of women [pausing ... doing math ...] and yet thrill to his removing hers. She could grow faint when he touched his lips to her taut breast regardless of how many others he had kissed. She could shiver visibly when his hands slid away her final garment although they were far too practiced.

Brig Doncaster, divester of flimsy fluffs and irresistible asshole extraordinaire.

~RP

Paperback 121: Bucks County Report / Irwin Wallach (Tower 43-690)

Paperback 121: Tower 43-690 (1st ptg, 1966)
Title: Bucks County Report
Author: Irwin Wallach
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• "Frankly, Scarlett, this mattress is lumpy"
• For such a hot topic (sex in suburbia) this is a terribly tedious cover. If it weren't for the tepid embrace there on the bed, it would look like a government report of some kind. "Bucks County Report: The Roads Have Been Repaved" ["Yay!"]
• The publication of the Kinsey reports on male and female sexuality in the late 40s and early 50s created a public discourse on sexuality that (ironically?) gave license to sex fiction publishers to promote their work with cover copy appealing to people's alleged scientific / civic interest in the subject. Peyton Place + Kinsey Report => books like this one.

Best things about this back cover:

• Awesome dated vocabulary: "jerkwater"! "squaresville"!
• "... then along came Wilson" - I knew that guy was a perv

Page 123~

Bucks County parties were the easiest for Sam because he did not have to participate beyond having his body in attendance and a glass in his hand. But this particular party held a strangeness for him.

~RP