Paperback 1170: Lady Chatterley's Lover / D.H. Lawrence (Signet Classic CW1077)

Paperback 1170: Signet Classic CW1077 (36th (?), n.d. (~late-'60s))

Title: Lady Chatterley's Lover

Author: D.H. Lawrence

Cover artist: Thomas Upshur

Condition: 8/10

Value: $8-10

Best things about this cover: 

• Something about this book (a new acquisition—$1 at a bookstore in New Haven) has brought me back to this blog after a month-long hiatus. I'll let you guess what that something is.
• Sincerely, though, this cover is utterly arresting. Kind of breathtaking. I showed my wife and her only response was a stunned "oh my god." That is a breast that demands to be looked at. I guess you might say that about any naked breast, if you're into breasts, but I'm fascinated by how much mileage this picture gets out of that small, uniform, soft pink disk inside a black semicircle. Total simplicity and economy of design, resulting in something way more evocative and erotic than many, many covers I've seen that are straining much harder after sexual effect. 
• This painting is verging on the abstract. It hints at a kind of yin/yang symbol. There are no distinguishing facial features on the woman besides the smile (which, by suggesting pleasure, adds to the eroticism). The pitch black hair has an enigmatic flow that makes it look like someone in profile (a man?) but it's just an illusion. The design is simple, yet complex and even weird enough to be riveting.
• Somehow one breast is far, far more naked than two. I cannot explain the math. This artist knows that the book he's designing for is a frequently banned book, notorious for its sexual content, but rather than playing it up, he plays it down. Or, rather, he plays it way up precisely by playing it down, eliminating . I'm normally drawn to much more realistic, frequently lurid, and sometimes unintentionally hilarious cover art, but this one really impressed me, from a design perspective.

Best things about this back cover: 

• This is the part where they reassure you that you are holding a serious book of great literary merit and cultural importance. It's also where they let you know that it's got the hot parts put back in (not one but two "unexpurgated"s!). 
• I always say: nothing hotter than legalese. Everyone knows that a blurb from [squints] literary executor Laurence Pollinger is a guarantee of real high-class filth.
• Frieda Lawrence was D.H. Lawrence's widow. She outlived him by a good quarter century (d. 1956)

Page 123~

"How did you come?" she panted.

Wow this book just gets right to it.

~RP

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Paperback 223: The Case of the Midwife Toad / Arthur Koestler (Vintage Books V-823)

Paperback 223: Vintage Books V-823 (1st ptg, 1973)

Title: The Case of the Midwife Toad
Author: Arthur Koestler
Cover artist: [Thomas] Upshur

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• Puffy toad font - mesmerizing
• Mystical Toad Overlord - will he kill us all or lead us to the promised land?
• His (her?) right eye is so disturbing in its protruding bulbousness

Best things about this back cover:

• Wow. Absolutely nothing.
• If you're not going to use all the space on the back cover, at least make the font bigger so people can read the text more easily. Or at least format the text in a compelling way. Sheesh.
• "Perhaps only he could have written it" - this kind of statement never makes any sense to me. Koestler did write it. Why would you sit around wondering who *could have* written something? Like the world was sitting around thinking "Oh, who will write 'The Case of the Midwife Toad?'" No one knew the world needed this book before he wrote it.

Page 123~

Did Kammerer breed water-mating Alytes with hereditary nuptial pads, and did the critical specimen show the pads before it was tampered with?

Intrigue!

~RP