Paperback 1139: Venus Library V-1070-T (PBO, 1972)
Title: Impervious to Pain
Author: David Malcom
Cover artist: photo cover
Condition: 9/10
Value: $25-30
[Newest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection]
- What's the opposite of "sans serif"?
- I can feel that bed cover, as well as those curtains, and it's not pleasant. I'm starting to itch.
- I cannot tell a lie, that is fantastic underwear. Not the boring nightgown—the orange paisleyesque panties. This cover is dead without them. Even the cat o' nine tails wouldn't be able to save it from the overwhelming motel beige.
- The subtitle of this book is "Case Studies in Sado-masochism." Improbably, it looks virtually unread.
Best things about this back cover:
- So much text, much of it deeply troubling. For instance, "slave" and "salve" on the same back cover? My brain hates it. And "moist"!? Worse, "Moist, most," one right after the other. It's like this back cover copy is running its fingernails down the blackboard of my mind.
- This book runs somewhat outside my normal collecting time frame parameters (i.e. it's post-1970), and it is (therefore?) way more explicit, both inside and out, than most of the "sleaze" books I own.
- "Quiver" twice!? I'm telling you: nails + chalkboard.
- "Her moist, most sensitive parts" and "his naked masculinity" are somehow both much sillier and much dirtier-sounding than their more straightforward, less euphemistic counterparts counterparts.
Page 123~
Then she flipped her long almost air-tight skirt over her head, saying, "And if you have trouble breathing down there, I'll like that, too."
Never mind the seemingly impossible logistics of "flipping" an "air-tight skirt" over your head, this is a fantastic line. A colorful detail. A fantastic bit of dialogue. I legitimately laughed out loud.
~RP
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Letterboxd]
