Paperback 663: Women / Ed. A. M. Krich (Dell First Edition D3)

Paperback 663: Dell First Edition D3 (PBO, 1953)

Title: Women
Editor: A. M. Krich
Cover artist: Walter Brooks

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• Women—can't live with 'em, can't tear their arms off.
• Women—how to tell a real one from a sculpture.
• Women—baffling us with their arcane "experiences" since the times of the ancient Greeks
• I'm familiar with the green "women" symbol, but I'm having trouble with the mysterious pink thing they've thrown around her neck. Is that a diaphragm?

Best things about this back cover:

• "Prepuberty in Women" seems self-contradictory.
• "The Unmarried" sounds like a horror film.
• "Menopause: It's Scary So Here's A Comforting Euphemism."

Page 123~

Among the Arapesh, the problem is seen not as maintenance of potency but as resistance of seduction by strong positively sexed women. "She will hold your cheeks, you will hold her breasts, your skin will tremble, you will sleep together, she will steal part of your body fluid, later she will give it to the sorcerer and you will die."

Sorry, I'm still giggling at "She will hold your cheeks..."

~RP

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Paperback 29: Dell D209

Paperback 29: Dell D209 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: Paths of Glory
Author: Humphrey Cobb
Cover artist: Walter Brooks

Best things about this cover:

• Ugly, pseudo-abstract expressionist cover - though if you look closely, you can see that there are actually little people in the painting: soldiers scampering up a hill. All the gorgeous cover paintings that go uncredited ... and yet this cover somehow merits an artist credit. Life is unfair.
• Lack of sensationalist cover art, plus 35-cent cover charge, plus blurbs from nearly reputable newspapers, let us know that this is "serious" literature.
• This is our first movie tie-in - a very collectible subset of vintage paperbacks. Though it's nowhere mentioned on the book, Paths of Glory is directed by Stanley Kubrick (one of his first major films - 1957). The novel is not lying when it tells you that the film is "great."

Best things about this back cover:

• The stony mug of Kirk Douglas!
• I wish I knew what "it" was in that blurb by "The Nation" - I'd hammer my students for leaving the referent so ill-defined.

RP