Paperback 1110: Handbook for the Woman Driver / Charlotte Montgomery (Vanguard nn)

 Paperback 1110: Vanguard (unnumbered) (no ed. stated, 1960)

Title: Handbook for the Woman Driver

Author: Charlotte Montgomery

Cover artist: Elizabeth Pollock + [photo cover]

Condition: 7/10

Value: $8

[from a big box of books sent to me by reader "Gail"]

Best things about this cover: 

• I love the idea that women will naturally be wearing fancy driving gloves while driving. Also, that the steering wheel will be a freestanding plate or disc or fencing mask or robot helmet of some kind. Looks more like someone discovering an ancient artifact than someone driving a car.
• She's giving Eleanor Roosevelt. She also looks kinda like my paternal grandmother.
• Phillips 66 had a cool logo. Sincerely.
• I wonder what kind of assumptions this book makes about women drivers. Let's open to a random page and test the waters, shall we? — "Many women have confessed to me (as if it were a secret vice) [... go on ...] that they sing loud and lustily when they're alone in their cars." Thankfully, Mrs. Montgomery approves. She does not approve, however, of picking up hitchhikers or stopping on a deserted road or dressing or acting in any way that might attract "undue attention." I think she wants to say "don't dress like a whore," but that was probably deemed untactful by the editors.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Trop-Artic! For when the weather is ... too ... ar(c)tic?
• Trop-Artic! Not at all awkward and nonsensical! Really surprised it didn't catch on.
• The corporate synergy of Good Housekeeping and Phillips 66 is really something to behold.
• I love (Love!) how they're selling motor oil to women the way they'd sell beauty cream. Because "every woman" wants a "lubricating formula" (!) to help her car look "younger."
• "*A trademark" is a hilarious footnote. Oh, is that what "Trop-Artic" is? I just though it was an ad exec's bad idea.

Page 123~

Paper Play: Ticktacktoe; drawing a figure in sections, turning back the paper each time to hide what's already been drawn; folding a sheet and cutting strips of dolls. A drawing game for older children is played by making a sketch to illustrate a title, song, event, etc. The first to guess correctly wins.

"Paper Play" sounds like a very ... interesting ... driving kink, but this is just part of a long section on "ways to distract your annoying kids on a long automobile excursion." I like how the author basically invents Pictionary here. But that spelling of "Ticktacktoe" is cursed. 

~RP

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Paperback 1101: Slipping Beauty / Jerome Weidman (Avon 322)

 Paperback 1101: Avon 322 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: Slipping Beauty

Author: Jerome Weidman

Cover artist: [Ray Johnson]

Condition: 8/10 (cover kind of warps away from the pages at the corners a bit, but otherwise square and bright)

Value: $15

[The Book Den, Santa Barbara, CA]

Best things about this cover: 

• When you're in the theater with your children and suddenly realize you've misread the marquee... "Mommy, that lady's not sleeping ... mommy ... can I get a cigarette holder?"
• This is really first-rate girl art. I love this dame: sexy, bored, comfortable in her sexy boredness. He does a good job with her body & profile but he does an even better job with her whole Attitude. High-end hardboiled.
• I like the palette on this cover, too. Real cool. The icy blue is unusual, and complements the pinkish lingerie and flesh tones really well.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Loooooove a good author photo, and this one is good. Gotta be smoking, of course, but I love how this is less author photo and more cover adornment. He's *this* close to looking like a logo.
• LOL those *eternal* ellipses in the New York Times quotation. Like the reviewer is thinking of something diplomatic to say and is like "... uh ... meaty? ..."
• "Cataloguer of heels"—if I were Weidman, I'd put that on my business card *immediately*

Page 123~ (from "Everybody Wants to Be a Lady")

Well, my husband Mac, he's the nicest fellah you ever wanna meet and all that, but when it comes to things like this, God bless him, if you don't put the words in his mouth, he don't know what to say.

Ah, to live in a time when people said "fellah" and spelled it with an "h." Glory days. 

~RP

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Paperback 1013: Serenade / James M. Cain (Penguin 621)

Paperback 1013: Penguin 621 (1st ptg, 1947)

Title: Serenade
Author: James M. Cain
Cover artist: jonas

Condition: 8/10 (laminate buckling in places, but perfectly square and tight)
Estimated value: $10-12

Best things about this cover:

• Ferdinand! What happened to you!?
• Love jonas's covers. What they lack in luridness they make up in flat-color mid-century graphic beauty. Somewhere between figurative and abstract painting. Like if Mondrian did cheap paperback cover art. That bull's face is borderline cubist.
• I love her impossible dress, the straps for which appear to start in her armpits
• I also love the weirdly mathematically balanced JAMES and M. CAIN. So weird to isolate middle initial and last name like that, and yet ... five letters on one side, five letters on the other. Makes sense.
• I also love how the expressive jagged lines behind the señorita make her look like she's in a mood.

Best things about this back cover:

• James M. Cain looks like a professor whose enthusiasm for medieval love poetry will never be shared by any of his students.
• "F.P. Adams" is exactly the kind of name you would have to have in order to coneive the phrase "vernacularly dictaphonic."
• Like Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity, this book too was made into a movie. Unlike those movies, it is not famous (though it was directed by Anthony Mann and stars Mario Lanza, Joan Fontaine, and (!) Vincent Price). In the book, the singing protagonist has sex with a (male) impresario, and falls in love with a (female) prostitue. The movie ... did not preserve those plot elements. 

Page 139~ (I haven't even looked at p. 123 because, well, I saw this first and ...)

All of a sudden she broke from me, shoved the dress down from her shoulder, slipped the brassiere and shoved a nipple in my mouth. "Eat. Eat much. Make big toro."
"I know now my whole life comes from there."
"Yes, eat." 

I mean ... does he point when he says "there" or ... ? ... yeah, wow.

~RP

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Paperback 993: The Farm / Louis Bromfield (Signet D1260)

Paperback 993: Signet D1260 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Farm
Author: Louis Bromfield
Cover artist: James Avati

Condition: 8/10
Estimated value: $15-20

Best things about this cover:

• Hay rides have always sounded like hell to me, but this doesn't look so bad.
• This is probably the single hottest Avati cover of all time. Note that 99% of all Avati covers involve people standing motionless and looking sad.
• It really is exquisite as a piece of figurative art—those heads, arms, calves, feet!—and all the peripheral details are rendered with keen-eyed precision as well.

Best things about this back cover:

• Jeez, Omaha World-Herald. Dial it back a notch.
• I'm here for the hot rural action, not "Indian massacres." Come on, Bromfield!
• He looks like Mickey Spillane's yokel cousin.

Page 123~

And for days Johnny was haunted by a vision of Greataunt (sic) Jane clad in a pink union suit with a corset cover of passementerie.

When you don't have internet porn, you make do.

~RP

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Paperback 955: The Way It Is / Curt Flood (Pocket Books 78188)

Paperback 955: Pocket Books 78188 (1st ptg, 1972)

Title: The Way It Is
Author: Curt Flood
Cover artist: photo cover

Estimated value: $20-30
Condition: 7/10

Best things about this cover:

• We now interrupt this cover to bring you the telekinetic powers of Curt Flood!
• It's like Curt willed the ball to stop with his mind. "If you want the game to start again, I have some ... demands."
• Curt Flood with the rarely seen Self-Photobomb!
• This cover seems both ill-conceived (you're blocking the shot!) and genius (Curt Flood will not be denied!)
• Vida Blue's intro is good. Also, Vida Blue is one of the greatest baseball names of all time.

Best things about this back cover:

• Man, people are throwing a lot of shade at Jim Bouton.
• Back when a "sensitive, artistic black man" was apparently some kind of wonder to the NYT...
• Miguel Cabrera's breakfast costs $100,000. All ballplayers should tithe to the Church of St. Flood.

Page 123~

Having established the plan unilaterally, without bargaining of any kind, they felt free to modify it at will. Above all, they felt free to keep the TV and radio money for themselves. This disturbed the players.

~RP

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Paperback 941: Sanctuary (with Requiem for a Nun) / William Faulkner (Signet T1900)

Paperback 941: Signet T1900 (4th ptg, 1st thus, 1961)

Title: Sanctuary (with Requiem for a Nun)
Author: William Faulkner
Cover artist: photo cover

Estimated value: $10-15
Condition: 8/10

Best things about this cover:

• When Lee Remick wants a rewrite, Lee Remick *gets* a rewrite.
• "Sure, it's filth, but it's Nobel-winning filth, so devour it with a clear conscience, dear readers."
•  Not sure who's in the foreground (I like to imagine it's Faulkner), but he's got some grade-A Fear Hand going on. Her hand is more Claw Hand / Slap Hand.

Best things about this back cover:

• Mrrow.
• That description of Temple Drake (great name!) is both sizzling and ultra-vague. "Courts horror" is an awkward phrase to say and look at.
• William Faulkner looks like Peter Sellers playing William Faulkner.

Page 123~

Then he was standing over and she was saying Come on. Touch me. Touch me! You're a coward if you don't. Coward! Coward!

The confused waiter smiled and returned slowly to the safety of the kitchen.

~RP

Paperback 898: Seminole / Theodore Pratt (Gold Medal 635)

Paperback 898: Gold Medal 635 (2nd ptg, 1957)

Title: Seminole
Author: Theodore Pratt
Cover artist: Jack Floherty [signature]

Estimated value: $7-10

Best things about this cover:

• Full frontal is cool if a. the woman is "native" or otherwise of color and b. you airbrush the nipple into virtual nothingness.
• Nothing says "sexy" like a slave auction! Seriously, this cover is infinitely gross.
• Mr. Top Hat Akimbo in the background knows it's gross. He and his bow tie are having none of it.
• If you're wondering whom the auctioneer is pointing at, just wait ...

Best things about this back cover:

• Wraparound!
• Sky looks even more insane back here. It's like Captain Cogitation there is summoning storm clouds with his mind. And his pointing pal is saying "Oooh, that one looks like a bunny."
• This painting is much, much better with the native slave auction cropped out of it.
• Just watched "Key Largo" and I'm pretty sure those two Native Americans that killed are called "The Osceola  Brothers." This Osceola was a leader of the Seminole resistance during the Second Seminole War.
• At least this novel seems to know what the white man is a "marauder."

Page 123~

Indians lay in water with lily pads over their faces to hide from the white soldiers. Seminole children were buried in pits to their heads, which were covered over with palmetto to conceal them.

~RP

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Paperback 841: The Bombshell / Carter Brown (Signet 1767)

Paperback 841: Signet 1767 (1st ptg, 1960)

Title: The Bombshell
Author: Carter Brown
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Estimated value: $8-10


Best things about this cover:

• One of the few crime novels to take place entirely inside a circus tent.
• Either that is a letter-perfect come-hither look or the rabid dog on her head has burrowed deep into her skull and now has full mind-control capabilities.
• That is one hell of a negligee. So … negligible.
• You can tell police dude is confused. "Shoot the thing on her head … or ask her out? Damn it, this job's hard!"
• Title font victory! Total A+.

Best things about this back cover:

• I think I found my new look for 2015. I am only 1/4 kidding. (The 1/4 that contains the cigarette)
• Anagrams to LIE TALLY, which I'm sure is high, 'cause she's a blonde dame, know what I'm sayin'? Also LIT ALLEY, where she buys all her books, and TILE ALLY, as she's known in the bathroom flooring industry.
• carter brown sold 25.5 million books without capital letters in his name so he's not about to start now.

Page 123~

 "Al!" She jumped up and down gleefully. "That thing's a microphone, isn't it?"

"It's whatever you want it to be, baby."

~RP

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Paperback 830: Trinity in Violence / Henry Kane (Avon 618)

Paperback 830: Avon 618 (PBO, 1955)

Title: Trinity in Violence
Author: Henry Kane
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $10-$15


Best things about this cover:

• A great cover mucked up by someone's bright idea of a teaser. "Let's put the first words of the book on the cover! It'll be revolutionary!" "Where are we gonna put them?" "Why … here, right across the bottom half of the dame. Nobody likes dames on covers anyway. It's words, Words they cry for!"
• I feel like she's so pinned in by darkness that we really Need the color from the bottom half of her dress. It honestly takes me several takes, every time I look at this thing, to realize it's a fur over her right shoulder and not some weird dark thing in the foreground blocking my view.
• Also, is the apartment building on fire? If not, why is there thick black smoke around the title?
• She looks an awful lot like my second college girlfriend. My girlfriend tended to wear more clothes and carry fewer guns than this lady, but still … if this lady we're looking at is named "Rosie" (as that damned block of text suggests), then that's another weird connection, as "Rose" was an element of my girlfriend's name.
• There's something quintessential about this cover. Not great on its own, but great at capturing a certain cover type: generic, be-hatted, trenchcoated sap stands in as proxy for reader/viewer. Doesn't matter what he looks like. It matters what She looks like. And it matters that she's trouble.

Best things about this back cover:

• I love the primitive video game-like swarm of armed "A" logos. I just need a Peter Chambers icon and a joystick.
• Henry Kane looks like he wants desperately to escape the photo shoot.
• "The Scandinavian?"

Page 123~

He nudged a pinky-point at his thin mustache.

From his picture, it looks like Henry Kane knows from thin mustaches. Authenticity, thy name is Kane.

~RP

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Paperback 756: The Wild Palms and The Old Man / William Faulkner (Signet S1148)

Paperback 756: Signet S1148 (1st ptg, 1954)

Title: The Wild Palms and The Old Man
Author: William Faulkner
Cover artist: James Avati

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• Contemptuous Annette Bening resents your intrusion into her back-porch reveries.
• James Avati is by far the best boring cover artist of all time.
• There are many nice features to this painting—the expression on her face, the color of her shirt, the … let's call it an 'awning,' her bare feet, the grain in the wood … but still, this is pretty dull as covers go. Maybe they dialed it back out of respect for the Nobel Prize?

Best things about this back cover:

• Yawn.
• You can do better than this, Signet Giant!
• The only part of this back cover that I like is the word "drenched."

Page 123~ (from "The Wild Palms")

The yellow eyes were full on him, she released the bitten lip and as he sprang back toward the bed he heard over the chuckling murmur of the wind the two voices at the front door, the porch—the plump-calved doctor's high, almost shrill, almost breaking, that of the gray gorgon wife cold and level, at a baritone pitch a good deal more masculine than the man's voice, the two of them unorientable because of the wind like the voices of two ghosts quarreling about nothing, he (Wilbourne) hearing them and losing them too in the same instant as he bent over the wide yellow stare in the head which had ceased to roll, above the relaxed bleeding lip.

In case you were wondering what "Faulknerian" meant.

~RP

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