Paperback 431: The Disappearance / Philip Wylie (Cardinal C-40)

Paperback 431: Cardinal Books C-40 (2nd ptg, 1952)

Title: The Disappearance
Author: Philip Wylie
Cover artist: Tom Dunn

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Quiz: Our hero is

a. trying cast the "Disappearance" spell on her dress
b. ordering five beers from the hologram waitress
c. saying "Up top! Don't leave me hanging, Betty!"

• "Suddenly for men there were no women"—that may explain why he's not interested in the advances of this particular "woman": "Stop right there. Pete, I know that's you."

Best things about this back cover:

• There's lots of interesting stuff here, but it all pales and fades before the claim that Philip Wylie is "famed as the exposer of Moms." How do you get *that* job? (outside of the niche porn industry, that is)

Page 123~

In due course a thunderous water wall had poured back upon the gleaming "dent" where Chicago and its environs had been.

This was during the period when Wylie was experimenting with sexual imagery. His wife would later suggest that perhaps "dent" was not as evocative of female genitalia as he thought it was.

~RP

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Paperback 430: Free Woman / Katharine Brush (Dell 10c 18)

Paperback 430: Dell 10c 18 (1st ptg., 1951)

Title: Free Woman
Author: Katharine Brush
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• This cover never fails to make me laugh—it's such a simple, visually succinct statement of the evils of the Career Girl. "Why does mommy hate us, daddy?" "Because she's a selfish harpy, Timmy. All women are. You'll learn."
• Or maybe she's just trying on a new suit at the department suit. "How do I look, dear?" "Well Timmy hates it, right Timmy?" "Something's wrong with my right foot, daddy."
• I like her gloves. A lot. I also like how she's verrrry subtly giving those two the middle finger.
• She is literally looking down her nose at them. "You two—bring the car around."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Jon is not your son. He sprang forth fully formed from my head. Now, bring the car around!"
• "At the height of her success, disaster struck, and she was ruined." Spoiler alert!
• "Like any unruly horse, she was broken by a man..."

Page 23~

She had finished school in June, and in September the first fruits awaited her—she was to be Director of Athletics, spelled that way in capitals, at a fashionable school for girls in Pennsylvania.

Oooh, capital letters. That *is* fashionable.

~RP

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Paperback 429: The Right Bed / Lee Walters (Saber Books SA-14)

Paperback 428: Saber Books SA-14 (unknown ptg & year, orig. 1959)

Title: The Right Bed
Author: Lee Walters
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• "Homosexual demons, I cast thee OUT!"
• Original title: "Sexy Phrenologist"
• Wanda struggled to remember exactly how to treat a choking victim...
• Hey, Bill, if you want to avoid the Twilight Life, maybe you should move out of The Pinkest Apartment Building In the Universe.
• Conservative columnist Bill, humiliated that he'd been caught watching "Maddow," collapsed to the floor. Wanda knew how to save him from the temptations of liberalism—take him to "The Right Bed" (American Flag bed sheets, portrait of Reagan on the ceiling, etc.) and give him a taste of that sweet, sweet missionary action.
• ... and introducing: House Plant!

Best things about this back cover:

• Where's the stuff about Floyd (!) struggling with his sexuality!? I was promised a "twilight life" on the front cover.
• "What did Jill think of all this?" — of all What? The more you read this description, the less coherent it gets. So ... his ambition is realized through her ... and her ambition is him ... so the conflict is ... what? Nothing. This is a short story at best.
• I like how the writer takes his own metaphor literally: "Jill was his key ... With her he would open many doors." Maybe that's what we're seeing on the front cover: after trying repeatedly to stuff Jill into the keyhole, he collapsed in a pile of rage and shame.

Page 123~

Johnson roamed the paths of the party like a stray buffalo [1], big, almost shaggy, a look of massiveness [2] about his broad face.

• [1] "... like a stray buffalo, knocking over hors d'oeuvres and end tables, wondering how he got into a 5th-floor walk-up."
• [2] You cannot have a "look of massiveness." Something is either massive or it's not. "Your face looks strange darling. A bit ... massive." No.

~RP

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Paperback 428: Lesbian Twins / Willi Peters (Vega Books V-2)

Paperback 428: Vega Books V-2 (PBO, 1960)

Title: Lesbian Twins
Author: Willi Peters
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• The title font is amazing—stuck somewhere between Wacky and Horror
• Composition here is also amazing—I especially love that her ass is at his eye-level, and the "Vega Book 50c" logo is like a caption over his head signifying "whoa...!" or "boing!" or "hubba hubba" etc.
• Remember Doublemint's short-lived ad campaign for "Adult Gum?" Me either.
• A book about lesbian twins by someone whose first *and* last names are slang for "penis!?" What are the odds?
• Like I believe that Bill here would find the idea of two hot young twins making out with each other "ugly." His akimbo arms say "well I never ..." but his ass-hungry eyes say something else.

Back cover is just a giant version of that "Vega Book 50c" logo, so we'll go straight to ...

Page 123~

"Bill, would you like to see the picture of the girl Jane lives with?"

The way she said it, speaking it all out unnecessarily [1], I was sure I got her message: Look, Bill, Jane is still a Lesbian [2].

The girl in the picture wore a leather jacket and levis [3] as she straddled her motorcycle.

"Looks more like a man," I couldn't help saying ... [4]

• [1] ??? "The way she said it, using her lips to form a syntactically coherent set of words..."
• [2] Love the capital-L Lesbian. More badass and imposing that way: appropriate considering the girl in question is a biker.
• [3] Capital-L Lesbian good; lower-case l / apostrophe-free levis, less so.
• [4] Pretty sure you could help saying, Bill. Although you do seem awfully mystified by words and the funny things they do, so who knows?

~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 426: Sex and the Armed Services / L.T. Woodward, M.D. (Monarch MB507)

Paperback 426: Monarch MB507 (PBO, 1963)

Title: Sex and the Armed Services
Author: L.T. Woodward, M.D. [pseud. of Robert Silverberg]
Cover artist: Uncredited [Robert Maguire]

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Navy women sleep with sophisticated diplomats, where Army men sleep with French whores.
• I have to say that I am disappointed with the balance here between "Sex" and "the Armed Services." You mean I have to *imagine* the sex? Total ripoff.
• This will sound weird, but the more I look at our two protagonists, the more I like them. They have a distinctly cool look that makes me want to know more about them. I want them to be rivals, scheming for ... something. They would have chemistry, but they would not be a couple. They might have to team up, perhaps using the French whore to pull a scam on the sophisticated diplomat. I'm not sure where the sex comes in, exactly.
• I LOVE these fake sciencey books that the sex publishers put out in the '60s (complete with caduceus / "Human Behavior" logo, Ha ha: "4 out of 5 scienticians agree, our books contain plausible human behavior"). Part of the whole post-Kinsey "Your Right To Know" "studies" of "real" sex lives, allowing adults to unembarrassingly indulge their penchants for voyeurism. I'm pretty sure the sex anecdotes contained therein are entirely fictional.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Code Red, Code Red, Emergency ... I'm gonna have to go lesbian!" Once you go lesbian, you never go back. Or you do, whatever.
• What the hell does "mingle promiscuously" look like? Is that when you grope boobs at a cocktail party? "Can I freshen your drink? How 'bout stick my tongue down your throat? No? OK..."
• LOVE the last sentence, which posits that the military encourages "abnormal" behavior.

Page 123~

The old nurses handled me impersonally, like I was something made of wood, but the very young ones would blush and glance away when their attentions aroused me.

Heh heh. "Wood."

~RP

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Paperback 425: Seeds of Sin / Louis Lorraine (Nightstand Books 1560)

Paperback 425: Nightstand Books 1560 (PBO, 1961)

Title: Seeds of Sin

Author: Louis Lorraine

Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $12

Best things about this cover:

• Sex Survey—Q: Where's your favorite place to make whoopee? A: On the train tracks.
• "... and then her left forearm exploded in a blaze of passion!"
• The Seeds of Sin lead to ... the Dandelion of Death!
• "The floodlights revealed Steve's secret shame: his girlfriend was a Macy's store mannequin!"

Best things about this back cover:

• So that bright light on the front cover must be Mark's "flame-haired wife Liz." Cool superpower.
• "A bevy of women who apparently did not care what they looked or sounded like..." Jeez, what are they doing, rolling around and snorting during the survey? "She's got a weird lisp and spinach in her teeth ... but as long as she's talking dirty ..."
• Another one of these tone-deaf back covers, where the copywriter doesn't understand how English works, where emphasis goes, what sexy is, etc. "... 'Fling At Passion!' It is a sexy phrase, no?" "No. If anything, it evokes orangutans flinging their feces."

Page 123~

He showed Arthur a chart. "This is the chart on sexual satisfaction. Rather an eye-opener, isn't it?"

"Pretty poor performance on their husband's parts, I'd say." Arthur studied it critically, with professional interest.

1. I assume "with professional interest" means "with his hand not [yet] on his cock."

2. "Pretty poor performance on their husband's parts" can be interpreted at least two ways.

~RP

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