Hardcover interlude: Rented Wife / Jack Woodford (Woodford Press, 1947)

Title: Rented Wife (Woodford Press, 1947)
Author: Jack Woodford
Cover artist: "Artist" is a strong word…

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• Man, hardback covers were (generally) sterile compared to those of paperbacks. Her boobs are prominent but without erotic quality. His mustache is thin but without erotic quality. Her hair is, indeed, epic, but again, without erotic quality.
• She does have a pretty decent "fuck-you" look, though.
• "Monica, can get you some more of these venetian blinds. In beige again, yes. That'll be all."

Best things about this back cover:

• This won the 1947 NYC erotic poetry slam.
• "Unmoral" is a word now?
• Memo to all authors—just start your own f'ing press.

Please also check out the great dust jacket flap copy—first, the ultra-ambiguous, super-dull, completely non-erotic plot description…


Then the hyperbolic, charmingly maniacal author description: "almost satanic powers of penetrating observation"???


Page 123~

Nope, going with Page 133, to which I randomly opened, and which contains this improbable bit of prosemanship:

On impulse she got up out of bed. Threw off her pyjamas … Started for the door, aflame with passion at the thought of putting her warm nudity down beside his muscular, hairy male body without further casuistry.

"Got a delivery here, let's see … [checks clipboard] …  looks like some warm nudity?" "Oh, great, we've been expecting that. Just put it down next to the muscular, hairy male body over there." "Alright. You gonna want any casuistry with that?" "No, just a receipt will be fine, thanks."

~RP

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Paperback 742: The Quick Brown Fox / Lawrence Schoonover (Bantam 1178)

Paperback 742: Bantam 1178 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: The Quick Brown Fox
Author: Lawrence Schoonover
Cover artist: Harry Schaare

Yours for: $16


Best things about this cover:

• "Hey, baby, I'm just a quick brown fox looking for a lazy dog … wait, let me rephrase that … oh, man, I shouldn't have drunk All That Alcohol."
• I count five bottles. I assume other people were there, earlier.
• I love this cover so much. So many details. Wreaths! Charts! Rolodexes! Typewriters! 
• I also love her I-could-take-you-or-leave-you expression. Seriously sexy.

Best things about this back cover:

• Gah. Horrible.
• You'll pardon me if I don't think "dry Gibsons, quick seductions and eccentric clients" sound "dreary."
• There is a hole-punch in the shape of an apostrophe at the bottom left of this back cover. I have no idea why.

Page 123~

But lately, Betty said, while Don was drinking so much and getting all these weird and twisted notions about her, the banks had been uncooperative with some of his loans and the finance company had been pressing them about payments on the car. 

Let me get this straight: it's a book about mid-century Madison Avenue and two of the main characters are a couple named "Don" and "Betty"? And "Don was drinking…" Huh. Interesting. Sounds familiar.

~RP

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Paperback 94: The Man from Scotland Yard / David Frome (Pocket Books 153)

Paperback 94: Pocket Books 153 (1st ptg, 1942)

Title: The Man from Scotland Yard
Author: David Frome
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• You can tell this cover was produced before sensationalism (sex and violence) became unstoppable forces of commodification in the paperback industry. This corpse is practically polite. In fact, I think he might just be sleeping after a tough day of pawn-brokering.
• Trench-coated woman! You don't see many of those. I love how incognito she is with her strategically placed umbrella. Is she going to pawn something, or just passing by?
• This book is from 1942, just three years after Pocket Books began. That is, the mass market paperback was exactly three years old when this book came out.
• The painting is subtle, smooth, understated, moody, detailed, elegant. Fantastic and respectable. Makes me sick - where's the action? the blood? the gratuitous partial nudity!?
• Books just held up better in the olden days. This book has been heavily read, but it is square, tight, solid. You could read it a million more times and it wouldn't change its appearance much. Eventually Pocket Books and all paperback producers lowered their quality standards, and books became much more susceptible to decay, fall-apart, and other cheapness-related injuries. I'm telling you, the interior pages on this thing are still Astonishingly white. Red color of the page edges has barely faded. This book may be quaint-looking, but it's tough.
• I love how the author's name is incorporated into the painting itself, made to look like the name of the dead/sleeping guy's pawn shop. That's just beautiful. Too bad that light fixture kind of ruins everything with its potent combination of insectiness and testicularity.
  

~PAGE 123

Leighton pressed the bell on his desk. A callow young man came in and took the paper. The firm had dispensed with the services of women in their offices since an attractive young lady typist had become the senior Mrs. Doubs, stepmother of the two younger Messrs. Doubs, each some ten years her senior.

~RP

Paperback 53: Croydon 57

Paperback 53: Croydon 57 (PBO, 1954)

Title: Love-Crazy Millionaire
Author: Gordon Semple
Cover artist: Bernard Safran


Best things about this cover:

• Wow, this guy really loves boats.
• Are they on a boat? Because they are both oddly listing toward my left.
• She appears to be very drunk - I cannot imagine her speaking in anything but very slurred speech. Also, her hands are quite mannish. And no one that blond should have eyebrows that black.
• That man is one of the grosser-looking men in paperback cover history. He has a weirdly soft baby face with greasy, patchy old-man hair and an oddly hairy and wrinkly neck.
• "Office wife" is a great 1950's concept. Many paperbacks "worry" aloud about this phenomenon.
• Artist's signature right across the back of the chair - Bernard Safran was a very accomplished illustrator and artist. For more on his career, go here.
  

Best things about this back cover:

• Wow, the writing is really, truly horrible.
• I'm going to start saying "Wanna bet, Sue!?" any time I want to sound menacing.
• "Queerly, it intrigued her" - hmmm, now I'm interested.

RP

Paperback 9 - Brandon House 705

Paperback 9: Brandon House 705 (PBO, 1964)

Title: Lesbian Starlet
Author: Tony Trelos
Cover artist: Unknown (there might be the faintest trace of a signature in the very lower left corner, but I can't make it out)

PRICE: SOLD! (4-12-08)


Best things about this cover:

• The title
• The world's least sexy office
• The mannish, silver-haired executive with the vacant stare who looks like a blow-up sex doll - is she taking her own temperature or pointing to some dental problem she's having, because whatever she's doing, she sure as hell isn't smoking
• "I paid for a lap dance, not a desk dance"
• "And thus concludes part 1 of my bra-removal seminar..."

I like trying to imagine what kind of interaction could possibly have led to the moment depicted on the cover. The back cover is a cheap, two-tone close-up of the front cover, with some choice copy:
Brandon House publishers did a lot of lesbian and other sex-themed paperbacks. The lesbian paperback was a major, popular niche market in early paperback fiction, and lesbian paperbacks are now very, very collectible. This is the most valuable book I've featured so far from my collection. Condition and scarcity and desirability are the three main features that determine resale value. This book is scarce and desirable, but there are a few condition problems. Condition here is a VG (Very Good) - there are some scuffs, and it's a bit dingy, but it's almost perfectly square and appears to be unread (no reading crease on the cover near the spine). It's probably worth around $35-40, and I wouldn't part with it for under $50. I do love the trashy, cheap paperbacks, and there are many, many more to come...

RP

The Great Paperback Project - Paperback 5: Pocket Books 833

Paperback 5: Pocket Books 833 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: Of Missing Persons
Author: David Goodis
Cover artist: Ray App

Yours for: $22

"It's OK, baby. Take my hand. I'm a generic non-threatening white man. You've got nothing to worry about..."

Best things about this cover:

• Preposterously upblown skirt, visible bra, fierce heels - that is one hot ledge-walker. She won't get far in those heels, but who cares?
• That guy's tie is sweet. I want one like that.
• The art here is really dynamic - lots of action - and the situation is strange enough to make it really memorable.
• Is he yelling at her? Trying to help her? Showing her his stigmata?
• This book is by David Goodis, one of the most collectible and revered hard-boiled writers of the 50's.

I was able to afford this book only because of its slightly shabby condition - note the many creases, and the "5¢" scribbled in ink in the upper right corner. Still, the cover is vibrant enough, and the book itself solid enough, that I'm really happy with it. I really admire the cover artists who paint in a hyper-realist style, with lots of great little details. I especially like those who can capture action or movement convincingly. My favorite covers of all time tend to be ones where the depicted figures are caught in the middle of some movement.

David Goodis was both superior to and typical of mid-50s crime writers. His writing is outstanding, but his life ... well, its arc was like that of many others. Become a writer, have some success, get lured out to Hollywood, lose your soul, kill yourself. Actually, I'm not sure if he was a suicide, but he died very young. Nope, not suicide. Not exactly. Cirrhosis - so he was a heavy drinker, which also puts him in Good Company, writer-wise. He wrote Down There, the basis for the Truffaut movie "Shoot the Piano Player."

RP