Paperback 916: In a Lonely Place / Dorothy B. Hughes (Carroll & Graf nn)

Paperback 916: Carroll & Graf (unnumbered) (1st thus, 1984)

Title: In a Lonely Place
Author: Dorothy B. Hughes
Cover artist: [movie stills] [colorized!]

Estimated value: $25 (prices All over map on this ... up to $136???!)

Best things about this cover:

• Not really in my main collection. More ... collection-adjacent. But it's Dorothy Hughes and it's got film noir stills on the cover and its *immaculate*, so I'm throwing it in.
• Library Sale FTW!
• If you ever thought Bogie would be sexier with cobalt contacts and pink lip gloss: here you go!

Best things about this back cover:

• Nothing to see here, except the comically phallic name of DIX STEELE.
• I do like the font on the title, actually. Monumental.

Page 123~

She hadn't been to bed!

Egads!

~RP

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Paperback 792: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly / Joe Millard (Award Western AQ1495)

Paperback 792: Award Western AQ1495 (4th ptg, 1975)

Title: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Author: Joe Millard
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Man, my brain really, Really wants the Oxford comma there.
• This cover manages to be plain vanilla and superbadass simultaneously.
• There should be a word for this style of cover art (prevalent in '60s and '70s) where different elements are montaged into one monstrous blob / human pyramid.
• Facial expressions here are all fantastic, especially on about-to-be-hanged guy.

Best things about this back cover:

• Aha, Tuco! So *that's* where "Breaking Bad" got it. Plagiarism!!
• Oh, Tuco. Why don't you come to your senses? You been out riding fences for so long now.
• This description is making me want to pull this movie out and watch it right now. My morning *is* kind of wide open …

Page 123~

Tuco lifted his own gun out of the concealing suds and shot him precisely through the adam's apple.

"When you're going to shoot somebody," he said coldly to the twitching figure on the floor, "shoot him. Don't stand around trying to talk a man to death."

Oh yeah, I'm definitely watching this Right Now.

~RP

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Paperback 728: Duel in the Sun / Niven Busch (Popular Library 102)

Paperback 728: Popular Library 102 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: Duel in the Sun
Author: Niven Busch
Cover artist: photo cover (mostly)

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Jennifer Jones manages to make armpit-sniffing look pretty sexy.
• Joseph Cotten does not look "lusty." He looks "lank" and "weird." (Upon further review, that looks more like Peck than Cotten)
• This hybrid photo/graphic cover is strange, though it does convey "sun-drenched" pretty well.
• I believe this was a controversial film in terms of its tawdriness. Ah, here we go—per wikipedia: "The film received poor reviews, however, and was highly controversial due to its sexual content and to Selznick's real-life relationship with Jones, which broke up both of their marriages."

Best things about this back cover:

• Just … nothing. 
• Wait, I take that back. "Lewt McCanles" is a pretty great/awful name.
• Also, that's pretty high praise from Cain. 

Page 123~

They rode for a couple of hours after dark and when they camped Coz wouldn't let Lewt light a fire. They were uncomfortable that night—thirsty and sore, and Lewt felt sick and couldn't eat the jerky Coz had brought along. 

I'm sure there is some very thick sexual tension here — if only I could understand all this coded language.

~RP

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Paperback 715: TCOT Perjured Parrot / Erle Stanley Gardner (Cardinal C-379)

Paperback 715: Cardinal C-379 (1st ptg, 1959)

Title: The Case of the Perjured Parrot
Author: Erle Stanley Gardner
Cover artist: Ric Grasso

Yours for: $8


Best things about this back cover:

• Woman distraught over loss of parrot attempts suicide by costume jewelry, gets tired, quits.
• "Maybe if I just lean here sultrily, my parrot will just fly back in the window."
• I unironically love her dress.

Best things about this back cover:

• Wait, I can't see Perry, WHERE'S PERRY!? Oh, there he is. Phew. Thanks, Giant Red Arrow.
• Not often you see the phrase "collection of guns at the public library." At least not where I'm from.
• Remember when people watched scripted television on Saturdays!? Good times.

Page 123~

"You're putting me in a very difficult position, Mason," Bolding said irritably.
Mason's voice showed surprise. "I am? Why, I thought you'd put yourself in it."

Perry Mason, Smug Dickhead-at-Law

~RP

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P.S. This is one of 97 paperbacks I bought yesterday at the University Book Sale. "Bingeing" doesn't really get at it.

Paperback 374: The Making of Star Trek / Stephen E. Whitfield & Gene Roddenberry (Ballantine 73004)

Paperback 374: Ballantine Books 73004 (PBO, 1968)

Title: The Making of Star Trek
Authors: Stephen E. Whitfield & Gene Roddenberry
Cover artist: photos

Yours for: [SOLD! 12-5-10]


Best things about this cover:

• If I were a Star Trek fan, I would be geeking out so hard over this very cool paperback original
• That Enterprise is absurdly model-kit-looking in this photo. Maybe that's the point? "How it works!—we make cheap-ass models and use trick photography, suckers."
• Further, "How it works"? I like how it implies that the tech is real.
• Those are two handsome spacemen.

Best things about this back cover:

• A "biography" of a TV show! Printed while said show was still on the air. Pretty visionary / ballsy.
• Seriously, this back cover isn't lying. This book is Thick and chock full of photos, internal memos, a miniature episode guide, and a chapter entitled "Whither Star Trek?"! Oh, and whoever owned this book originally was a megageek, as there are tiny clipped-out TV Guide epsiode summaries taped and/or paperclipped into the episode guide section. Also, this section is annotated in some kind of code.

Page 123~

When the first screening was over, the general reaction from the people in the room was, "This is the most fantastic thing we've ever seen."

~RP

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Paperback 373: Bewitched / Al Hine (Dell 0551)

Paperback 373: Dell 0551 (PBO, 1965)

Title: Bewitched
Author: Al Hine
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: [SOLD 11-28-10]


Best things about this cover:

• Big crush on Elizabeth Montgomery. Big big crush. Love this show, esp. Agnes Moorehead as Endora.
• Sexy witch. Wish the pic were bigger. Stupid text.
• "Sexy-hexy" is an adjectival form that I really would like to see more of.
• I want to tell the cover artist "she's not that kind of witch," but she's kind of hot as "that kind of witch," so I'm torn.
• AL HINE anagrams to INHALE.

Best things about this back cover:

• I love how the opening line suggests that they were having out-of-this-world sex.
• "In book form," HA ha.
• "Over-hexed"—OK, you've maxed out the pun card.
• This book sounds much saucier than the TV show.
• Is the blurb for the TV show or the adaptation? Moreover, wtf is the "Philadelphia Bulletin?" Is that like the "Springfield Shopper?"

Page 123~

"Poor man wants a cigarette," Bertha said. "Give him one, darling."
Samantha chuckled and fixed her nose: "Addis Ababa Enamels, Walk a Mile and Meet Some Camels," she said.

~RP

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Paperback 335: Deep Throat / D.M. Perkins (Dell 1857)

Paperback 335: Dell 1857 (PBO, 1973)

Title: Deep Throat
Author: D.M. Perkins
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: SOLD (7/19/10)


Best things about this cover:

• The font—the style, and the pink
• Hey, this book is right: I never did get the chance to see the movie. Then again, I was 3 when it came out.
• Wish there were more art on the cover. I kind of dig the 70s-era cartooning style in evidence here.
• This book is in amazing condition. A little scuffing here and there, but essentially square, w/ blue edges. Hardly appears to have been read at all.
  

Best things about this back cover:

• Her capital-P Problem is that her clitoris is in her throat, and her capital-S Solution is ... the title of the book. Oh, and also, SPOILER ALERT!

Page 123:

So here I am, she thought, ass up on a tall pole, waiting for two Tarzans to swing to me so that I can give them head.

~RP

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Paperback 334: The Partridge Family #5: Terror By Night / Vic Crume (Curtis Books 06148)

Paperback 334: Curtis Books 06148 (PBO, 1971)

Title: Terror By Night
Author: Vic Crume
Cover artist: Photo

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• Literally nothing about this cover — the pic, the design, nothing — says TERROR BY NIGHT. Is there a ghost in the amp? Is Keith gonna get blown away by some wicked feedback?
• There's a weed-whacker on the wall.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Downbeat for Danger!" should have been the title.
• Why is "and when Keith" italicized???
• "Provincetown was *nothing* like Keith expected..."

Page 123~

Keith Partridge and Bill Angelo, dripping wet, followed with another heavy box, and in back of them were eight men—three of them in handcuffs.

"Mom," said Keith, "it's not what you think."

~RP

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Paperback 298: Call Me Deadly / Hal Braham (Graphic 152)

Paperback 298: Graphic 152 (PBO, 1957)
Title: Call Me Deadly
Author: Hal Braham
Cover artist: Walter Popp

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• Nearly everything — this is late 50s paperback gold. Love the weird cropping provided by the ornate frame, and then again by the beaded curtain! Then there's Fabulous Girl Art (killer dress), jazz guitar, mystery hand w/ gun, Broderick Crawford lookalike with fat cigar ... all in a tight, barely read paperback.
• The title is awesome in inverse proportion to the cover painting's awesomeness, i.e. the title is a sad, unimaginative rip-off of a Mickey Spillane title (movie version of which came out just a couple years before this novel). Paint brush font on "Deadly" is kind of cool, though.
• Love Graphic Novels for their (frequent) crediting of the cover artist on the publishing info page, though here you can actually see the artist's signature (right under "25c").
• Gun/vagina proximity here is oddly common. Here's a variation. There will be more. Maybe I should make "guncrotch" a label... oh, wait, it already is.

Best things about this back cover:

• See that red dot separating the paragraphs? It's like it was drilled into the cover with a bore. Deeply embossed. Weird as it sounds, it's the first thing about this cover that caught my eye.
• Love their dockside dancing! Put any energetic music on your iTunes and then look at this painting. They are totally dancing. Nothing else can explain what she's doing with her left hand (mysterious hand gestures ... seems like a recurrent theme).
• I love how the cover copy starts out campy and ends up in nearly incoherent lunacy.
• "... between them, an unholy shadow murmured: 'There's no way you can tightrope walk in that dress, Gini ... Go on, I dare you ...'"

Page 123~

She said finally, "So this is the lion's den. What do you do with your spare time, Dillon?"

I shrugged. "I have the television for sport, there are books and records. It depends."

"Gets a bit monotonous, doesn't it?"

"It does," I admitted.

This is like the "Don't" column from a 1950's "How To Pick Up Hot Chicks" manual.

~RP

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Paperback 261: The Couch / Robert Bloch (Gold Medal s1192)

Paperback 261: Gold Medal s1192 (PBO, 1962)

Title: The Couch
Author: Robert Bloch
Cover artist: movie still

Yours for: $18


Best things about this cover:

• He wanted to confess, but she wouldn't shut up about the mole between his eyebrows, so he opted to kill instead.
• Agent: "Well, kid, the good news is, you're on the cover of the paperback tie-in. The bad news is, there's a lady's hand where your face should be. But hey, your hair looks terrific."
• Robert Bloch wrote "Psycho," but by now you know that.

Best things about this back cover:

• Mmm, more stiff lying. What's the opposite of "chemistry?"
• This is the story of a copywriter who hated paragraphs longer than once sentence.
• Seriously, he hated them.
• The only name I recognize here (besides Bloch's) is Blake Edwards. He directed the Peter Sellers Pink Panther movies. He is married to Julie Andrews. Also, he was born William Blake Crump! That makes Owen Crump here his ... I'm gonna guess brother ... nope. He's way older than Edwards. Why won't any site tell me how they're related. Not even imdb. Am I really supposed to believe they're not related, with a name like "Crump?" Come on.

Page 123~

"And that's the real reason you wanted to kill me. Because in your mind, I took the place of your father."

Bloch was sure into this "kill your parents" stuff.

~RP

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Paperback 259: Lincoln's Commando / Ralph J Roske and Charles van Doren (Pyramid G356)

Paperback 259: Pyramid G356 (1st ptg, 1958)

Title: Lincoln's Commando
Author: Ralph J. Roske and Charles Van Doren
Cover artist: Herb Mott

Yours for: SOLD (7/19/09)


Best things about this cover:

• The title and picture made me laugh out loud the first time I saw it. That is the only reason I own this book. "Arnold Schwarzenegger is ... Lt. William Cushing in ... Lincoln's Commando!"
• Actually, this guy looks more like ... who's that guy from "Ned and Stacey" and "Sideways?" Thomas Hayden Church?
• The rebels on the Albemarle appear to be shooting in random directions and possibly at each other.
• The water under Cushing's boat appears to be breaking on ... more, differently colored water. Weird.
• Here we see Cushing continuing the time-honored tradition of deck-edge weapon-dancing begun years earlier by the infamous Pirate Wench.

Best things about this back cover:

• Not much. We do get to see the NYT succumbing to a bout of sensational alliteration. That's slightly interesting.
• Apparently Cushing was a daring daredevil with a daredevil career of daredeviltry. He was also fearless. And daring.

Page 123~

He was pleased to discover that his adventures were well known in the town, that the paper reported his arrival on its front page, and that all the little boys hung on his every word when they could get him to describe his exploits — and not only the little boys; everyone seemed appreciative.

"[...] and not only the little boys ... I mean, not that he's particularly into little boys or anything. Really, he was popular with everyone. I swear. Forget what I said about the boys."

~RP

P.S. Thanks for keeping up with my stepped-up summer publication pace. I'm loving the volume and quality of comments. Happy that the blog has a modest but loyal and reliably smart/funny following. Keep it up.

P.P.S. Thanks for the links, the tweets, and any other form of promotion you've provided for this site. Truly, deeply appreciated.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 107: Love in a Goldfish Bowl / Jack Sher (Cardinal C-409)

Paperback 107: Cardinal C-409 (PBO, 1961)

Title: Love in a Goldfish Bowl
Author: Jack Sher
Cover artist: one very confused photographer

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• The dog. By far, the dog. The dog is looking to us for help.
• This cover would actually be beautiful if you just replaced the photo with ... well, anything. Title font design is gorgeous.
  
• I know a Jack Sher. Hey, Jack, you wrote a book ... many years before you were born. Congratulations. [my friend's real name is Jack Shear, so this is funny only to me and possibly him]
  
• This photo = rejected Alpo campaign still #178
• What ... I ... just what the hell is supposed to be happening here? Why is she ... what is that ... what's in the ... why are they ...?
• "Gee, Blythe, where'd ya get the giant snail, and why are you keepin' him in a goldfish bowl on your belly out here on the beach?"
• This cover is the reason words like "camp," "queer," and "ambiguously gay duo" were invented.

Best things about this back cover:

• "SNAFuglugluglug..."
• SNAFU = Situation Normal: All Fucked Up. A most apt description of the front cover.
• How come nobody's named "Gordon" any more?
• The last two paragraphs are so ambiguous that they allow me to imagine that the people pictured end up addicted to heroin and turning tricks ... in Balboa.
• "It was the bending end" - that's what she said!

Page 123~

"Gordon, where are you going?" my foolish, fuzzy mother asked.

"I think I'll sleep on my boat," I said.

"You'll do nothing of the kind!" she said.

So there I was, stuck with Holloway for the night.

~RP

Paperback 84: Nobody Lives Forever / W.R. Burnett (Bantam 888)

Paperback 84: Bantam 888 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: Nobody Lives Forever
Author: W.R. Burnett
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• It's simply a retooling of the last cover: smoking man in background leering at paranoid guy in foreground, who is in some kind of odd physical relationship to dame, also in foreground.
• "Jimmy Cagney ... and Lauren Bacall in ... Nobody Lives Forever!" (actual movie starred John Garfield and Geraldine Fitzgerald)
  
• This is one of the most quintessentially noir covers I own: fedoras, dark alleys, shadows, seediness, pretty dames, smoking ... exposed brick! It's all great.
• W.R. Burnett is probably best known for writing Little Caesar, which was made into a classic movie starring Edward G. Robinson in one of his most famous gangster roles.

Best things about this back cover:

• Nothing says tough-guy prose quite like: Hyphens!

1. "hard-bitten"
2. "smooth-talking"
3. "good-looking"
4. "big-time"
5. "hard-hitting"
6. "half-world" (a phrase normally reserved for the world of gays and lesbians - although in that context the phrase is more often "shadow world" or "twilight world")

I'm proud to introduce a new feature to the blog: Page 123. It's based on a meme I just learned about at The Rap Sheet (a crime fiction blog that gave this site a very nice write-up yesterday, btw). You're supposed to take the book that's closest to you, open it to page 123, post sentences 6, 7, and 8, and then tag five other bloggers. Well, I didn't get tagged, so it doesn't apply to me. BUT, I figure I can give you at least a taste of what's actually in these books by quoting from them arbitrarily - specifically, from page 123. So I intend to Page 123 (it's a verb now) all subsequent paperbacks. I'm just going to pick my favorite sentence or bit of dialogue from the page.

So I leave you with today's PAGE 123 - from Nobody Lives Forever, by W.R. Burnett:

It seemed strange to him that quiet, retiring Mrs. Halvorsen would suddenly elope to Mexico with a man she hardly knew - like a susceptible and romantic boarding-school girl.

I encourage you to use this and subsequent random quotations to start your own short stories. Or turn them into the subject of art or poetry of any kind.

-RP

Paperback 49: Ballantine 236

Paperback 49: Ballantine 236 (PBO, 1957)

Title: Gunsmoke
Author: Don Ward
Cover artist: photo cover


Best things about this cover

• "I Was A Sunburned Frankenstein"
• Wow, colorization could really wreak havoc with your skin back then. Marshal Dillon looks like he just completed an overly lengthy stint at the tanning salon. You live in the DESERT, Marshal. Just walking around outside should give you all the color you need.
• I'm not sure this cover could be less interesting if it tried. "I am ... walking toward you ... I am huge ... that is all."
• Love the CBS "Eye"

Best things about this back cover

• Copy writer should be fired - you don't open your promo with the passive voice, for god's sake.
• Further, of course it "is remembered." If I'm reading this book in 1957, then I "remember" it from Last Night, When It Was On.
• "Movie goers" is two words now? Walker Percy's not going to like that one bit.

RP

Why Book Sales are Like Crack Dens To Me, Part 4

Dondie's Revenge!

The continuing story of the books I bought at the University Book Sale for no good reason except that their covers amused me ...

Title: Darling
Author: Frederic Raphael
Cover artist: photo cover


Best things about this cover:

• "I love me"
• Why is the lettering on "Darling" veiny / viny?
• I think this photo was cropped wrong

The back cover is SO much more interesting


Best things about this back cover:

• "Frenzied sexcursion"!
• Is that the same guy in both pictures? The sideburns say 'no.' Sexcursion!
• "Face that has launched a thousand billboards" - "Billboards" = not quite as glamorous as "ships"
• She looks disappointed in Sexcursion Part One: "Your ugliness disappoints me. You have made The Happiness Girl unhappy. Be gone."
• Normally one does not find a large polka dot hair bow in a sexcursion. Disturbing.

Next!

Title: The Late Great Me
Author: Sandra Scoppettone
Cover artist: photo cover


Best things about this cover:

• Her right hand is like that of a right tackle awaiting the hike
• "I'm in love with vodka. I love it so much, I gave it my watch."
• Her lap looks disturbingly wet.
• "I have bangs like an early twentieth-century mustache. Or a ..."
• Dondie says: "C-clamp!?"
• Rex says: "Yes"
• Dondie says: "Rex has gone to the bathroom...the controls are mine! all mine! muahahaha!"
• Dondie says: "Books are funny."
• Dondie says: "This one especially so, because...the cover is...dumb."
• Dondie says: "I wish that girl would come over and share her vodka with me, after all, she is the girl next door..."
• Dondie says: "I wish I could have thought of something better" (Too Late! Rex is back!)

Best things about this back cover:

• "That vodka looks even better from back here, several feet further away."
• "Come hither, vodka..."
• "That vodka sure was good. I'm glad I got out these 45's to symbolize my descent into rock-n-roll madness."
• "The biggest lush at Walt Whitman High" - awesome distinction
• "President of a lot of leftover people" - Geri's mom has no facility with words. Here, she confuses people with dinner.

RP w/ Dondie

Why Book Sales are Like Crack Dens To Me, Part 1

I spent much of the last year getting rid of books - giving them away, throwing them away, recycling them, cutting them up to make art, etc. I just had too many. And I vowed not to acquire anymore books unless they were a. beautiful, or b. written by someone I really wanted to support with my $.

But those vows were made before I encountered the latest University Book Sale, at which point they immediately went out the window. I actually paid money (well, technically my student paid for me... we'll call her "Dondie") to get into the sale, and then got first crack at a ton of books - fiction, instructional, other, etc. I immediately went into super-consumption mode, as nearly every other cover called out to me with its cheesy greatness and awe-inspiring improbability. I am sitting here at my desk with "Dondie" right now - she actively encouraged me to buy many of the following. That's what they call an "enabler." What did I pick up? OK, Where to start ...?

Henry Bridgman, How To Make an Oboe Reed (PBO, 1987)
Cover artist: Some clip art genius

• I don't know why, but I know that someday this book will come in handy
• Did you know, and I quote: "The tip is where most of the action is"? Damn, this is hot. And useful.
• "We are assuming a finished tip length of 4.5mm." Dondie says: "Whoa, low standards!"

• Woo hoo, First Edition!
• Dondie says: "I was four when this came out!"
• Not only did Henry Bridgman write the book ... he then mailed it to himself.

John Updike, Bech: A Book (1st ptg, 1971)
Cover artist: Arnold Roth

• "Bech, A Book, A Female Book..."
• More like "Blecch: A Book" [HA ha, I kill me]
• He has boobs in his hair. Furthermore, he has Boobs in his Hair.
• Dondie says: "The nipples are ferociously red"
• Head = phallus? scrotum? squash? zucchini?
• I have to say, that is the most disturbing head in all of paperback cover art history - even more disturbing than ...

Lawrence Durrell, Clea (1st ptg, 1961)
Cover artist: Unidentified

• This, my friends, is the Original Floating Head, in that it is LITERALLY FLOATING. In water. Ur-Floating-Head. Totally scary / haunting.
• The floating head that ate Beirut! Run, women in burkhas, run! The blonde lady is hungry!
• Dondie says: "You'll never understand .... Clea ... my love [kisses book]"

Edwin Newman, Sunday Punch (1st ptg, 1980)
Cover artist: "Paris"

• That can't be good for your back.
• Dondie says: "He farted in the martini ... fartini."
• Dondie says: "His grimace has an 'I wanna do you / I gotta poop real bad' quality."
• This is my second "Person-in-a-cocktail-glass" book cover, if you can believe that. Here is the other one. This Sunday Brunch one is far less hot.
• There is something very wrong about the olive.

"The Walking Asparagus" - "So powerful that he can make your pee smell funny just by looking at you."

James Salter, Solo Faces (1st ptg, 1980)
Cover design: Neil Stuart
Cover photograph: Christina Rodin


The story of the gigantic nose that climbed the Swiss Alps.

And, lastly for today, a gem:

Joan Oppenheimer, Which Mother Is Mine? (PBO, 1980)

• Novelization of an ABC Afterschool Special! Awesome!
• Starring Blind Mary from "Little House," and My all-time TV mom crush, Mrs. C from "Happy Days."
  
• Is Mary blind in this show too? Is that why she is looking at nothing in particular and using her hands to communicate with Mom 1? It's so "Miracle Worker."
• Dondie says: Awesome photograph. Mom 2 is so sickened by Mom 1: "I'll kill you, bitch! She's mine!"
• Dondie also says: Ugliest dress ever. It's a wonder either of them wants to be her mom.
• I say: I think this is actually an Ugly Dress Pageant, and these are the three finalists. Mom 1 is doing that fake hand-holding "I hope you win" thing that pageant finalists do to fake support each other before the winner is announced.

More - much more - to follow.

RP (with Dondie)

Paperback 31: Bantam 1679

Paperback 31: Bantam 1679 (1st ptg, 1957)
Title: Pal Joey
Author: John O'Hara
Cover artist: Barye Phillips


Best things about this cover:

• Ring-a-ding-ding, this cover rules in every way.
• Not the greatest likeness of Frank, but cool nonetheless.
• Love the cover design - the font, the colors - and love the cocky pose Frank is striking.
• Even the inside of his trench coat looks cool.
• I wanna be a "two-bit nightclub heel"! That's a great phrase. Considering that one of my students today sent out a message to the entire class (240 students) saying that I am ugly and look like a monkey ... I would love to be called a "two-bit heel" right about now.

Best things about this back cover:

• More great design. Love the colors, and the circles diminishing into the background. The chick in fishnets with her hips thrust forward isn't bad either.
• World's tiniest movie stills.

RP

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