Paperback 863: Father and Son / James T. Farrell (Signet D1066)

Paperback 863: Signet D1066 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Father and Son
Author: James T. Farrell
Cover artist: James Avati

Estimated value: $8-10

Best things about this cover:

• This is as dynamic as Avati gets. This is Avati tripping balls. This is Avati's dark twisted fantasy. This is porno-vati. I mean, that one guy's hand is adjacent to that woman's ass. Ass-adjacent! Call the censors.
• Why would you name your kid "A. Stormy Adolescence?" That's just cruel.
• "Hey, lady. Lady! I come bearing snakes … it's a metaphor."
• All main people in Avati paintings are lit like religious figures. Beatific. Haloed in light.
• I do (sort of!) like the way this pictures is posted and pillared into three parts, a triptych, with the salacious stuff happening on the ends, but our primaries still framed in a place of relative innocence in the center.

Best things about this back cover:

• We get it. One's old, one's young. It's called Father and Son, for god's sake. Move along.
• I really want this to be a 500pp. novel (!) about a guy who stops trying to understand his son and just takes him to a whorehouse.
• Unflinching! This novel will not flinch. Tickle it. Pretend you're going to punch it. You'll see.

Page 123~

Father Michael took a cowbell off the window ledge and marched downstairs to ring it.

Sorry, this is all I can think of right now:


~RP

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Paperback 309: Yesterday's Love / James T. Farrell (Avon 260)

Paperback 309: Avon 260 (2nd ptg / 1st thus, 1950)

Title: Yesterday's Love
Author: James T. Farrell
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $17


Best things about this cover:

• You know what they say: "Yesterday's Love, Today's Floating Head"
• Marion celebrates her victory in the "Ornamented Boobs" contest by ordering up a pizza for her and the floating head of her recently deceased boyfriend: "Oh, and get extra anchovies. I can't taste for shit since I became incorporeal."
• "Yes, hello, Home Depot? My wallpaper seems to have grown a head. Also, it's astonishingly ugly. Can you help?"
• "Studs Lonigan" always struck me as a great porn name. "Long Studsigan" might be better, though perhaps too spot-on.

Best things about this back cover:

• Yes, I knew it. "Frankness!" I was just perusing this back cover going "come on, some form of the word 'frank.'" — "These stories will sear you with their frankness!" Then they will put you in the oven of "brutal awareness" and gently roast you until you are cooked through.
• Is James T. Farrell the reason so many writers and hipster affect a scroungey "I could give a fuck" look. This guy's got it down pat. He's like the original. "Hair-combing's for squares! Fuck ties! Where are my cigarettes?"

Page 123~

She went to Sonny. Harry looked at her with utter contempt. His eyes were full of hatred. He got up and turned on the radio. He could hear the child babbling and gaily talking to its mother as she washed him. He turned off the radio and sat there waiting until they would take their walk. Then they would eat their supper, see another moving picture, and come back to the hotel. [final paragraph of "The Sport of Kings"]

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 215: Company K / William March (Lion Books 111)

Paperback 215: Lion Books 111 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: Company K
Author: William March
Cover artist: Rafael DeSoto

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• DeSoto is one of the great naturalistic cover artists, and this cover is really expertly painted. Beautiful, detailed, evocative of the suffering of war. I'm finding this cover slightly hard to make fun of. Although ... if her stroking and pumping that giant lever isn't innuendo, I don't know what is. That is, if "she" is indeed a woman. The novel is, after all, "flaming."
• I'm afraid of the guy at the front of that line. He looks like he's lost all hope ... or else he is a golem or a droid or something.
• "The Flaming Novel of Men and Women at War" - sounds like a book about the battle of the sexes. "Men Are From Mars ... : WWI Edition!"

Best things about this back cover:

• "Company K is a Knockout"! Letter play not so effective when the "K" is silent. "Company G is a Gnat-infested Gnightmare"
• This back cover is in Love with alliteration. Courage and cowardice ... lustings (!?) and lies, daring, doom, and death.
• It's appropriate that this book is somewhat purple, because check out the prose in that second paragraph. March impales angry moments with his bayonet-pen!?
• I like the little flag, particularly the wacky font of the letters.

This is a pretty famous and well-received novel of W. W. I, organized into micro-chapters about every single man in the company. Blurbs inside from Granville Hicks, Graham Greene, James T. Farrell, and Phyllis Bentley (whoever that is).

Page 123~

On Monday a kid from my company named Ben Hunzinger got fifteen years hard labor for deserting in the face of the enemy, and a long talk from Mr. Fairbrother about justice tempered with mercy.

Whoa, "Mr. Fairbrother?" Is this an allegory?

~RP

Paperback 106: A Dangerous Woman / James T. Farrell (Panther 954)

Paperback 106: Panther 954 (1st ptg, 1959)

Title: A Dangerous Woman
Author: James T. Farrell
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: SOLD (6/2/08)


Best things about this cover:

• This is more like a woman auditioning for a paperback cover than an actual cover painting. "You want me to [not] wear what?"
• "... her obsession for men became a desire to repel them" - Mission Accomplished.
• 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Five bangles on her right wrist. Yes, that's a record for a paperback cover. Congratulations, boring, overly-clothed lady. You can collect your $10 Target gift certificate on your way out the door. Buh-bye.
• "Dangerous" extends directly out from her crotch. Nice.

Best things about this back cover:

• This blurb writer is from the "Adverb adjective, adverb adjective, adverb adjective, and adverb adverb adjective..." school of blurb writing.
• Why don't writers cover "the human scene" any more?
• That Panther is far too sedate to be a good logo. It should really be killing something, or at least roaring.

Page 123~

I never knew what anarchism was except that I'm against it and it's radical, but I never knew what an anarchist was. Now I know. An anarchist is a Frenchman driving an automobile in gay Paree.

~RP