Paperback 1010: Georgia Boy / Erskine Caldwell (Signet 760)

Paperback 1010: Signet 760 (5th ptg, 1957)

Title: Georgia Boy
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Cover artist: James Avati (signed, not attributed)
Interior illustrations: Birger Lundquist (attributed on copyright page)

Condition: 8.5/10
Estimated value: $8-12

Best things about this cover:

• Great Girl Art. Godawful Goon Art. I want to CGI that guy off of the cover.
• "Check under your hood, ma'am? [snort]" Seriously make him go away.
• That guy is not a "boy." In fact, I don't see any boys here at all. False advertising!
• Caldwell was the king of "earthy" "bawdy" midcentury rural near-porn. Country folks are freer with their bodies—more like animals—dontcha know. I never got the appeal.
• It's actually quite good art. I'm just not buying the guy at all. He looks uninterested—like he has a tire rotation to get back to.

Best things about this back cover:

• No alloys here! Looking for alloys? Well, keep moving, buster!
• "This reviewer" LOL. "It was a dark time ... personal pronouns were Forbidden!"
• Ah, who could forget PA STROUP? Everyone? Oh, OK.
• "Yardboy"

The best part of this book by far is the interior illustrations. From the copyright page: "The line drawings by Birger Lundquist are reproduced from the Swedish edition of Georgia Boy (Son av Georgia) by permission of the Forum Publishing Company, Stockholm, Sweden." Here are a couple examples (there's one on about every third page!):

 [better...]

[whoa, racy]

Page 123~

"He told me he wasn't married," Lucy told Ma. "He said he was a single man all the time."

"Single man!" Ma yelled.

She got red in the face again and ran to the fireplace for the poker.

Ah, good ole fire poker: a harried Ma's best friend.

~RP

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Paperback 1007: Tragic Ground / Erskine Caldwell (Signet 661)

Paperback 1007: Signet 661 (27th ptg, 1957)

Title: Tragic Ground
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Cover artist: James Avati

Condition: 8/10
Estimated value: $8-10 (weirdly couldn't find this 1957 printing at abebooks)

Best things about this cover:

• That's a hell of a face-mash. And embrace. And wino.
• "Oh, the juvenile delinquents and their dungarees and heavy petting, why, in my day... [glug glug glug] [pass out]"
• I sincerely love her capri pants. And the title font.
• This cover is close to immaculate.

Best things about this back cover:

• [sniff sniff] What's that smell? .... oh, I see you're reading Caldwell. My, that's pungent.
• "Casual ribaldry and haphazard lovemaking" is my new lifestyle ideal.
• What is this, the Adjective Olympics? You can't get past a single damn noun without some adjective going, "Hey, look at me!" I'm surprised it doesn't end with "over 35,000,000 frank and febrile copies."
• LOL that Saturday Review blurb. "Tired of cooked sex? Well have I got the book for you..."

Page 123~

Spence lay partly awake holding his knees against his stomach for warmth and wondering where his pants were.

Pantsless pungency!

~RP

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Paperback 769: God's Little Acre / Erskine Caldwell (Penguin 581)

Paperback 769: Penguin 581 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: God's Little Acre
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Cover artist: jonas

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• Do love the peephole covers. Though usually we get to peep at something sexy. Or at least living.
• It's an oddly tepid cover, given how strongly Caldwell's work was associated with sex. Future Caldwell covers will be … less discreet, to put it mildly.
• I believe that to be the smallest outhouse that has ever been painted.

Best things about this back cover:

• Stock photo, lifted from "Generic White Man" entry in Encyclopedia Americana. 
• "Graduating from neither," ha ha. "He sampled your so-called 'higher education' and decided 'fuck this—I'ma pick cotton!"
• That is weirdest way in which anyone's pro football career has ever been introduced. "He was truly fuckable, like a football player, which he was once. Probably. Somewhere."
• Damn, looks like a dog hair got on the scanner platen. Sorry about that.

Page 123~

"Saying he's going to vote for me and doing it when the time comes is as far apart as the land and the sky." 

It's like when Martin beat Bart for class president on "The Simpsons." Everyone said they supported Bart, but only two people voted: Martin and Martin's running mate Wendell.  So Martin won.

Amazing discovery of the day—this book reprints, at the very end, the ruling by the Magistrate's Court of the City of New York, clearing Viking Press (this book's original publisher) from charges of obscenity brought against it by the People of the State of New York at the instigation of The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Based on this information, the oddly sexless cover instantly becomes either more perplexing or more understandable, depending on how you look at it. I have only ever seen this legal opinion-reprinting in the backs of sleaze paperbacks, specifically those published by in the late '50s and early '60s by Sanford Aday, who has his own repeated run-ins with the law. As the opinion reprinted here makes clear, God's Little Acre was defended by many scholars and writers on its literary merits. Harder to argue for said merits when the title of your book is Sex Life of a Cop (as it was in Aday's own trial). Anyway, very cool to discover this much-more-mainstream precedent for self-justifying end matter.

~RP

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Paperback 694: Stop This Man! / Peter Rabe (Gold Medal 763)

Paperback 694: Gold Medal 763 (2nd ptg, 1958)

Title: Stop This Man!
Author: Peter Rabe
Cover artist: Darcy

Yours for: $14


Best things about this cover:

• A great, brutal cover marred only by the stupid slab of yellow Erskine at the top.
• Love the unfinished quality of painting toward the bottom, the obvious dilapidation on the ceiling, the dynamic use of perspective, the framing of his left hand in the dead middle of the page, the believable fear on her face, the simple, understated, off-center title ... all fantastic.
• Not sure what that shirt's made of though? Taffy?

Best things about this back cover:

• OK, is it "could not put this book down," or, as the cover clearly states, "couldn't put this book down." I call bullshit.
• I love (sarcastically) how this book basically belongs to Erskine Caldwell now. Sorry, Peter Rabe. I know it must be tough to get shown up on your own cover(s) by a 3-to-1 margin, but that's show business. Gotta move product.
• The NYT review clearly has no appreciation for how much I like "the lurid modern crime thriller."

Page 123~

They put handcuffs on the Turtle and put him in a police car. Then they drove him downtown, to the office of the FBI. The Turtle didn't say anything during the long ride. He didn't think that funny talk would make any difference any more.

Aw, c'mon, The Turtle, you're not trying hard enough. Do your Nixon impression!

~RP

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Paperback 588: The Sin Shouter of Cabin Road / John Faulkner (Gold Medal s1070)

Paperback 588: Gold Medal s1070 (3rd ptg, 1960)

Title: The Sin Shouter of Cabin Road
Author: John Faulkner
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• Josiah never went out a-preachin' without his trusty pet slattern.
• Behold what the mind-blowing success of Erskine Caldwell hath wrought. 
• With "ribald," "earthy," "uninhibited" and (on back) "bawdy" all featuring prominently on this cover, I canNot believe there's not a "frank" in sight. I guess "frank" is what you get when you drain the corny humor away.
• I dig the guy's pocket square but what the hell is up with his shoes? Those are some amazing technicolor dream shoes right there. 
• She is supposed to be sexy but she has dumb, lop-sided eyes and looks more seal than human.

Best things about this back cover:

• If you liked "Uncle Good's Girls," you'll "Uncle Good's Girls II: Gooder Than Ever."
• I believe in the reality of a person named "Harry Serwer" about as much as I believe in a "star of Beelzebub."
• Please please please let "the glory trail" be some porn term I'm as-yet unaware of.

Page 123~

"They ain't much difference in them politicians oncet they gits to Washington nohow," Uncle Good said. "They are all jest about furriners. I wouldn't trust nair one in Washington after they let the W P and A fall through."

Uncle Good—poet, prophet, statesman, regional caricature

~RP

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Paperback 581: When You Think of Me / Erskine Caldwell (Signet S1839)

Paperback 581: Signet 1839 (1st ptg, 1960)

Title: When You Think of Me 

Author: Erskine Caldwell

Cover artist: [Signature blurred / Uncredited] — interior illustr. by Louis Macouillard

Yours for: $20

Best things about this cover:

• I know Caldwell girls are typically very "earthy," but I don't normally think of them as literally growing out of the earth.
• I love the guy in the background. He's like "That ... looks like ... what the hell?"
• The hyphen on "Ameri-ca's" hurts. A lot.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Living, loving, laughing ... suffering!" Ouch. It's really, really hard to land that Quadruple Alliteration in competition.
• I'm curious about the engineering on this "gun to distribute bread among starving peasants."
• Whoever typeset "bum's—eye" doesn't know his en dash from his rear end (-ash).

Page 123~

"They'd never understand what you went through at a time like that. All you knew was that your pal, who had gone through hell with you, was dead. That puts a queer feeling into any man."

One of the earliest documented discussions of post-traumatic queer disorder.

~RP

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Bonus interior illustrations include stunners like "Josef Stalin Likes To Drink" 



... and "Dementors Adopt Potter As Their Own":

Paperback 551: God's Little Acre / Erskine Caldwell (Great Pan G148)

Paperback 551: Great Pan G148 (1st thus, 1958)

Title: God's Little Acre
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $23
Best things about this cover:

• The Professor and Ginger never did see eye to eye.
• It's like they're having a clenchedmouth-off and she's winning—though it looks like the judge in the background there is about to call "illegal use of boobs." We'll see...
• Zeke likes to watch.
• I think she was overcome by Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer" and had to be shaken out of her rockin' reverie before she tore up all the hay bales.
• Zeke, on the other hand, is immune to Bon Jovi's charms.
• Movie tie-in! 

Best things about this back cover:

• Wow, they sure picked a dramatic scene for this back cover. And by "dramatic" I mean "one that showcases Tina Louise's tits to the fullest."
• Chivalry isn't dead, it's just horribly, horribly mutated.
• "Gusty vitality"??? Did they mean "gutsy"? Did they conflate "gutsy" and "gusto." "You know, the vitality of his writing ... it's got a ... windlike quality to it ..."

Page 123~

Ty Ty put one foot inside the room and leaned against the door-frame. He watched her roll and unroll her stockings and hang them over the back of the chair. She got up quickly and stood at the foot of the bed.

I *knew* creepy, overt, unwelcome voyeurism was going to figure prominently in this book. The cover artist did his job well.

~RP

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Paperback 526: The Courting of Susie Brown / Erskine Caldwell (Signet S1621)

Paperback 526: Signet S1621(5th ptg, 1960)

Title: The Courting of Susie Brown
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $5

Best things about this cover:

• The Delousing of Susie Brown.
• Is this it? I have to believe that something far more salacious than this was painted over in thick purple. That would explain how Wrong her elbow looks. 
• Also, how big is that chair seat? I see the chair, and it appears she is sitting on it, and yet those ... gowns? rags? ... she's sitting on don't appear to have anything to do with the chair. They're just ... hovering. 
• Maybe the comb in a girl's lap is some kind of sexy visual shorthand I just don't get.

Best things about this back cover:

• The Human Comedy ... is a novel by William Saroyan. And a series of novels by Honoré de Balzac. Like those classics, this book ... is also fiction.
• Here is mirth and disaster. There be dragons.

Page 123~

   Dessie gripped the phone.
   "Did you say Waldo has a big roll of money?" she shouted. "Greenbacks tied with a string around the middle?"
   "He surely has, Mrs. Murdock. It's the biggest roll of money I've seen on a man since the Democrats took over."
   Dessie, who had risen from the chair until she was almost erect, sat down, hard.

Dessie and Mrs. Murdock found that by substituting "roll of money" for "penis," they drew far fewer outraged stares.

~RP

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Paperback 436: Midsummer Passion / Erskine Caldwell (Avon 177)

Paperback 436: Avon 177 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: Midsummer Passion
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Cover artist: Ann Cantor

Yours for: $19


Best things about this cover:

• "With your permission, my lady ... May I sniff these?"
• He is appropriately grubby. She is impossibly clean.
• All I can think is "Really? Right on a bed of lettuce? Isn't there a nice flat patch of lawn nearby where you can have your furtive rustic tumble?"

Best things about this back cover:

• Once again, Shakespeare approves!

Page 123~

"I ain't going to let that good-for-nothing Canuck get his hands on the best farm in the whole gol-darned country. Come on to the village and get it settled right away."

For some Boston Bruins fans, winning the Stanley Cup was not enough. Canucks must be made to suffer year-round!

~RP

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Paperback 108: Tobacco Road / Erskine Caldwell (Signet CW 985)

Paperback 108: Signet CW 985 (43rd ptg, I think, ca. 1970)

Title: Tobacco Road
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Cover artist: somebody Baxter

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• It would be very sexy ... you know, if someone hadn't blown the right side of her face clean off. Really ruins the mood.
• There is something Klimt-y about the shapes and floral patterns in and around her ... dress. I guess that's a dress.
• This book is in near perfect condition. Feels unread, though if I hold it up to the light I can see the very faintest reading crease. Still, it's about as square and tight and shiny as a read book gets.
• Tobacco Road is paperback legend. This is the 43rd printing. It sold tons. A certain rural sexual frankness made this book good fodder for at least two generations of cover artists. I'm just really glad this "Baxter" guy signed, and dated, his cover painting, because Signet is crap for giving artists credit (or for dating their reprint editions clearly).
  

Page 123~

Dude said he was hungry, and that he wanted to go somewhere and eat. Sister Bessie had half a dollar; Jeeter had nothing. Dude, of course, had nothing.

~RP