Paperback 879: Number One / John Dos Passos (Lion Library LL1)

Paperback 879: Lion Library LL1 (1st ptg, 1954)

Title: Number One
Author: John Dos Passos
Cover artist: Robert Schulz

Estimated value: $10-15

Best things about this cover:

• When you start shooting up bourbon, your friends naturally get a bit concerned.
• He's right to be freaked out. If you look at her left hand too long, you too will begin to get the creeping sense that she's an ALIEN, MAN.
• Pee. This book is about pee. You don't want to read the sequel.
• Clever bit of publishing here on Lion Library's part. This is the first (i.e. Number One) book to come out under the Lion Library imprint.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Why is there a ladybug in here!? Who authorized this?! I'm gonna swat it, so help me …!"
• "There's no floor here! No floor! It just … stops." "Er, it's a stage, sir, that's what stages do." "I don't care, someone should've told me, Brian! You're fired!"
• John Dos Passos came to earth to study curious earthling types.

Page 123~

As he looked out through the glass doors of the phone booth at the bustle of dressy people, men in sportsclothes with cigars, frilly stoutish women with skittish hats, pretty girls in long evening dresses, young men out to have themselves a time, he felt an invisible sour smoke swirling between them and him.

I mistyped several words while transcribing this. Every time I looked to see what I'd screwed up, I was like "Yeah, that's better." This passage crystallizes noir—"good times" seen at a sad, knowing, alienated remove. Deromanticized. Surface appearances all revealed as desperate posturing. This is Don Draper just before he goes "fuck it" and just takes off across the country in his Caddy.

~RP

PS check out that "SCHULZ" signature, etched right into the side of the damned table. I always did love how he made his signature part of the three-dimensional world of the painting.

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Paperback 283: Adventures of a Young Man / John Dos Passos (Lion Library 42)

Paperback 283: Lion Library LL42 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: Adventures of a Young Man
Author: John Dos Passos
Cover artist: Clark Hulings

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• "Steve approached trench warfare with an air of whimsy, never letting a silly helmet ruin his perfectly coiffed blond mane."
• "Steve, how come when you hug me it feels like you're killing Germans?"
• Let's play: What's Steve Doing With His Mouth!? Choices a. gnawing on Gillian's brains, zombie-style, b. licking the chocolate out of her hair (don't ask), c. laughing at his own inability to find the bra strap, or d. Steve has no mouth — he lost it in the war.
• Hey, it's Clark Hulings Week this week at "Pop Sensation" — not because of any particularly burning desire on my part to write about him, but because I've had a request from Illustration magazine for some hi-res scans of Hulings covers, and so I've moved all his work to the front of the queue.
  

Best things about this back cover:

• "Gillian, your father and I strongly disapprove of your sleeping in the nude. Also, as you can see by our presence in your room, security in this apartment is terrible. You could at least get a dead bolt."
• Steve is doing his "going bowling" dance. Step slide, step slide ...
• If that is a train he's grabbing, and it is moving, he is about to be dragged to his bloody death. So ironic — surviving WWI only to be needlessly dragged to death on his way to a bowling engagement.
• Front cover scanned at 400dpi, back cover scanned at 200dpi. Can you see the difference?

Page 123~

Sometimes he wished he was a rolling stone like Glenn; but if you were going to raise stuff, corn or stock or babies, you just had to stay put.

~RP

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