Paperback 911: Darkness at Noon / Arthur Koestler (Signet 671)

Paperback 911: Signet 671 (2nd ptg, 1950)

Title: Darkness at Noon
Author: Arthur Koestler
Cover artist: [jonas?]

Estimated value: $7-10

Best things about this cover:

• This looks like me at roughly 9:30am on the days I don't teach. Minus the cigarette, I mean. Ladies ... liquor ... mystery dude in a hat ... these are where my thoughts wander.
• This is a classic, but I haven't read it. I am surprised to find it is about a lazy dude fantasizing about Parisian booze and broads.
• It's a prison novel, but this doesn't really evoke prison. Faint hints of "brick" in the walls, but that robe looks too comfy for prisonwear.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ah, the era of the author-smoking photo. So ... debonair.
• But also so tiny, what the hell's with the picture shrinkage?
• That cover copy does not offer much in the way of breathing room. Yikes.

Page 123~

Woe to the fool and the aesthete who only ask how and not why.

This is in the middle of a dense philosophical section that is all italics and also a bummer.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 690: Go Down, Aaron / Chris Davidson (Ember Library EL376)

Paperback 690: Ember Library EL376 (PBO, 1967)

Title: Go Down, Aaron
Author: Chris Davidson
Cover artist: Uncredited [Robert Bonfils]

Yours for: Not For Sale, partly 'cause I just wanna keep it, partly because I'd feel guilty profiting in any way from this thing (probably worth something north of a C-note)


Best things about this cover:

• The title is ... amazing. I mean, if you can ignore completely the horrible Nazi / gay erotic nexus for, like, one second, you have to appreciate the wordplay involved in that title. Changing "Moses" to Aaron ... punning on the phrase "Go Down" ... playing "Third Sex" off of "Third Reich" ... seriously great.
• The painting is also fantastic in its composition. I mean, again, horrible, but just the way the naked man is framed by the Nazi's legs, the way the Nazi's crotch is illuminated / represented by steel bars, the details on the uniform (belt, gun, trousers, whip (?), boots ...). And all in an unusual Green. Jaw-dropping.
• This is among the most flat-out outrageous books in my collection. It takes "Sleaze" to 11. It's also in astonishing condition. I'd rate it 9/10, condition-wise.

Best things about this back cover:

• Yuck.
• What's the difference between a "deviate" and a "deviant"?
• I'm trying to imagine finding any of this arousing. Not judging, though. Different strokes, as it were.

Page 123~

"The Master requests your presence in the study, sir," the servant informed Aaron.

Hmmm, this is a kind of prison I'm not familiar with.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 677: Scottsboro Boy / Haywood Patterson and Earl Conrad (Bantam 920)

Paperback 677: Bantam 920 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: Scottsboro Boy
Author: Haywood Patterson and Earl Conrad
Cover artist: Joseph Hirsch

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Tagline should probably be a bit more specific: "The Shocking Truth about Black Men in Prison on Charges of Raping White Girls in Ultra-Racist Alabama"
• In case you didn't know, this case is super-famous in the history of Civil Rights.
• I love how this is just a straight-up portrait, and all the drama is in the background details—white lawman with a club; "Alabama" and "South(ern?)" partially blocked by man's head; fittingly Black & White rail crossing guard sticking straight up; etc.
• I like his suspenders.

Best things about this back cover:

• I am unsure how I feel about the characterization "Jungle Conditions"—sounds sympathetic, but "jungle" is one of those words that hovers disparagingly around black people. All the time. I've been deep into 1923 newspapers this month, and I'm more familiar than I'd like to be with the vast and colorful language of racism.
• Interesting to have an Alabama paper blurb this book.
• Like the shadowed font on "Scottsboro Boy" here.

Page 123~

Merle had a funny sense of justice. He didn't want to see anybody injure anybody else. He'd kill the guy that injured the other one.

From now on, violence in the name of non-violence will be called "Merle Justice."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 553: One Monday We Killed Them All / John D. MacDonald (Gold Medal s1177)

Paperback 553: Gold Medal s1177 (PBO, 1961)

Title: One Monday We Killed Them All
Author: John D. MacDonald
Cover artist: Bill Johnson

Yours for: $18

Best things about this cover:

• One of the greatest titles in pulp fiction history
• Disturbing, fantastic cover. I have no idea what's happening. It's like the men are a loosely affiliated mob of zombie hunters who have decided to use the woman as a human shield. But the men seem kind of shambling and zombie-like themselves.
• "On the seventh he rested"! – "Attention, Citizens of Brook City: Monday is the new Sabbath. Stop working immediately or We'll kill you all. . . thank you."

Best things about this back cover:

• This copywriter is not good with the metaphors. I don't think walls harbor cores, and if the wall itself is made of hate, isn't the "steaming evil" inside kind of redundant? What did you expect to find inside the wall of hate? Bunnies?
• Pictures says: "Yes, *that* John D. MacDonald" and "Don't hate me because I'm rugged" and "I think you mean Ross Macdonald, asshole."

Page 123~

Harpersburg State Prison erupted into overdue violence on the following Tuesday.

Tuesday? But what about Monday? I was promised killing on *Monday*!

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 451: Women Without Men / P.J. Reed-Marr (Gold Medal k1306)

Paperback 451: Gold Medal k1306 (3rd ptg, 1963)

Title: Women Without Men
Author: P.J. Reed-Martin
Cover artist: Uncredited [Barye Phillips]

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Barye Phillips's paintings could be beautiful. Could be. Then again, they could be hot (mustard) messes.
• That's not a tear. It's a tear tattoo—you get one every time you kill an (inevitably) handsy matron.
• I love how the defining horror of prison, the impetus for complete social breakdown, is the absence of men. This way, men can thrill to the soft-core lesbian action they will (inevitably) find inside, while reassuring themselves that what women really need is ... them.
• Honestly, is her head resting on a pillow? A block of cheese? A pile of sand topped with a cat's paw? What the hell, Barye Phillips?

Best things about this back cover:

• So ... your typical "Chained Heat" stuff, with sadistic inmate instead of sadistic warden. Gotcha.
• I like "Queen," for its odd gender-confusing quality, but "courtier" is taking the metaphor into stupid and decidedly unsexy territory.
• "Twisted loves" = lesbian. "A web that would imprison Mary more degradingly than any cell in the world," though much wordier, also lesbian.
• Between "baggy, gray cotton" and "the gray, gross spider," I'm beginning to think that maybe the absence of men isn't your real problem. Try chartreuse uniforms. Or maybe mauve. I hear those colors are more soothing / less lesbifying.

Page 123~

After lights out, Willie's voice pleaded in the darkness. "How about it, Mary?"

"No," Mary said coldly. "But maybe you can twist my arm and make me, the way you made Annie go to court."

"Aw, baby. I'll come over to you if you want. Forget Annie. It's all over now."

"Oh, no, it's not, Willie," she said. "Go maul somebody else. You've had it. Never again."

Girls named after penises can be so pushy.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 228: Crucible / Ben Ames Williams (Popular Library 113)

Paperback 228: Popular Library 113 (1st ptg, 1947)

Title: Crucible
Author: Ben Ames Williams
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• "Crucible," Or "The Andrews Sisters Go To Hell"
• Sadness! Fear! Uh ... Sultry Boredom!

Best things about this back cover:

• Ugh, text. And not even a break or indention to separate the paragraphs. So lazy.
• If those three on the cover are "Mary, Phil and Barbara" ... I might have to read this book. I need to know more about "Phil"
• I can only hope that Ben Ames Williams went on to write a novel called "Leave the Strange Woman to Heaven"

Page 123~

Q. You went into the office? A. I stood in the doorway and reached the switch.
Q. Did that light the hall? A. Yes, enough.
Q. Did you see anything? A. I saw a woman lying on the hall floor.
Q. And you did what? A. Turned on the hall light to look at her.

"If you love page after page of mundane interrogation transcripts, you will love ... Crucible! If you loved Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," on the other hand ... well, that's historically impossible. It won't be performed for the first time for another six years."

~RP