Paperbacks 1115 & 1116: The Ivory Grin & The Way Some People Die (Bantam 10979 & 10987)

Paperbacks 1115 & 1116: Bantam 10979 & 10987) (6th ptg, 1977 / 8th ptg, 1977)

Titles: The Ivory Grin & The Way Some People Die

Author: Ross Macdonald

Cover artist: Mitchell Hooks

Condition: 8/10 & 8/10

Value: $5-10 each

Best things about this cover: 

• I said last time that I had one more of these late'70s Archer covers by Mitchell Hooks, but it seems I lied: I had two, bringing my total to five. I guess I collect these now? Subcollection! Just what I need...
• Well yeah, sure, grins don't get much more ivory than that. 
• The dude loading the gun looks like a very disappointed middle manager. "We didn't make our quota this quarter, team. I told you there'd be consequences..."
• I'm super into that cat burglar guy but he's about a centimeter in height, and it's hard to truly love a design element that small. 
• The tealish hue coating every element of this painting is kinda sickly, but somehow when set against the equally sickly pale yellow background, it ends up ... perfect?

Best things about this 2nd cover: 

• Maybe my least favorite of these Archer covers so far. Still good, but the people look like they're carved out of wood. Looks a little sloppy, a little lifeless. But the neon signs and palm trees and dead guy are ... mwah!
• Her hair is insane. I can only hope that it's a wig. Her posture and expression are priceless, though: "Sigh, bikinis are so tiresome ... when do we drink?"
• Does the dead guy have a toupee that's come loose, or did he flatten a small bird with his head when he fell?

No point doing back covers, since they're just that same shadowy photo of Macdonald from the last book. So on to ...

Page 123~ (from The Way Some People Die)

    "The dirty bastard picked up and left me," she said in a deep harsh voice. Her eyes were round with anger, or surprise at her own language. "Good heavens," she said in her normal voice, "I never swear, honestly."

    "Swear some more. It will probably do you good."

~RP

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Paperback 1091: A Hasty Bunch / Robert McAlmon (Popular 445-04314)

 Paperback 1091: Popular 445-04314 (1st, ~1977)

Title: A Hasty Bunch    

Author: Robert McAlmon

Cover artist: [Uncredited]

Condition: 9

Value: $20

Best things about this cover: 

• Look, full disclosure, I have never done acid, but this is what I imagine the world looks like. Kind of a pleasant psychedelic jumble with rainbow streaks. Love the horizontal lines coming out the back of the main guy's head, and then running through the entire middle of the painting. Completely unnaturalistic and Of The Time (the '70s). My favorite figure is the guy on the far right, who looks kinda like if the Joker were a cruise director.
• The typewriter, equally great, but equally disorienting, in its own way. The keyboard makes sense to a point but somewhere east of the "F" key things start to buckle and by the time you get all the way to the right its a monstrous free-for-all. Oh, I'm not realizing that what I'm seeing is a hand hovering over the keys on the right side. Who Types Like That!?
• I got this book solely because of the cover. I didn't start out collecting anything from the '70s, but, well, time has passed (30 years next year since I started my collection), and the '70s are now fair game, especially when a book is in near-perfect condition and just sitting there on the $1 shelf.
• Sometime in the '70s, Southern Illinois UP reprinted some long out-of-print American books, and then ended up partnering with Popular Library here to release a number of them as mass-market paperbacks: their Lost American Fiction Series. This book is part of that series. There are 15 other books listed, with intriguing titles like THE PROFESSORS LIKE VODKA, CUBICAL CITY, and THEY DON'T DANCE MUCH. I am ... curious. This particular book has an afterword by writer Kay Boyle. Here's the full list of everything Southern Illinois Press brought back.
• I'm also curious about this cover artist, whom I love, and whose name I don't know. I believe he's also the artist on this early-'70s Bantam cover:

[You can see the resemblance, I hope. If you know who it is, kindly holler.]

And now the back cover...

Best things about this back cover: 

• Telling it how it really is and especially "sexual candor" are always big selling points for paperbacks. Not just truth, but (as the front cover says) "naked truth." What fun is the truth if it's wearing clothes. People want stuff that's sexily truthful. Hornily honest. In a word: frank. (I wish that word were somewhere on these book covers—my favorite cover copy euphemism; been a while since I've seen it)
• This book was originally published in 1922, and even then it was barely published at all: "Reprint of a Contact Press edition privately printed by the author in Dijon, 1922."
• This books is a collection of short stories by an ex-pat who apparently hung with Hemingway and Joyce. "Prophetic genius"? That is a big claim. Let's see what p. 123 has to say: 

Page 123~ (from "A Business Family")

"It doesn't do a place any good to have a person die in it. We ought to have insisted on her being taken to a sanatorium."

Mrs. Sturgeon runs the "Rest an Hour Kosher yearround hotel," and one of her guests, Mrs. Davis, has just done her the great disservice of dying in her establishment. Hugely inconvenient, the dead.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and BlueSky]

Paperback 649: All-Pro Football Stars 1977 / Jerry Brondfield (Scholastic TK 3959)

Paperback 649: Scholastic TK 3959 (PBO? 1977)

Title: All-Pro Football Stars 1977
Author: Jerry Brondfield
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $5


Best things about this cover:

• Not sure why I own this. Must've been overcome by a wave of nostalgia for my earliest days of sports awareness. 1977 was pretty much the year that pro sports entered my consciousness, and I became a big sports (and stats) fan very quickly thereafter.

Best things about this back cover:

• Nothing. I think the real reason I own this book must be the amazing interior photos—a dazzling array of mid-late''70s men's hair styles. In lieu of "Page 123," here are a few:

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 158: Dionysus: The Ultimate Experiment / William S. Ruben (Manor Books 15232)

Paperback 158: Manor Books 15232 (PBO, 1977)

Title: Dionysus: The Ultimate Experiment
Author: William S. Ruben
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• This is possibly the most boob-oriented cover I own.

"Do you like them, Steve? I electroded them especially for you?"
"Well ... oh my ... I say ... they're quite ... I'll just ... how does one ... is this ... do I ... like so? ... or ..."

• She is so arched and ecstatic and ready to go, and he is Totally killing the vibe.
• He seems to have made eye contact with the boobs, but his hand!? WTF!? Hey, buddy, you're not supposed to wave at them!
• His junk, while barely visible, is not invisible enough for my, uh, taste.
• Whatever "human emotion" this is, I don't think I care to "experience" it, thanks.

Best things about this back cover:

All this rigmarole about weightless sex is just a front. The REAL "unreportable project" is embedded in the title itself:

Ronnie James DIO will play the New York State (NYS) Fair causing a mass conflagration of rocking out that will engulf the US in madness, allowing a Black Sabbath reunion ... at the highest levels of government! No one can resist the heavy metal keyboard strains of "Rainbow in the Dark!"



Page 123~

This was the time of Eldridge and Grainly, born into a world which accepted without conscience an acknowledgment of the underground. They simply did not think of this sustained nether world.

Funny, I'd rather not think of it either.

"This was the time of Eldridge and Grainly ... Attorneys at Law!"

~RP