Paperback 1111: Every Girl is Entitled to a Husband / Nina Farewell (MacFadden Books 75-116)

 Paperback 1111: MacFadden 75-116 (1st, 1964)

Title: Every Girl is Entitled to a Husband

Author: Nina Farewell

Cover artist: Roy Doty 

Illustrated by: Roy Doty

Condition: 7    

Value: $15

[from a big box of books sent to me by reader "Gail"]

Best things about this cover: 

• "If you've got what it takes, but no one takes it" is, I have to admit, a good opening line.
• I also love that Buy is italicized. "Stop thumbing through the book and just buy it already! This is a drug store, lady, not a lending library!"
• You can read this cover as a complex metaphor about marriage being simultaneously exalting and stifling. Or you can read it as "Gladys's avant-garde entry in the Ladies Auxiliary cake-decorating contest."
• The cartooning here is perfect, in its perfectly iconic bland suburban white adult couple-ness. The lady actually looks great, and man that nose is perfectly vertical. Something to behold.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Love a good survey. Were women supposed to cut along that dotted line and send the survey ... somewhere? Seems like it would be easier to just tear the whole back cover off and send that in.
• Gonna need to see those other 14 other "Pleasures" first, please, thanks.
• "(the book)"—not sure why this bit from the Hartford Courant is making me laugh, but it is. "Sorry, perhaps the referent of 'it' is not totally clear; I am referring, of course, to the book as a whole, thank you for listening to this parenthetical comment."
• I love that whoever "designed" this back cover has the confidence and courage to just go by one name. Copy editor: "OK, so ... Karol what?" Karol: "Just ... Karol! You know, like 'Gowns by Irene' ... 'Design by ... Karol!'" Copy editor: "Uh ... sure, whatever, sounds good."

The illustrations in this book are funny and fascinating, though an awful lot of them seem to involve women threatening some kind of self-harm—in case you thought snagging a man was going to be all fun and games:

Page 123~

Her prestige seems to diminish if she tries in any way to please him, whereas it is enhanced when she behaves as though she has conferred an extraordinary favor by granting him the honor of her company.

Ooh, there's a picture that goes with this one, in case you're wondering what such a couple might look like:

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and BlueSky]

Paperback 640: Under Cover of Night / Manning Lee Stokes (MacFadden Books 60-431)

Paperback 640: MacFadden Books 60-431 (1st ptg, 1969)

Title: Under Cover of Night
Author: Manning Lee Stokes
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• You must be this tall to ride Manning Lee Stokes.
• Cigarette holders—I don't really get them, but as visual affectations go, I like them a lot.
• I actually really love the arc of the title font.
• There is a reason the show was not called "Mission: Difficult."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Armed with a gut-searing greed"? Uh ... Clean-up on aisle Metaphor!
• The Iron Buddha would be a cool wrestling name.
• The Bloody Cache would not.

Page 123~

Yi Sun-Sin, of course, had Oo working in Seoul, and soon he had known about the American who was coming to find a million buried dollars. And they started making plans. The fact that Oo had been a former houseboy of mine made his chances good.

I'm trying to decide what my favorite part of this passage is: "Oo," "houseboy," or "of course."

~RP

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Paperback 516: The Conscience of a Conservative / Barry Goldwater (MacFadden Capitol Hill Book SP1)

Paperback 516: Macfadden Capitol Hill SP 1 (21st ptg, 1964)

Title: The Conscience of a Conservative
Author: Senator Barry Goldwater
Cover artist: Photo cover

Yours for: $25

Best things about this cover:

• Barry Goldwater cares not about your desire to see scantily-clad women and poorly-written taglines! 
• One of the most important books in the history of American conservatism. This edition was published in January of the year Goldwater ran for president. It's in phenomenal, barely- or unread shape. (some scuffing on back)
• I think MacFadden Books created their "Capitol Hill" book line just for this book (note the number: SP1)

Best things about this back cover:

• Well, I'll give him one thing: as back covers go, it doesn't get much more Conservative than this.

Page 123~ (*this* should be Hot...)

We may not make foreign peoples love us (no nation has ever succeeded in that) but we can make them respect us.

"Dad, they're Canadian, and I'm sure they'll return your barbecue tongs if you just ask. Jeez."

~RP

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Paperback 446: Take a Lesbian to Lunch / Ann Aldrich (McFadden Books 125-118)

Paperback 446: McFadden Books 125-118 (PBO, 1972)

Title: Take a Lesbian to Lunch
Author: Ann Aldrich
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $300


Best things about this cover:

• I've written briefly about this book before. Searching for that post led me to this thread, which quotes my original discussion of the book, and features a reply from The Author Herself. I learned about this just this second. I Heart The Internets. Discussion was about the term "lipstick lesbian," which suggested might have been "coined" by this book; that's probably not true, but the author suggests she might have been the first to use the phrase in print.
• It's not a very vivid cover, sadly, but I love the weird title and the Lipstick on the (Lesbians'?) cigarettes.
• Oh, this book is super-rare, in case the suggested dollar value didn't tip you off. There's one on amazon for $200 something. I priced mine off the ABE Books listings. The book is no longer available from ABE Books. Insider's look at gay New York in the aftermath of Stonewall by an excellent writer = cultural gold.

Best things about this back cover:

• Did people used to think lesbians were mythical? Like sylphs or unicorns or yeti?

Page 123~

"Surely it is the nature and quality of a relationship that matters; one must not judge it by its outward appearance, but by its inner worth. Homosexual affection can be as selfless as heterosexual affection, and therefore we cannot see that it is some way morally worse..." [—from "Toward a Quaker View of Sex," an essay signed by 11 British Quakers, first published in London in 1963]

Not all of this book is so earnest, I assure you. The more anecdotal parts of the book are often entertaining, touching, vivid, and sometimes very funny.

~RP

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Paperback 443: The Sixth Man / Jess Stearn (MacFadden Books 60-106)

Paperback 443: MacFadden Books 60-106 (1st ptg, 1962)

Title: The Sixth Man
Author: Jess Stearn
Cover artist: N/A

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• I know the cover wants to be ominous, with the suggestion that "you can't tell them apart" and "they're hiding among you," but the image just looks too much like the spinning wheel on a game show for me to be too "frightened": "Congratulations, you landed on Fabulous!" (love that the one-in-six is hot pink)
• Monotonous corporate drones ... or sophisticated men dancing in a Busby Berkeley / Ethel Merman movie? I can't decide.
• So *this* is what the NBA's "Sixth Man" award is all about ...

Best things about this back cover:

• "That's right, we gays have taken over, and we've hung Straighty up by his ankles. Let that be a warning to you. You better queer it up right now, see, or it's curtains for you!"
• I'm guessing this cover is a lot more scarifying than the actual book.
• The first two sentences here (particularly the second one) are pointless. "He is a chronicler of events..." Congratulations. I myself am an "eater of Doritos."

Page 123~

George looked like anything but the popular conception of a homosexual. He cut a manly figure, tall, strongly built, and was neatly but plainly dressed. And while he drank and talked fast, gesticulating a lot, so do hundreds of people I know on Madison Avenue who aren't queer.

Interesting, but you might want to rethink your certainty about those Madison Avenue people.

~RP

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Paperback 417: The Day Khrushchev Panicked / George B. Mair (MacFadden Books 50-183)

Paperback 417: MacFadden Books 50-183 (1st ptg, 1963)

Title: The Day Khrushchev Panicked
Author: George B. Mair
Cover artist: Stan Borack

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• Unless she is about to devour his man parts with razor-sharp teeth, this might be the widest gap I've seen between text and picture. Unless half-naked, chair-averse redheads were used for calming agents during the Cold War. "Ah, a cigarette and a subservient redhead ... I feel refreshed and ready to battle Communism once again!"
• Text says "As Exciting as 'Fail-Safe'," but the downward-facing red arrow subliminally suggests otherwise.
• Has anyone seen my bejabbers? They were here a minute ago...
• The U.S. eventually won the Cold War, due in no small part to the fact that they had Jabbers Christ on their side.
• I insist that everyone reading this post use "bejabbers" at least once today. Let me know how it goes.

Best things about this back cover:

• Well that's the last time I make my hammer-and-sickle insignia out of pie pastry.
• It's true, you know: you cannot deny the terrifying *possibility* of its truth. This book essentially anticipates 95% of 21st-century journalism.

Page 123~

"Perhaps after all," said Trudie thoughtfully, "we only feel self-conscious because we are amateurs."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

"Harling College!"

I'm on vacation, where I just received THIS book as a gift.


Discuss.

New posts when I return to NY.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 140: Carnival of Death / Day Keene (MacFadden Books 50-239)

Paperback 140: MacFadden Books 50-239 (PBO, 1965)

Title: Carnival of Death
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• "Shhhhh. Keep quiet, or it's curtains for you, pillow!"
• Title sounds like it belongs to a "Kojak" episode.
• My favorite Carnival of Death can be seen in "The Killing Joke"
• Yet another girl who prefers to pet her gun rather than hold it properly. Where is her thumb? Her finger is behind the trigger!
• This cover is like one of those perception-skewing pictures: depending on how you look at her, she is looking either at the pillow or toward the noise coming from the next room. If you stare at her long enough, you can actually make her eyes head in opposite directions.
• This cover turns sleazy into SLEE-ZAY'. Something about the photo just looks low-rent and tawdry. The roughly-handled book doesn't help (or helps a lot, depending on your affection for SLEE-ZAY')

Best things about this back cover:

• OK that balloon is flat-out awesome. I can't hate on that.
• Anywhere a clown is throwing things at you ... that's somewhere you don't want to be. Trust me.
• Sadly, "gay scene" meant something different in '65.

Page 123~

A moment later the light in the living room came on and, peering through one of the leaded glass panes in the front door, Daly could see a tall, attractive, bare-legged, black-haired girl wearing a baby doll nightdress trying to slip her arms into the sleeves of a matching negligee while she held a crying infant in one arm. It made a pleasant, homey picture.

O man, I was with you until the crying infant. Worst peeping tom letdown ever. The fact that the infant pleases this guy makes him far creepier than your average peeping tom, in my book. "That's it ... burp the baby ..."

~RP