Paperback 1013: Serenade / James M. Cain (Penguin 621)

Paperback 1013: Penguin 621 (1st ptg, 1947)

Title: Serenade
Author: James M. Cain
Cover artist: jonas

Condition: 8/10 (laminate buckling in places, but perfectly square and tight)
Estimated value: $10-12

Best things about this cover:

• Ferdinand! What happened to you!?
• Love jonas's covers. What they lack in luridness they make up in flat-color mid-century graphic beauty. Somewhere between figurative and abstract painting. Like if Mondrian did cheap paperback cover art. That bull's face is borderline cubist.
• I love her impossible dress, the straps for which appear to start in her armpits
• I also love the weirdly mathematically balanced JAMES and M. CAIN. So weird to isolate middle initial and last name like that, and yet ... five letters on one side, five letters on the other. Makes sense.
• I also love how the expressive jagged lines behind the señorita make her look like she's in a mood.

Best things about this back cover:

• James M. Cain looks like a professor whose enthusiasm for medieval love poetry will never be shared by any of his students.
• "F.P. Adams" is exactly the kind of name you would have to have in order to coneive the phrase "vernacularly dictaphonic."
• Like Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity, this book too was made into a movie. Unlike those movies, it is not famous (though it was directed by Anthony Mann and stars Mario Lanza, Joan Fontaine, and (!) Vincent Price). In the book, the singing protagonist has sex with a (male) impresario, and falls in love with a (female) prostitue. The movie ... did not preserve those plot elements. 

Page 139~ (I haven't even looked at p. 123 because, well, I saw this first and ...)

All of a sudden she broke from me, shoved the dress down from her shoulder, slipped the brassiere and shoved a nipple in my mouth. "Eat. Eat much. Make big toro."
"I know now my whole life comes from there."
"Yes, eat." 

I mean ... does he point when he says "there" or ... ? ... yeah, wow.

~RP

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Paperback 881: Please Write For Details / John D. MacDonald (Gold Medal R1922)

Paperback 881: Gold Medal R1922 (unknown ptg, 1968)

Title: Please Write for Details
Author: John D. MacDonald
Cover artist: Uncredited [Mitchell Hooks]

Estimated value: $5-8

[Donation to the collection courtesy of L. Gagne]

Best things about this cover:

• Love how all those dorky guys are checking her out, but she's swiveled around to face you because, well, you're doing the same thing, big boy. She has the best "Like what you see?" face ever.
• I am not familiar with MacDonald's comedy writing. Most everything else I have by him is Travis McGee stuff.
• This book takes place at a "Mexican art colony," in case you're looking at the dorky guys and going "WTF?"

 Best things about this back cover:

• "Why, yes. Yes, I *do* enjoy those three things. You've piqued my interest. I *will* write for details. Thanks for your help."
• That first sentence is an epic, loony, self-parodying masterpiece. Can you hitch your starload to a bent?
• Great hyphen confusion. I read "love-lies" as "lies one tells about love"; but it's just "lovelies."
• John D. MacDonald, still staring down that fly on the ceiling.

Page 123~

Torrigan had the usual ideas, all right, but he was a lot easier to handle. Hinting you could be a real hell of a painter if he'd let you learn all about Life from him. Always trying to load your drinks. And that tired game that goes I've-just-got-my-arm-around-you-because-I'm-just-a-big-friendly-guy. No trick in handling him.

Nothing like a good, withering take-down of a leering phony. I like the knowing, implicitly female perspective. This seems like it might be worth reading.

~RP

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