Paperback 951: Skin and Bones / Thorne Smith (Pocket Books 490)

Paperback 951: Pocket Books 490 (3rd ptg, 1948)

Title: Skin and Bones
Author: Thorne Smith
Cover artist (and illus.): [Herbert Roese]

Estimated value: $not a lot
Condition: 3/10

Best things about this cover:

• Dang. I'm sure there's an innocent enough explanation for whatever is happening here, but for a late '40s cover, this is pretty ... saucy. It's like she's looking over her shoulder going, "Well, get on with it, then..." and he's trying to figure out how one removes these bloody stocking contraptions.
• I love that when I was tagging this post, the category of "all fours" already existed.
• Thorne Smith was a very big deal in the mid-century "humor" game.

Best things about this back cover:

• Frankly, this sounds amazing.
• "Hoarse, gamy laughter" is what I just emitted upon reading that phrase.
• I never noticed that the kangaroo, in this incarnation of the Pocket Books logo, kinda looks like he (!?) has a giant book erection.

Page 123~

"Sure," said the drunken mortician, growing a little tired of the Rev. Watts.

~RP

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Paperback 268: The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything / John D. MacDonald (Gold Medal s1259)

Paperback 268: Gold Medal s1259 (PBO, 1962)

Title: The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything
Author: John D. MacDonald
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $23


Best things about this cover:

• "IT'S 9:30, STEVE. TIME TO GIVE BACK THE GIRL!" / "Aw, but we were goin' to a clam bake ... that didn't feel like a three-year harem lease at all!"
• That analogy makes one wonder: how many times can Bonny Lee fuck in one day? Do the math. Even if you're getting it from your entire harem only once per day, in three years, that's still well over a thousand times. And Bonny can do that in one day? No wonder the cover's on fire. The friction alone...
• More font awesomeness, though here we're pushing the wackiness factor a little hard.

Best things about this back cover:

• "If you've ever had a yeasty yearning ... please, see your doctor."
• YEASTY is, very coincidentally, a word in today's NYT crossword puzzle.
• Apparently John D. MacDonald books like to get cheeky. First there was the metapaperbackery of "A Key to the Suite," and now there's the cliche-subverting and self-erasure of "The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything."
• "Sheesh!"
• If you don't know who Thorne Smith is, see this. More to come in future Pop Sensation installments.

Page 123~

He looked at her, sitting erect, six feet away. Her back was arched, her shoulders good, the waist slender, the lime slacks plumped to the pleasant tensions of her ripeness.

I laughed out loud at "her shoulders good." What is he, a caveman? "Ugg want woman. Ugg want that woman. Hair pretty. Shoulders good. Slacks plumped. Ugg want."

~RP

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Paperback 45: Pocket Books 447

Paperback 45: Pocket Books 447 (1st ptg, 1947)

Title: Turnabout
Author: Thorne Smith
Cover artist: Uncredited (possibly Charles L. McCann)

Yours for: SOLD! (8/22/08)

Best things about this cover:

• I can't believe that in the 1940's you could get away with a front cover featuring a transvestite man in the bed of a transsexual Joan Crawford impersonator. Progressive.
• I hope (for his sake) that those are his knees that are tenting that bed sheet.
• Look at the bloody talons peeking out from the sleeve of Man-Joan's candy-cane pyjamas. Run away, transvestite man, run away!
• I believe that Charles L. McCann illustrated this cover. Why? Well, this "woman" has McCann's signature noseless-alien design. Remember this looker, from one of McCann's illustrations in Let's Make Mary?

Of course you do.

I love that the front cover gives you No explanation of what exactly is going on with Joan and her John - you have to flip the book over to find out; not that things get much clearer ...

Best things about this back cover:

• "Ribald" - 40's code for "sexed-up"
• "It seems..."
• "Mr. Ram..." - because Egyptian gods like European formality
• "Tim now occupied his wife's body..." [!?]
• "personally" [???]
• Last sentence makes No grammatical sense - I believe "become" should be "becomes"; I know that Pocket Books had decent editors, so this is just embarrassing
• "... the most hilarious novel in many a moonshine" [which copy writers were clearly drinking when they wrote this up]

Thorne Smith was a terrifically popular "humor" writer of the 40's and 50's. I own several of his paperbacks. One features a lady with preposterous boobs not unlike Mr. Crawford's here, and she is riding a sheep. I know, you can't wait, but you'll have to.

RP