Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Paperback 142: Liana / Martha Gellhorn (Popular Library 529)

Paperback 142: Popular Library 529 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Liana
Author: Martha Gellhorn
Cover aritst: That guy who did all the Popular Library covers (i.e. I don't know)

Yours for: NOT FOR SALE


Best things about this cover:

  • Note the censored (excised with scissors!) tagline - it should read: "Her Color Was No Barrier - To Men." I guess we're supposed to believe that that thing in red trunks is a man and not an oddly anthropomorphic lizard.
  • "Are you done with your one-armed water chin-ups yet? My neck is getting tired."
  • Martha Gellhorn was married to Ernest Hemingway. She was a writer and journalist of some note. I have no idea how she came to be responsible for whatever this book is.

Best things about this back cover:

  • OK, this is officially the gayest not-explicitly-gay paperback I have blogged about to date. It wants you to think it's all about her, but the pictures say otherwise. It's beefcake central up in here. All the boy/girl interaction here feels forced and sexless.
  • "Hey, Johnny Handsome, your broad, muscular back and impossibly toned ass are blocking my view of the lady!"
  • "Now I'm going to show you what women's breasts look like, Johnny." Johnny backs away in discomfort ... while still managing to give us yet another view of his rippling delts and obliques.
  • Her dress appears to zip down the front (!?) past her crotch (!!?)
  • "... a realistic analysis of a woman's degradation" - Nothing sells books like a realistic analysis of degradation, boy howdy. It should have its own section of the bookstore.
  • "Frankness!" - that means there's sex. Yee haw!
Page 123~

Liana sent the servants home early that night and they were glad to go. They would feel safer in their own flimsy homes with their own people.


Silly natives and their love of straw huts!

~RP

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

One of your best write-ups ever Rex. I am just now recovering. Thanks!

Miss Maggie said...

I can't even tell you how in love with this cover I am. I keep on waiting for her to hold aloft Excalibur.

Rex Parker said...

Yeah, it's like Excalibur meets the myth of Narcissus meets Cinemax.

rp

Anonymous said...

"Her colour"... So that would be cadaver grey, then. It'd sure as hell be a barrier to me.

JamiSings said...

Thank you, neko - it's just what I was thinking. She doesn't look like she's - "of color" - or whatever the politically correct term is. To me, she looks like a drug addicted white girl.

Eunice said...

Maybe that's why the servants were happy to go home early. People tend to get uncomfortable about working for the undead and their guests who, apparently, only have one red speedo to wear.

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