Friday, October 23, 2015

Paperback 911: Darkness at Noon / Arthur Koestler (Signet 671)

Paperback 911: Signet 671 (2nd ptg, 1950)

Title: Darkness at Noon
Author: Arthur Koestler
Cover artist: [jonas?]

Estimated value: $7-10

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Best things about this cover:
  • This looks like me at roughly 9:30am on the days I don't teach. Minus the cigarette, I mean. Ladies ... liquor ... mystery dude in a hat ... these are where my thoughts wander.
  • This is a classic, but I haven't read it. I am surprised to find it is about a lazy dude fantasizing about Parisian booze and broads.
  • It's a prison novel, but this doesn't really evoke prison. Faint hints of "brick" in the walls, but that robe looks too comfy for prisonwear.

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Best things about this back cover:
  • Ah, the era of the author-smoking photo. So ... debonair.
  • But also so tiny, what the hell's with the picture shrinkage?
  • That cover copy does not offer much in the way of breathing room. Yikes.

Page 123~

Woe to the fool and the aesthete who only ask how and not why.

This is in the middle of a dense philosophical section that is all italics and also a bummer.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

1 comment:

Graham Powell said...

It's a really great book, and as far as I can tell the cover has NOTHING to do with it.