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Paperback 302: Bantam 407 (1st ptg, 1948)
Title: Behold This Woman
Author: David Goodis
Cover artist: William Shoyer
Best things about this cover:
- Only four?
- Behold these boobs!
- Love the guy's hand: "... must ... not ... fondle ..."
- Notice how often woman is front and center on pb covers while man is off to side, lopped off, seen from behind, kind of in shadows, etc. Woman is meant to be a very particular dish, while man is usu. a kind of Everyman. Or Anysap, I guess.
- Now that I look more closely at the picture, I think that the guy is an interior decorator who is having a coronary after witnessing the pink rococo orgasm that is this room.
Best things about this back cover:
- I'm going to go with ... the knife jammed into the window sill. Yes, that's the best thing.
- Actually, I'm loving the little blue and pink Yes / Buts.
- Wow, the original cover girl for "Behold This Woman" was all kinds of ugly.
Page 123~
The gray-haired man was annoyed. "What do you mean, help you?" he said. "What do you take me for, an ignoramus?"
~RP
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]
9 comments:
I figured you'd stopped posting 'cause you were mad at me for not posting more often on my own blog! 'Course, it could be the persecution complex...
Glad to see you back, Rex!
Well, I suppose that will do for Mammary Monday too ...
Feral Boy
Welcome back, Rex! I love how they showed just enough of his eyeballs to show you that he's staring at her boobs.
I agree with your last "best things about this cover" bullet point - trying to determine his line of sight, it seems like he may be staring at the pink monstrosity that is the bed.
Also, unrelated to this post, if you can figure out how, you might want to report to Blogger that your search box is broken. I tried searching for a year ago - I found it by hunting through the archives, because trying a search gave me nothing. I had the same problem, complained about it in a post, and then my search was mysteriously functional again a few days later (although it may be broken again, since I haven't checked lately...).
Heh, sorry, I meant "a post from a year ago", not just "a year ago."
I'm ashamed to say that I want to read this book on the strength of the front and back covers.
Behold...Secret antiperspirant keeps my underarms fresh all day!
(My word verification was "cojones". Seriously.)
David Goodis was actually one of the tragic greats in the noir genre (Shoot the Piano Player, Nightfall, among others); he deserved better packaging than this, but that was the name of the game back then. Centipede Press recently repackaged a couple of his books in a more suitably elegant manner.
I want to read this book. What a brazen hussy of a protagonist!
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