“Oh, I don’t know – I’ll just work on it till I get it right, I guess.”
As cool water poured over me, he empty, uncertain feeling in the center of me gradually became bearable. George was somewhere in the vicinity, doing whatever he was doing, and when I saw him next I would be clean, calm, self-possessed; I would stop acting like an eighth-grader. I thought for a while about what to wear and decided that there was no point in pretending I went around dressed for a party whenever we weren’t working; I pulled on a clean pair of cutoffs and looked through my shirts. But the only ones that were clean were so totally functional I couldn’t stand them. A bold thought entered my mind: Wear one of Augusta’s. She might give me a hard time later on, but … I opened the door of my room and peered out, making sure that George wouldn’t catch me in my bra, and hurried into her room. The thought of wearing one of Augusta’s mannish cowboy shirts with the mother-of-pearl snaps filled me with a dizzy sense of power; I didn’t take her favorite, but they were all fascinating, all too big for me in a way I found irresistibly casual. I put one on, knotted it around my waist, looked myself over in the mirror above her dresser. Almost, for once, satisfactory. Back in my room I laced up my sneakers, did the best I could with my impossible hair, and sneaked out into the living room and listened. Where was he? There were no sounds from downstairs, no voices drifting in the windows; I could hear the quiet scrape of sandpaper that had been going on all day. With the thought that I might as well go all the way if I was going to get in trouble, I went back into the bathroom and found in a corner of the medicine cabinet Augusta’s tiny bottle of Interdit. Then I felt silly. She would smell it and give me an unbearable look – and did I want George to, after all? Here it was four o’clock on a hot day and he had come over to do a job. I put it back.
That left nothing to do but go downstairs and look for him. I found him in the dining room, supplied with a stack of blank paper, a handful of pencils, and a ruler; Augusta’s sketch was in front of him, and he was reworking it. He looked as if he had already found his place in the house and settled in.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.” He smiled, preoccupied, and kept drawing.
“What are you doing?” I looked over his shoulder, one hand on the table, one on the back of his chair.
“Trying to make some sense out of this. I’ve got a feeling she doesn’t really want it to look like that, anyway.”
As he talked, his hand continued to draw with a control that impressed me; he put in a vertical line with the ruler, using just enough pressure on the pencil so that its point gently stroked the surface of the paper. Then he began to draw some gingerbread decorations freehand. As I watched, a piece of wooden scrollwork took recognizable shape before me; I had seen its like repeated a dozen times around Augusta’s house but had never actually examined it. When had he had time to commit its form perfectly to memory?
“Mind if I watch?”
“No.”
I sat on the table, my knee almost at his elbow, and wondered how long it would take him to look up for more than a glance. That’s really good,” I said.
“Thanks.”
He continued to draw methodically without the slightest hurry or impatience. I was beginning to consider how long this part might take, when he put down his pencil and ruler picked up a ball-point pen, and without a pause put his left hand around my kneecap to steady it and wrote on it in tiny capitals, HI KAREN HOW ARE YOU? The hand made me self-conscious, but the writing tickled. I took the pen and his left arm and wrote FINE, becoming tensely aware that because of the way I was holding his arm, his left hand was against my thigh. I had meant to write more than FINE, but I stopped there and let go of his arm so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea.
“How long do you think this’ll take?”
“Oh, I don’t know – I’ll just work on it till I get it right, I guess.”
“Did you get her to agree with you about the roof?”
“Well … I don’t know if ‘agree’ would be the right word,” he said, giving me a mischievous smile. “But I’m building it, right?”
“You’ve got the idea, George.”
They were made for each other, I thought, but not as jealously this time. I got up and searched through the house for my Lord Peter book, finally finding it sitting with a wrinkled cover on top of my damp bathing suit from the day before; I tucked it under my arm, wandered into the kitchen and got two glasses of iced tea and a bag of potato chips, put everything on the dining-room table, and sat down across from George to read.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Does this come out of my paycheck?”
“Not if you’re nice.”
He tickled my ankle with his foot.
“I’m very nice,” he said.
______________________________
It’s an appealing image – especially with the various shades of blue, particularly the sky edge with a pink horizon – but on second glance, Rick Lovell’s cover painting for Family Resemblances is also a bit of a visual pun, reminiscent of the work of Guy Billout. Look, and look again: A house is reflected mirror-like from the driver’s window, but in the distance, in the upper left corner, stands a gazebo, distorted, as if rushing by.
Jay McInerney authored three novels published as Vintage Contemporaries: Bright Lights Big City, Story of My Life, and – below – Ransom, for which Rick Lovell’s stunning cover art is equal parts simplicity and symbolism…
The principles of Japanese advertising, he said, were really quite simple. Gaijin were glamorous. If you were selling a luxury product – liquor, perfume – you used a gaijin, preferably a blond model, a New York, London, or Paris backdrop, and an English slogan. If you were selling a household product, you used a domestic-looking Japanese model. The interesting cases were those in between. Miti had decided that the sauna, being a service, ought to have some racial identification as well as gaijin glamour.
Miti asked Ransom what he thought of Sadaharu Oh, the home-run heir apparent.
Ransom said he was a fine ballplayer.
Miti said, Hank Aaron is a Negro, isn’t he?
Ransom said he was, unsure of the significance Miti ascribed to this fact. He went back out to his deck and struggled with the sauna copy, the construction of which was brought back to him that evening as he worked through Lesson Nine of Level Two with his Mitsubishi class, Ransom reading and the class repeating, books closed.
I make a deal.
“I make a deal.”
You make a deal.
“You make a deal.”
He makes a deal.
“He makes a deal.”
She makes a deal.
“She makes a deal.”
Mr. Smith makes a deal…
______________________________
With a pair of Samurai swords suspended above a gently flowing stream, a bird – a rainbow-colored Japanese red-crowned crane – stands in the middle of a gently flowing stream, the swords reflected in the water in the undulating form of a Japanese wooden foot bridge. More symbolism: Just as the swords are reflected as a symbol of Japanese culture, so is the crane: It appears as a red-hued bonsai tree, seeming to float upon the water’s surface. The orange-yellow moon (yes, it can appear that way) suspended to the side, above, balances the the scene. And completing the image, soft and undulating green hills recede into the distance, separating the blue of sky from blue of water.
“Tell her you are suffering from amnesia and looking for clues.”
I haven’t read the book, but I remember the movie.
I saw the movie.
I really liked the movie.
I really like Marc Tauss’ cover art, too…
Open the drawers of your desk and you realize it could take all night.
There is a vast quantity of flotsam:
files,
notebooks,
personal and business correspondence,
galleys and proofs,
review books,
matchbooks,
loose sheets with names and phone numbers,
notes to yourself,
first drafts of stories,
sketches and poems.
Here, for instance, is the first draft of “Birds of Manhattan.”
Also the “U.S. Government Abstract of Statistics on Agriculture, 1981”,
indispensable in researching the three-part article on the death of the family farm,
on the back of which you have written the name Laura Bowman and a telephone number.
Who is Laura Bowman?
You could dial the number and ask for her, ask her where she fits into your past.
Tell her you are suffering from amnesia and looking for clues.
____________________
The term “odeon” (via the Century Dictionary), refers to, “…A kind of theater in ancient Greece, smaller than the dramatic theater and roofed over, in which poets and musicians submitted their works to the approval of the public, and contended for prizes; — hence, in modern usage, the name of a hall for musical or dramatic performances.” I especially like the way a neon-lit Odeon, and, the World Trade Center, contrast with one another in shape, size, and color, their orange and blue nicely complimenting the violet color of the empty sky above. The fact that protagonist Jamie Conway (I suppose he’s Jamie Conway?!) has his back turned towards the viewer – amidst the city’s exciting glow – imparts upon the scene feelings of solitude and anonymity.
A work of art can be distinctive in, of, and by itself. Yet, its impact and power can be enhanced by setting it within just the right kind of “frame”, and not just a physical frame.
In science-fiction and fantasy pulp art of the 1950s and early 60s, prominent examples of how art could be framed – visually framed, that is – were the Galaxy Science Fiction and Beyond Fantasy Fiction, pulp magazines which utilized the same general cover design. Cover illustrations were set within the lower right corner of the cover “landscape”, with all textual information – magazine title, names of authors and stories, and mundane but necessary information like selling price and date of issue – located within the top and left margins. This design could capture a passing reader’s attention with great effect, and, give the publications a somewhat “arty” (pardon the pun!) look. Hey, if the only thing you know about a story is its title and the name of its author, the cover art has to be its biggest selling point!
A memorable example of this style of cover design took prominence from the mid-1980s through early 1990s, in Random House’s Vintage Contemporaries series, which eventually comprised 89 novels as both reprints and works by contemporary authors.
In a general sense, two cover designs were used for the series: A more traditional style, with a work of art occupying the entirety of the cover and text superimposed upon it, and, the style alluded to above, in which a cover painting comprised only a portion of the front “real estate”. This latter style involved placing the illustration within the cover’s right center and “framing” it by white space alone its top, bottom, and left margins. The author’s name was situated in the upper right corner, as white text on a colored rectangular field – said color being repeated on the upper spine, with the author’s surname again superimposed in white. On the front cover, the book’s title was set just below the author’s name, just above the main illustration. Another cover element was a rectangular grid of subtle gray dots to the upper left of the cover painting, which kind of broke up the monotony of white space, and at the same time, balanced the cover art.
All this might read kind of technical, but when you actually look at the Vintage Contemporaries covers, they stand out for the catchy and pleasing effectiveness of the overall design. Well, that’s why I bought a few of them – !.
You can read much more about the design history of the Vintage Contemporaries covers at TalkingCovers, a blog created by Sean Manning (Vice President and Executive Editor at Simon & Schuster), which was active from May of 2012 through November of 2013. (Though quite fortunately, it’s still “up and running” and entirely accessible!) As described in its descriptive blurb: “Talking Covers is a blog where authors, designers, and artists join to discuss a particular book cover. It is edited by Sean Manning. He is the author of the memoir The Things That Need Doing and editor of the nonfiction anthologies The Show I’ll Never Forget, Rock and Roll Cage Match, Top of the Order, and Bound to Last. He has written for The Village Voice, Esquire.com, The Daily Beast, Deadspin, USA Today, The Awl, and elsewhere, and he is a frequent guest commentator on WNYC’s music talk show Soundcheck.”
Mr. Manning’s post about Vintage Contemporaries, created on September 12, 2012, can be accessed right h e r e.
To quote just a little bit:
“Editor Gary Fisketjon launched Vintage Contemporaries, a paperback imprint of Random House, in September 1984. There were seven initial titles. By decade’s end, there would be close to 100. The line was a mix of reprints and originals, and nearly thirty years later the checklist found in the back of the books reads like a ballot for some Cooperstown of late-20th Century fiction.”
“The person who came up with the uniform, De Stijl layout, and the one whose name can be found on the back of those hundred or so books – that was Lorraine Louie.”
“The series was a critical and commercial success; Bright Lights, Big City sold 300,000 copies in two years, and publishers raced to start their own knock-off imprints. But by the early nineties, personnel and tastes within Vintage Contemporaries had changed and the design was phased out.”
It’s a long, pithy, and fascinating post, highlighted with numerous examples of Vintage Contemporaries covers, as well as comments by authors, editors, and artists involved in the production of the series. They comprise, in order of appearance in the post (scrolling from top to bottom):
Comments by Mark Tauss, artist Far Tortuga, by Peter Matthiessen The Chosen Places, The Timeless People Dancing Bear, by James Crumley Dancing in The Dark, by Janet Hobhouse
Comments by Jay McInerney, author Bright Lights, Big City Ransom Story of My Life
Comments by Thomas McGuane, author The Bushwacked Piano To Skin A Cat Nobody’s Angel Something to Be Desired
Excerpt from Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life by Carol Skelnicka Where I’m Calling From What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Fires Cathedral
Comments by Maxine Chernoff, author Bop
Comments by Rick Lovell, artist Airships, by Barry Hannah Fiskadoro, by Denis Johnson Norwood, by Charles Portis The Car Thief, by Theodore Weesner The Sportswriter, by Richard Ford
Comments by Richard Ford, author A Piece of My Heart The Ultimate Good Luck Rock Springs
Comments by Joy Williams, author Taking Care Breaking & Entering State of Grace
Comments by Paul Hoover, author Saigon, Illinois
Comments by Jill Eisenstadt, author From Rockaway
Comments by Steve Erickson, author Days Between Stations Rubicon Beach
Comments by Chris Moore, artist Platitudes, by Trey Ellis (with comments by Trey Ellis, author) Angels, by Dennis Johnson Myra Breckenridge and Myron, by Gore Vidal Steps, by Jerzy Kosinski Lulu Incognito, by Raymond Kennedy Ellen Foster, by Kaye Gibbons
Comments by Patricia Mulcahy, editor
Comments by Michael Downing, author A Narrow Time
Comments by Peter Davies, author The Last Election
Comments by Lowry Pei, author Family Resemblances
Comments by Gary Krist, author The Garden State
Excerpt from A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates by Blake Bailey Revolutionary Road The Easter Parade
Comments by Mary LaChapelle, author House of Heroes
Comments by Susan Daitch, author The Colorist
Comments by Valerie Martin, author A Recent Martyr The Consolation of Nature
Mr. Manning’s post opens with an image of the checklist of Vintage Contemporaries titles. Rather than copy and paste directly from his blog, I’ve OCR’d these scans to come up with this list of all titles in the series. They’re listed alphabetically by book title, each title followed by author’s name, price, and ISBN.
Airships, by Barry Hannah – $5.95 – 394-72913-7 All Girl Football Team, The, by Lewis Nordan – $5.95 – 394-75701-7 Angels, by Denis Johnson – $7.95 – 394-75987-7 Anywhere But Here, by Mona Simpson – $6.95 – 394-75559-6 Asa, as I Knew Him, by Susanna Kaysen – $4.95 – 394-74985-5 Bad Behavior, by Mary Gaitskill – $7.95 – 679-72327-7 Beginning of Sorrows, The, by David Martin – $7.95 – 679-72459-1 Bop, by Maxine Chernoff – $5.95 – 394-75522-7 Breaking and Entering, by Joy Williams – $6.95 – 394 75773-4
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Movietime!
Bright Lights. Big City, by Jay Mclnerney – $5.95 – 394-72641-3
Bushwhacked Piano, The, by Thomas McGuane – $5.95 – 394-72642-1 California Bloodstock, by Terry McDonell – $8.95 – 679 72168-1 Car Thief, The, by Theodore Weesner – $6.95 – 394 74097 1 Carnival for the Gods, by Gladys Swan – $6.95 – 394-74330- Cathedral, by Raymond Carver – $6.95 – 679-72369-2 Chosen Place, the Timeless People, The, by Paule Marshall – $6.95 – 394 72633-2 Clea & Zeus Divorce, by Emily Prager – $6.95 – 394 75591- Colorist, The, by Susan Daitch – $7.95 – 679-72492-3 Commitments, The, by Roddy Doyle – $6.95 – 679-72174-6 Consolation of Nature and Other Stories, The, by Valerie Martin – $6.95 – 679 72159-2 Dancing Bear, by James Crumley – $6.95 – 394-72576- Dancing in the Dark, by Janet Hobhouse – $5.95 – 394-72588-3 Days Between Stations, by Steve Erickson – $6.95 – 394-74685-6 Debut, The, by Anita Brookner – $6.95 – 679-72712-4 Easter Parade, The, by Richard Vales – $8.95 – 679-72230-0 Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, by Richard Yates – $8.95 – 679 72221-1 Ellen Foster, by Kaye Gibbons – $5.95 – 394-75757-2 Family Resemblances, by Lowry Pei – $6.95 – 394-75528-6 Fan’s Notes, A, by Frederick Exley – $7.95 – 679 72076-6 Fat City, by Leonard Gardner – $6.95 – 394-74316-4 Fires, by Raymond Carver – $7.95 – 679-72239-4 First Love and Other Sorrows, by Harold Brodkey – $7.95 – 679-72075-8 Fiskadoro, by Denis Johnson – $6.95 – 394-74367-9 From Rockaway, by Jill Eisenstadt – $6.95 – 394 75761-0
______________________________
Movietime!
Garden State, The, by Gary Krist – $7.95 – 679 72515-6
Great Jones Street, by Don DeLillo – $7.95 – 679-72303- Handbook for Visitors From Outer Space, A, by Kathryn Kramer – $5.95 – 394-72989-7 House of Heroes and Other Stories, by Mary LaChapelle – $7.95 – 679-72457-5 I Look Divine, by Christopher Coe – $5.95 – 394-75995-8 Last Election, The, by Pete Davies – $6.95 – 394-74702- Last Good Kiss, The, by James Crumley – $6.95 – 394-75989-3 Last Notes from Home, by Frederick Exley – $8.95 – 679-72456-7 Latecomers, by Anita Brookner – $7.95 – 679-72668-3 Love Always, by Ann Beattie – $5.95 – 394-74418-7 Lulu Incognito, by Raymond Kennedy – $7.95 – 394-75641- Mama Day, by Gloria Naylor – $8.95 – 679-72181-9 Mezzanine, The, by Nicholson Baker – $7.95 – 679-72576-8 Mohawk, by Richard Russo – $8.95 – 679 72577-6 Myra Breckinridge and Myron, by Gore Vidal – $8.95 – 394-75444-1 Names, The, by Don DeLillo – $7.95 – 679-72295-5 Narrow Time, A, by Michael Downing – $6.95 – 394-75568-5 Nobody’s Angel, by Thomas McGuane – $6.95 – 394-74738-0 Norwood, by Charles Portis – $5.95 – 394- 72931-5 November, by Janet Hobhouse – $6.95 – 394-74665-1 One to Count Cadence, by James Crumley – $5.95 – 394-73559-5 Pages from a Cold Island, by Frederick Exley – $6.95 – 394-75977- Piece of My Heart, A, by Richard Ford – $6.95 – 394-72914-5 Platitudes, by Trey Ellis – $6.95 – 394-75439-5 Player, The, by Michael Tolkin – $7.95 – 679-72254-8 Players, by Don DeLillo – $7.95 – 679-72293-9 Rabbit Boss, by Thomas Sanchez – $8.95 – 679 72621-7 Ransom, by Jay Mclnerney – $5.95 – 394-74118-8 Ratner’s Star, by Don DeLillo – $8.95 – 679-72292-0 Recent Martyr, A, by Valerie Martin – $7.95 – 679-72158-4 Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates – $8.95 – 679-72191-6 Risk Pool, The, by Richard Russo – $8.95 – 679 72334- River Dogs, by Robert Olmstead – $6.95 – 394-74684 8 Rock Springs, by Richard Ford – $6.95 – 394-75700-9 Rubicon Beach, by Steve Erickson – $6.95 – 394-75513-8 Running Dog, by Don DeLillo – $7.95 – 679-72294-7 Saigon, Illinois, by Paul Hoover – $6.95 – 394-75849-8 Selected Stories, by Andre Dubus – $9.95 – 679-72533-4 Soft Water, by Robert Olmstead – $6.95 – 394 75752-1 Something to Be Desired, by Thomas McGuane – $4.95 – 394 73156-5 Sportswriter, The, by Richard Ford – $6.95 – 394-74325-3 Stars at Noon, The, by Denis Johnson – $5.95 – 394 75427-1 Steps, by Jerzy Kosinski – $5.95 – 394-75716-5 Stories in an Almost Classical Mode, by Harold Brodkey – $12.95 – 679-72431-1 Story of My Life, by Jay Mclnerney – $6.95 – 679 72257-2 Suttree, by Cormac McCarthy – $6.95 – 394-74145-5 Taking Care, by Joy Williams – $5.95 – 394 72912-9 To Skin a Cat, by Thomas McGuane – $5.95 – 394-75521-9 Ultimate Good Luck, The, by Richard Ford – $5.95 – 394-75089-6 Visit From the Footbinder, A, by Emily Prager – $6.95 – 394 75592-8 Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair, by Lewis Nordan – $6.95 – 679-72164-9 What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Carver – $6.95 – 679-72305-6 Where l’m Calling From, by Raymond Carver – $8.95 – 679-72231-9 Within Normal Limits, by Todd Grimson – $5.95 – 394-74617-1 Wrong Case, The, by James Crumley – $5.95 – 394-73558-7
Though probably best known for his 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque’s literary oeuvre comprises (well, going by Wikipedia!) fourteen other novels, all written between 1920 and 1971. One of these is Arch of Triumph, first published in 1945 as Arc de Triomphe.
The 1948 version starred Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer in the title roles of Dr. Ravic and Jean Madou, while in the 1985 remake the title roles were reprised by Anthony Hopkins and Lesley Ann-Down, with Donald Pleasance in the role of the chief (only?) villain, van Haake, a, “…a German Gestapo man who tortured Ravic and committed his beloved girl Sibylla to suicide. Killed by Ravic at the end of the novel.” The latter is quite ironic, given the fact that as a member of the Royal Air Force, Donald Pleasance flew sixty-one bombing missions over Germany as a wireless operator in Lancaster heavy bombers, and was a prisoner of war at Stalag Luft I!
You can view the trailer (from Media Graveyard) for the 1948 version here…
…and, watch the trailer (from Movieman Trailers) for the 1985 production here…
Interested in viewing the full production? You can view the 1985 film at Archive.org, here.
________________________________________
Thus for film. Now, back to print…!
Here’s Signet’s 1959 paperback edition of the novel. The themes of the cover art are direct and immediate: The Arc de Triomphe stands in the background, while a lady both sultry and forlorn (Jean Madou?), casting her gaze upon something, or someone, in the distance. Unfortunately, I’ve not been able to identify the artist on this one!
A quote from the novel:
Ravic walked on. The large hall with its staircase came steadily toward him. And suddenly, high above everything, rose the Nike of Samothrace.
It was a long time since he had seen her. The last time it had been on a gray day. The marble had looked dull and in the dirty winter light of the museum the princess of victory had seemed hesitant and freezing. But now shed stood high above the staircase on the bow of the marble ship, illuminated by spotlights, gleaming, her wings wide spread, her garment pressed tight by the wind against her striding body, bright and ready for flight. Behind her the wine-colored Sea of Salamis seemed to roar, and the sky was dark with the velvet of expectation.
She knew nothing of morals. She knew nothing of problems. She did not know the storms and dark ambushes of the blood. She knew the victory and the defeat, and the two were almost the same. She was not temptation; she was flight. She was not enticement; she was unconcernedness. She held no secret; and yet she was more exciting than Venus, who by hiding her sex emphasized it. She was akin to birds and ships, to the wind, to the waves, and the horizon. She had no country.
She had no country, Ravic thought. But she did not need one either. She was at home on all ships. She was at home wherever there was courage and conflict and even defeat if it was without despair. She was not only the goddess of victory, she was also the goddess of all adventures and the goddess of refugees – so long as they did not give up. (244)
________________________________________
LOST LOVERS
A brilliant refugee doctor and a beautiful headstrong actress find love in Paris, during the tense and tragic days before the outbreak of World War II, in this great bestseller that became an important motion picture.
A tempestuous, romantic picture of a touching and tormenting love affair, Arch of Triumph “will surely go down as one of the truly memorable works of fiction of our time.” – Philadelphia Record
“A vivid picture of a crisis in history, a gallery of brilliant portraits of of individuals, a study of human motives – a work of art that would have added to the fame of Balzac.” – Cleveland Plain Dealer
________________________________________
Here’s Remarque’s portrait (and caption) from the novel’s rear cover…
ERICH MARIA REMARQUE was born in Germany in 1898, fought in World War I and was wounded five times. All Quiet on the Western Front was his first and most famous novel. He was driven from Nazi Germany to France by the Nazis, and in 1939 came to America. Arch of Triumph, published originally by Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., sold over 700,000 copies in its original trade and booklcub editions.
A fascinating aspect of Arch of Triumph (well, Signet’s paperback edition, that is!) is not necessarily the novel itself, but instead, what is physically within the book: A perforated, tear-out subscription card for Doubleday’s One Dollar Book Club (mailing location, Garden City, New York), which provides a fascinating window upon popular literature, public tastes, and (*ahem*) book prices of the late 1950s: “Choose any 4 for 99 ¢.” (? – !!!)
Rather than simply present the subscription card as scanned images, I thought the “flavor” of the advertising could be more adequately conveyed as full text.
Which, appears below…
Choose Any 4 of these hard-bound best-sellers for 99¢
when you join the Dollar Book Club and agree to take as few as 6 best-selling novels out of 24 to be offered within the year
AROUND THE WORLD IN 2000 PICTURES. Sail the Seven Seas – visit Rome, Paris, London, Hong Kong, Mexico, Peru … see the wonders of 84 lands in this huge 832-page volume of vivid photos and informative reading.
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GRIMM’S FAIRY TALES. Famed children’s classic in a superb new edition! 32 never-to-be forgotten stories – Tom Thumb, Snow White, Hansel & Gretel, Sleeping Beauty, Rumpelstiltskin, etc. Illustrated.
HAMMOND’S FAMILY REFERENCE WORLD ATLAS. Brand new! Big 256-page Volume covers U.S., Canada, all foreign lands. 190 pages of the latest color maps! With profusely illustrated world geography, historical maps, etc.
HEALTH SET – 2 volumes. Handy Home Medical Adviser by Dr. Morris Fishbein; includes latest on allergies, mental health, new drugs, etc. Plus Stay Slim For Life – new book that tells how to eat and reduce. 620 pages. Illustrated.
What Happens When a Young Psychiatrist Falls in Love with His Patient? Dr. Jim Corwin’s love for beautiful Lynn Thorndike forces him into a desperate medical gamble which risks not only their future together but also his professional standing. Frank G. Slaughter’s DAYBREAK is new, exciting.
A Pair of Golden Slippers for a Night of Love! A dandy gift of golden slippers to a tantalizing café girl in exchange for her favors – followed by a shocking murder – looses a storm of passions in a Louisiana town. VICTORINEis Frances Parkinson Keyes’ most exciting hit since “Dinner at Antoine’s.”
ICE PALACE – Edna Ferber tops “Giant” in this new best-selling novel about a beautiful young girl whose quest for love is caught up in a struggle for power in her native Alaska. Timely different!
LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL BOOK OF INTERIOR DECORATION. New edition! Big, lavish volume contains 293 illustrations – 144 in full color! Crammed with exciting new ideas on fabrics, lighting, color, furniture, table settings, accessories, etc.
MODERN FAMILY COOK BOOK – Meta Given. 1,250 delicious recipes, 250 tempting menus, 640 pages. Latest edition of the most useful cook book ever published. Helps plan meals, guides shopping. New freezing section. Illustrated.
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY – H.G. Wells. 2 volumes. 1,024 pages, over 200 maps and pictures. The whole dramatic story of man from earliest times to our own years. One of the most widely acclaimed works of the twentieth century!
THRONDIKE-BARNHART COMPREHENSIVE DICTIONARY. 2 volumes. Latest edition – 80,000 entries, 700 illustrations, 896 pages! Sections on letter writing, grammar, punctuation, pronunciation, etc. Hundreds of new words.
Send No Money – Mail Attached Card
MAIL THIS CARD TODAY – NO STAMP REQUIRED
Doubleday One Dollar Book Club, Dept. PB-32, Garden City, N.Y.
Enroll me as a Dollar Book Club member. Send me at once as my gift books and first selection the 4 books checked at the right and bill me only 99 ¢ FOR ALL 4, plus a small shipping charge. As a member, I will be offered best-selling novels at the members’ price of only $1 each – a few extra-volume selections somewhat higher – the same full-size complete, hard-bound novels that cost up to $3.95 each in publishers’ editions. (Members have received books by such authors as Thomas Costain, Daphne du Maurier, Frank Yerby and other popular best-selling novelists.) An exciting new bonus plan entitles me to other big savings too.
Also send me my first issue of The Bulletin, describing new forthcoming one-dollar book selections and other bargains for members. I may notify you in advance if I do not wish the following month’s selections. I do not have to accept a book every month – only six a year. I pay nothing except $1 for each selection I accept (plus a small shipping charge) unless I choose an extra-value selection at a somewhat higher price.
NO-RISK GUARANTEE: If not delighted, return all books within 7 days, and your membership will be cancelled.
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“So, that is love,” thought I dumbly, despairingly, as we picked up our things; “so that is the love my books at home were so full of – of which I had expected so much in the vague dreams of my youth!”
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The Road Back is a book I’ve read a b o u t, but not yet actually read, having learned about it at ChicagoBoyz. There, the book is discussed in the context of literature of First World War in general, and, the war’s impact and legacy, in intellectual and cultural terms, in particular, on the generation of soldiers who fought in it. Much more importantly – with relevance for the world of 2022; our world – is the way in which the war altered ways of understanding, living in, and acting upon (and catastrophically against?) the world, for veterans of the conflict and especially those who came after.
Akin to Remarque’s to Arch of Triumph, The Road Back was transformed to film in 1937. The full movie, at Sir Jänskä’s YouTube channel, can be viewed here…
The Old Man decides to humor us at all costs. We are too many, and Willy stands there too formidably trumpeting before him. And who can say what these undisciplined fellows may not be doing next; they may even produce bombs from their pockets. He beats the air with his arms as an archangel his wings. But no on listens to him.
Then suddenly comes a lull in the tumult. Ludwig Breyer has stepped out to the front. There is silence. “Mr. Principal,” says Ludwig in a clear voice, “you have seen the war after your fashion – with flying banners, martial music, and with glamour. But you saw it only to the railway station from which we set off. We do not mean to blame you. We, too, thought as you did. But we have seen the other side since then, and against that the heroics of 1914 soon wilted to nothing. Yet we went through with it – we went through with it because here was something deeper that held us together, something that only showed up out there, a responsibility perhaps, but at any rate something of which you know nothing, and about which there can be no speeches.”
Ludwig pauses a moment, gazing vacantly ahead. He passes his hand over his forehead and continues. “We have not come to ask a reckoning – that would be foolish; nobody knew then what was coming. – But we do require that you shall not again try to prescribe what we shall think of these things. We went out full of enthusiasm, the name of the “Fatherland” on our lips – and we have returned in silence, but with the thing, the Fatherland, in our hearts. And now we ask you to be silent too. Have done with fine phrases. They are not fitting. Nor are they fitting to our dead comrades. We saw them die. And the memory of it is still too near that we can abide to hear them talked of as you are talking. They died for more than that.”
Now everywhere it is quiet. The Principal has his hands clasped together. “But, Breyer,” he says gently, “I – I did not mean to – “
Ludwig has done.
After a while the Principal continues. “But tell me then, what is it that you do want?”
We look at one another. What do we want? Yes, if it were so easy a thing to say in a sentence. A vague, urgent sense of it we have – but for words? We have no words for it, yet. But perhaps later we shall have. (97-98)
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At last came my turn. The man who had been before me stumbled out and I stepped into the room. It was low and dark, and reeked so of carbolic acid and sweat that I thought it strange to see the branches of a lime tree just outside the window, and the sun and wind playing in the fresh, green leaves – so withered and used up did everything in the room appear. There was a dish with pink water on a chair and in the corner a sort of camp-bed on which was spread a torn sheet. The woman was fat and had on a short, transparent chemise. She did not look at me at all, but straightway lay down. Only when I still did not come, did she look up impatiently; then a flicker of comprehension showed in her spongy face. She perceived that I was still quite young.
I simply could not; horror seized me and a chocking nausea. The woman made a few gestures to rouse me, gross, repulsive gestures; she tried to pull me to her and even smiled as she did so, sweetly and coyly, that I should have compassion on her – what was she, after all, but a poor, army mattress, that must bed twenty and more fellows every day? – but I laid down only the money beside her and went out hastily and down the stairs.
Jupp gave me a wink. “Well, how was it?”
“So, so”, I answered like an old hand, and we turned to go. But no, we must go first to the A.M.C corporal again and make water under his eyes. Then we received a further injection of protargol.
“So, that is love,” thought I dumbly, despairingly, as we picked up our things; “so that is the love my books at home were so full of – of which I had expected so much in the vague dreams of my youth!” I rolled up my great-coat and packed my ground-sheet, I received my ammunition and we marched out. I was silent and sorrowful, and I thought upon it: how now nothing was left me of those high-flying dreams of life and of love, but a rifle, a fat whore and the dull rumble out there on the sky-line whither we were now slowly marching. Then came darkness, and the trenches and death. – Franz Wagner fell that night, and we lost besides twenty-three men. (157-158)
For Further Thought
World War One, and the Transformation of Civilization, With Relevance for Our Times, atChicago Boyz…
Though I’ve been unable to find much about artist Tom Dunn, his work appears to be stylistically similar to that of Bayre Phillips, possibly – at least in this instance – because of Pocket Books’ desire to maintain consistency in style and cover design for Cardinal Edition paperbacks.
Paralleling the covers of Great Jewish Short Stories, and, Famous Chinese Short Stories, John Alcorn’s cover illustration of Norris Houghton’s anthology Great Russian Short Stories displays the dual-headed eagle of the Russian coat-of-arms, a symbol having antecedents actually dating back to the Bronze Age.
More importantly, the simplicity of Alcorn’s composition gives one no inkling as to the superb quality of the tales in this collection, the most striking aspect of the anthology being how despite the natural differences in plot, theme, and style among the thirteen tales therein, the literary quality of the tales is uniformly excellent. (Well, as for my own taste, I’ve always been very partial to the stories of Anton Chechkov.)
Like Great Chinese Short Stories, I’m presenting Great Jewish Short Stories far more for virtue of its content that its cover. The latter is nice enough and entirely appropriate, but nothing that too dramatic, thus, leaving not-too-much to discuss.
The content, of which there is very much, taking precedence, I’ve included links to a variety of websites for eighteen of the nineteen authors whose works appears in the book, as well as to the Apocrypha and Aggadah.
Contents
Tobit, from the Apocrypha
The Lord Helpeth Man and Beast, from the Aggadah
Hadrian and The Aged Planter, from the Aggadah
The Rabbi’s Son, by Reb Nachman of Bratzlav
The Judgement, by Martin Buber
The Rabbi of Bacherach, A Fragment, by Heinrich Heine
[Though I created this post back on August 15, 2021, I’ve felt through the intervening year (it’s now July of 2022) that a central aspect of the story of “Red Sky at Morning” – the movie “Red Sky”, rather than Richard Bradford’s original novel upon which the film is based – has been missing. That missing piece is, given the centrality of Catherine Burns’ performance to the movie “Red Sky”, the story of Burns’ own life. While some of the links listed below, such as Wikipedia and IMDB, shed light on Burns’ life and brief acting career, by nature the information therein is limited in scope and depth.
However, the puzzle is a puzzle no longer. Scott Feinberg and Scott Johnson’s poignant and moving article “Catherine Burns: The Vanishing of an Oscar-Nominated Actress”, from February 3, 2020, atHollywoodReporter.com, provides a much fuller biography of Burns, encompassing her upbringing, brief acting career, and subsequent, intentionally anonymous life as a writer.]
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“I am one of a kind,” she said. “Ah, but what kind?” – Catherine Burns, 1989
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There wasn’t anything I could do. I just stood there with my hands behind me, wondering what was happening, and what was going to happen.
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“How old is this friend of yours that has the figure?” “My age. Seventeen.” “My God, are you insane? I already have a civic reputation as a lewd old man.” “This is a really nice girl. Her father’s a minister.” “Worse and worse.”
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“Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.”
Red Sky at Morning. I remember this movie.
I remember catching it on NBC television in the 1970s. (The specific date and time were, just now I’ve found, Wednesday, January 30, 1974, at ten PM. )
I remember being as uninterested as I was unimpressed with the film – “Boring!”– which – looking back – was probably more reflective of my age than the film itself. Yet even then, to the small extent that I viewed it (“Isn’t anything going to happen?! It’s World War Two after all…!”) I noticed what I’d deem, in retrospect, to have been the air of skepticism? – distance? – deliberate anti-nostalgia? – surrounding the characters and story, especially in light of it having been set well into America’s engagement in the Second World War. The events of which, I noticed, were far, far more backdrop than central to the story.
And, I remember the presence of Richard Thomas in the film. That guy from The Waltons… What was he doing in New Mexico? I thought he was in Virginia…
(I was always interested in movies, television programs, and books dealing with history, but somehow, The Waltons left me cold. The show seemed to have been permeated by a Potekmin-Village-like air of near mathematically-generated-sentimentality, especially the grating, contrived, ingenuous “Niiight, ‘sooo-and-sooo’…. routine that accompanied each episode’s closing credits (I’d turn the volume down whenever that came on) particularly ironic given the post-WW II ideological ethos of the CBS Television network (and not just CBS) – which today, looking back from 2021, seems quaint.)
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So, moving forward.
Here’s the 1986 Harper Perennial edition of Richard Bradford’s Red Sky At Morning. What really caught my attention far more than the story itself (!) – well, thus far! – is William Low’s lovely, subtle, and entirely well-conceived cover art, which expresses a transition from youth to adulthood; the uncertainty between moods of “beginning”, “possibility”, and the arrival of a new horizon – or impending danger, the “unknown”, and “oncoming challenge” – all depending on the viewer’s mindset – “Do you see morning or evening?”; the manner in which most of the composition is actually occupied by horizon and sky, rather than characters and action; the characters themselves, representing a triad of youth, young adulthood, and (wizened? detached? patient? skeptical?) middle age:
There’s a conversation going on…
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So. I have not read the novel just yet (too much of a backlog!), but these excerpts give an appreciation for Bradford’s prose…
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“Amadeo,” she said, “seems to be forgetting that he’s a servant and not a member of the family. Your father’s always been too lenient with both of them. He seems to lose all perspective when he come to Sagrado, and forgets his class distinctions. Class distinctions are extremely important, because without them nobody knows where his place in life is. A stable society is a society in which everyone knows his situation.”
“And anything else is Red Communism, right?”
“Don’t you dare be sarcastic with me. Don’t you dare be snotty. You’re already picking up a lot of filthy manners from those tacky trash you go to school with, that Greek boy and that Davidson girl. Do you know that she’s Jewish?”
“I thought her father was the Episcopal minister,” I said.
“He is,” she said. “That’s just the point. That’s the first thing they do, become Episcopals.”
“Well, if they’re Episcopals, how can they be Jewish? I mean, if you switch from being a Baptist to being a Methodist, you’re not a Baptist any more.”
“I don’t care how Episcopalian they pretend to be. I don’t care if one of them becomes the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
“Okay,” I said. “First thing tomorrow I’ll go out and paint a swastika on St. Thomas’s.”
“You just shut your mouth, Joshua M. Arnold, or I’ll come over there and slap it shut for you. I’m going to write your father about your behavior.”
“You might mention in the same letter that Kimbob’s got pneumonia. Dad might need some cheering up.”
She got up from he chair and walked three or four steps and slapped me on the check with her right hand. I didn’t even have time to finch; she’d never slapped me before. It didn’t really hurt, but it stung, and it made me sick to my stomach. I felt as though I’d been hit by a crazy stranger. I wanted to hit her back, to slug her a good one, so I locked my hands behind my back to be sure I wouldn’t. She cracked me another one, backhand, on the nose, and it made tears come to my eyes. I could feel my nose starting to bleed. There wasn’t anything I could do. I just stood there with my hands behind me, wondering what was happening, and what was going to happen. I was much bigger than she was, and heavier and stronger. I’d never noticed before what a little woman my mother was. I looked at her face closely while she was hitting me, and it was a stranger’s face. Her cheeks were fuller than they’d ever been, and her skin was gray. There were tiny grape-colored lines in her cheeks near her nose, and the whites of her eyes were pink, as it she’d been swimming in a chlorinated pool. Each time she slapped me I caught a whiff of sherry.
She said, “Apologize! Apologize! Apologize!” and each time she said it she slapped me. But when I opened my mouth she hit me in it. I don’t know how many time she slapped me. My face was getting numb, and the slaps sent little dark red drops of blood from my nose flying around the room. After five or six blows, I realized, in a detached and clear-headed way, that I wasn’t angry any more, just bored. So I finally brought my hands around in front of me and grabbed her wrists and held them. They were thin and without strength. I said, as slowly and clearly as I could, “I’m sorry, Mother,” and dropped her wrists and walked into my bedroom. It was only after I’d sat down on the side of the bed that my legs began to tremble.
I sat in the dark for several minutes, waiting for her to come in and start again, but she didn’t. I turned on the light and went into the bathroom and wiped the blood off my face with a wet washcloth, and then I threw up the coffee that Chango’s parents had served me. (115-117)
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I walked home alone, and saw that the frying pan from breakfast was still in the sink where I’d left it. My mother was still in her room; I could hear her humming tunelessly to herself. I washed the frying pan and put it away, and then went down the hill, turning left on Camino Chiquito to go to Romeo’s studio.
He had a dirty white bandage wrapped around his head, and a purple bruise extending down his jaw. He pointed to it. “Anna moved out, and left me with this. She hit me with an iron saucepan during a perfectly civil discussion about art, and when I awoke she was gone, along with eighteen dollars and several cases of Vienna sausage, which I’d been saving for when I was really broke. Come in. I want you to meet Shirley.”
Shirley was sitting at the table, smoking a cigarette, and wearing the same dirty bathrobe that Anna had worn. She was very large and sleepy-looking, and acknowledged my presence by slowly nodding her head. Her bathrobe was untied, and she was naked underneath it. She arranged it arranged her very deliberately, without changing her expression. “Romeo”, she said, yawning, “I’m tired. Can I rest now?”
“Shirley, my dear, you’ve been resting for half an hour. Don’t you remember? Look at all the cigarette butts in the ashtray.”
“Oh,” she said, “half an hour. I’m so-o-o tired.” She cradled her head on her arms and conked off.
Romeo took the burning cigarette from between her fingers and put it out. “You want some coffee?”
I nodded, and we walked over to the kitchen area. “Have you been giving her sleeping pills?” I asked him.
“No, it’s her thyroid. When she first came three days ago I took her down to my doctor, and he gave her a basal metabolism test. He told me that clinically she’s been dead for some time. Has no thyroid gland at all. He wrote a prescription for thyroid stimulants, but I like her this way. If I gave her the pills she might get jumpy and start throwing things, like Anna. This way she’s easy to handle.”
“Can she model?”
“She’s a terrific model. She’s like a catatonic. I can arrange her in any position, standing, sitting, kneeling, leaning over, balanced on one toe, and she falls asleep and never moves. Of course, she’s not very good as a housekeeper, but she eats very little. It doesn’t take much fuel to keep an engine that sluggish moving. All in all, I’d say she was about perfect. She may even be intelligent, but she can’t stay alert long enough to let me know.”
“I know a girl who’d be a good model,” I said. “She has a good figure, anyway.”
“Good figures have nothing to do with it. Or very little. A model has to have some imagination and lots of muscular control, and she has to know how to take orders. If she looks like Miss America she’ll probably be a lousy model. Girls that are always preening themselves and showing you their profiles and wondering if they have a pimple on their behinds. How old is this friend of yours that has the figure?”
“My age. Seventeen.”
“My God, are you insane? I already have a civic reputation as a lewd old man.”
“This is a really nice girl. Her father’s a minister.”
“Worse and worse. I can see that you have no appreciation for the niceties. Here, drink your coffee. It may help to clear your mind.” (120-122)
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“At the heart of this coming-of-age story of young man sitting out World War II with his mother is a father-son relationship of intense mutual respect and loyalty. The year is 1944. When Mr. Arnold volunteers his services to the navy, Josh Arnold and his mother are transplanted from Mobile, Alabama, to the hills of New Mexico. The leading player is seventeen-year-old Josh, who narrates the story with deadpan irreverent humor. Miss Anne, Josh’s genteel Southern Belle mother, gradually withers in Sagrado, tippling sherry and playing bridge with Jimbob Buel, their permanent houseguest, while Josh becomes an integral member of the Corazon, Sagrado community – Chango, a criminal kid turned softie and Chango’s sister Viola, a would-be-nun-turned criminal; Steenie Stenopolus, who collects sex facts from his father, the OB-GYN; Marcia, the rector’s daughter; and others. The group is as delightful as they disreputable. In the correspondence between father and son, we watch Josh come into his own as he reconciles news of the war with the events and people that are shaping his life in Sagrado. In this New Mexican hill town, Bradford takes a piece of America and catches the enduring spirit of youth and the values of life that count.”
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The 1971 film Red Sky at Morning is the subject of Larry Karaszewski’s review, at Trailers from Hell.
On another note, it was only while completing this post that I learned about the extraordinarily talented Catherine Burns who played Marcia Davidson, her acting career having spanned 1967 through 1984. Burns also published a children’s novel, The Winter Bird (link given below), possibly (?) one of a number of works. According to Wikipedia, “Little is known about Burns’ life following her acting career; Shire said that she had resented the publicity and scrutiny from it, saying “She hated the movie [Last Summer]… and most everything that came with it. She wanted to be remembered as a published writer of novels.”
You can listen to the movie’s theme, “Red Sky at Morning Suite” (quite an appropriate name!), by Billy Goldenberg (William Leon Goldenberg), at Valdez444’s YouTube Channel.
And – yes! – you can view the full movie at Christian Arthur’s YouTube Channel (Gadzooks – download it now while you still can….!) ((Just kidding.)) (((Or am I…?))) ((((!))))
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