Fifty Bucks for a Used Paperback?
At the recent Antiquarian Book Fair in St. Petersburg, one of the things I kept an eye out for were paperbacks from the paperback original heydays of times gone by. And lucky me, I found a few. Not many, which makes sense if you consider that all of these vendors have to pack and ship their wares and probably lean toward showing pricier items, but I don't know. The next show I go to I should ask a few folks how they decide what to bring.
Anyway, at the first booth where I found some, the woman gave me a deal right off the bat. "I just want the damn things gone," she said. Um, no problem. I picked up a couple of Gold Medals and a Dell map book. I'm describing the publishers and not the authors on purpose: I'm hinting at an era.
At another booth I found some more and I just wish I could have bought them all, even the ones from writers I'd never heard of. But we do what we can. I've just read three of these books in a row and I'm blown away by their quality. The plotting, the characterization and above all else, the various styles, made me as happy as a reader as I've been in a long time.
The first was a Lam and Cool book by A. A. Fair, better known as Erle Stanley Gardner: Gold Comes in Bricks (1940). A straight up detective mystery, it was written around a plot that seemed organically fueled from an interesting concept involving reviving defunct corporations and then using them to sell shares in a seemingly legitimate company. This isn't what the book is about, but I think that served as the seed that gave rise to the plot and I'll write about that in another entry.
The second was the first book I've ever read by Charles Williams, which is bad, and is called Hell Hath No Fury (1953). Like many noir novels, it has a hard luck drifter lighting in a small town and doing bad things. He meets a woman who gives him a shot at redemption but his past mistakes catch up with him and all he can do is watch his hopes fade away, and for the last time. Classic noir themes but written so well with superb similes ("She crawled into my lap like an anxious Dachsund.") that it never reminds us jaded children of the post-Cold War era of a B movie parody.
And I just finished Behold This Woman (1947) by David Goodis. Damn, what a book. A woman destroys a family and those around her simply by the force of her own presence. She marries a good man and breaks him with her words and actions, all under the veneer of her pose as a good wife, as well as corrupts his daughter into nearly becoming a junior version of herself. This is not a traditional thriller or mystery and I have never read anything like it. It is superb in its portrayal of working class evil and its depictions of people and the hell they can make for themselves and inflict on others. It's brilliant.
I paid four dollars for the Goodis book and it is in good condition with creases in both covers and the standard slanted binding. The pages are in good shape, though, and there is a pencilled in price on the first page of $35.00. I looked the book up on Amazon and there was one used one listed for $50.00. ABEbooks.com shows copies starting at $17.00.
I've written before about reading only contemporary fiction or "what's hot now" and I want to climb back on this horse. I'll do it over the next few posts, though, especially since this is following one on wordiness and length. In the meantime, log on to the internet and buy a copy of the Goodis book, even if it costs you fifty dollars. In the immortal words of the sadly fictional Ferris Bueller, "If you have the means, I'd highly recommend one." Pick up all these books, or other titles from these same writers. Then you can tell me why, like our parents used to tell us all those years ago, they just don't make them like that anymore.
Anyway, at the first booth where I found some, the woman gave me a deal right off the bat. "I just want the damn things gone," she said. Um, no problem. I picked up a couple of Gold Medals and a Dell map book. I'm describing the publishers and not the authors on purpose: I'm hinting at an era.
At another booth I found some more and I just wish I could have bought them all, even the ones from writers I'd never heard of. But we do what we can. I've just read three of these books in a row and I'm blown away by their quality. The plotting, the characterization and above all else, the various styles, made me as happy as a reader as I've been in a long time.
The first was a Lam and Cool book by A. A. Fair, better known as Erle Stanley Gardner: Gold Comes in Bricks (1940). A straight up detective mystery, it was written around a plot that seemed organically fueled from an interesting concept involving reviving defunct corporations and then using them to sell shares in a seemingly legitimate company. This isn't what the book is about, but I think that served as the seed that gave rise to the plot and I'll write about that in another entry.
The second was the first book I've ever read by Charles Williams, which is bad, and is called Hell Hath No Fury (1953). Like many noir novels, it has a hard luck drifter lighting in a small town and doing bad things. He meets a woman who gives him a shot at redemption but his past mistakes catch up with him and all he can do is watch his hopes fade away, and for the last time. Classic noir themes but written so well with superb similes ("She crawled into my lap like an anxious Dachsund.") that it never reminds us jaded children of the post-Cold War era of a B movie parody.
And I just finished Behold This Woman (1947) by David Goodis. Damn, what a book. A woman destroys a family and those around her simply by the force of her own presence. She marries a good man and breaks him with her words and actions, all under the veneer of her pose as a good wife, as well as corrupts his daughter into nearly becoming a junior version of herself. This is not a traditional thriller or mystery and I have never read anything like it. It is superb in its portrayal of working class evil and its depictions of people and the hell they can make for themselves and inflict on others. It's brilliant.
I paid four dollars for the Goodis book and it is in good condition with creases in both covers and the standard slanted binding. The pages are in good shape, though, and there is a pencilled in price on the first page of $35.00. I looked the book up on Amazon and there was one used one listed for $50.00. ABEbooks.com shows copies starting at $17.00.
I've written before about reading only contemporary fiction or "what's hot now" and I want to climb back on this horse. I'll do it over the next few posts, though, especially since this is following one on wordiness and length. In the meantime, log on to the internet and buy a copy of the Goodis book, even if it costs you fifty dollars. In the immortal words of the sadly fictional Ferris Bueller, "If you have the means, I'd highly recommend one." Pick up all these books, or other titles from these same writers. Then you can tell me why, like our parents used to tell us all those years ago, they just don't make them like that anymore.
posted by Rick Ollerman at 5:43 PM
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