The New Yorker book blog celebrates the Stonewall riots with a showcase of book covers from pre-Stonewall gay and lesbian pulp fiction. They are appropriately fabulous. My favorite (pictured below) is apparently now a rare and coveted collectors item.
Late last year I read through a bunch of Ruth Rendell novels: I always thought she was one of those elderly English murdered-clergy-in-the-vestibule writers but most of her early work is psychological and rather gritty – like a UK version of Jim Thompson. Anyway, you can buy classy looking reprints of all her books in the chain stores but the original novels were published with lurid pulp covers similar in tone to that of Satan Was a Lesbian and these can be purchased in the second hand stores for a couple of dollars – they are, to my mind, the superior editions. My copy of Burroughs’ Junky also shows a picture of a sleazy guy ravaging a helpless girl on the cover, which is nice and ironic.
That Burroughs book – this edition, I take it?
http://theo.underwires.net/local/cache-vignettes/L450xH700/Junkie_US_Ace_1953_front-8c38d.jpg
Comment by Sam Finnemore — June 25, 2010 @ 12:37 pm
That sleazy guy is the husband, trying to stop his wife using. Based on how she’s dressed, the housekeeping money isn’t enough to feed her habit, so she prostitutes herself. I can’t explain her nipples, though.
Comment by Clunking Fist — June 25, 2010 @ 1:55 pm
That cover illustration was based on a Dunedin South Labour electorate committee meeting.
Comment by davy crockett — June 25, 2010 @ 1:59 pm
I presume from the title that, at some point in the past, Satan decided that she (?!) actually liked dudes after all?
It sounds suspiciously like thinly veiled VRWC religious propaganda.
Comment by Phil — June 25, 2010 @ 3:42 pm
Hard Case Crime is a rather cool paperback imprint that does “hard-boiled” fiction (with some suprisingly big names on the list) with deliciously trashy old school covers:
http://www.hardcasecrime.com/books_bios.cgi
Comment by Craig Ranapia — June 25, 2010 @ 9:37 pm