Showing posts with label literary fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literary fiction. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Georgie Winthrop by Sloan Wilson (Pan, 1965)

On the last afternoon of the Lifeline Bookfair they start selling off their stock by the bag.  Naturally I always take full advantage... and I gravitate towards the "vintage" table where I can fill my bag full of wonderful old paperbacks.  And the beauty of it is, at these bargain prices I can experiment with books I normally wouldn't be interested in - just because I like the looks of their covers.


'I'd love to be the Firebird in the Firebird Suite,' she said.  'She's sort of doomed, because she's feeding on herself, but she's also beautiful to see.  And anyone who touches her is doomed too, set afire, just the way she is.'
CHARLOTTE - at seventeen already a woman, grabbing at life, her passion for Georgie Winthrop all-consuming...
GEORGIE - forty-five, married with two children, a college vice-president - a man whose secure, complacent world trembles under the impact of Charlotte's uninhibited youth and beauty...
And this is a perfect example.

I'm becoming more and more enamored of Pan's output from the early fifties through to the mid-sixties.  They made a habit of commissioning good commercial artists to do their covers, and the best of them were very good indeed.   Later in the sixties Pan decided to cut costs by substituting photographs for the cover art, bringing their Golden Age to an end.  A shame, but it was fun while it lasted!

Meanwhile, I think I've started a collection...

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (WDL Books, 1959)

Found in a dusty corner of "The Green Shed:

 

In 1857 when Madame Bovary was first published, the detailed realism of its love scenes shocked and horrified the entire populace of France; and Gustave Flaubert, its author, was made to stand trial for "immorality".

Since then, the brilliant, cynical story of Emma Bovary, who revolts against her bourgeois surroundings and her marriage only to find profound disillusionment in the arms of a shallow lover, has come to be regarded as one the masterpieces of nineteenth-century literature.

Flaubert's aim was to give an impersonal, objective account of emotions and events, without any of the moralizing which was then the literary fashion.  His Madame Bovary stands today as the perfect model of fictional "realism".
Flaubert's infamous adulteress is sexed-up, 1950s style, on the cover of this paperback.  Maybe it's her anachronistic makeup, or her backless nightwear (and seriously, how is she keeping that garment from falling off?) but this picture does not say "nineteenth century novel" to me.  It doesn't even say "notorious nineteenth century novel" to me.  I could imagine an ignorant reader mistaking this one for contemporary sleaze, and finding himself with something quite different!