Sunday, October 5, 2008

Paperback 147: Shock Treatment / Wright Williams (Beacon Books 143)

Paperback 147: Beacon Books 143 (PBO, 1957)
Title: Shock Treatment
Author: Wright Williams
Cover artist: Peeping Tom

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

  • I love how she looks - not terrified, but exasperated: "You again!?"
  • Wait - I thought she was in her bathroom and the peeping tom was opening the window shade, but it seems just as likely she's in a hospital with mobile curtain dividers, in which case a. whose arm is that?, b. what's it yanking on?, and c. what is that red cloth? What am I looking at!?
  • "AT LAST..." - HA ha. I was just asking myself, "Why is there no book that explores the borderland between love and perversity?" Now, at last, that void is filled.

Best things about this back cover:

  • "Sure, big Eric was crazy. Crazy about women! And who can blame him? Am I right, guys!? Yeah, you know what I'm talking about ... [amused chuckles from drunk comedy club crowd] ... ah, chicks."
  • Whimsical drawings of cruel medical experimentation. "It'll cure your pervertedness, but ... you're gonna experience some rubber-arm, I'm not gonna lie."
  • Maybe those arms are supposed to represent the gyrations of patients at the "hospital dance" (!?)
  • "Not since Snake Pit ..." - I can't stop laughing long enough to comment on that line
  • "Frankly!"
  • "Passion-wracked!"
Page 123~

Instead of thinking of Katrine as a lovely, attractive girl who had bravely come out of a harrowing experience, I was drawing mental pictures of her in bed with a man married to someone else. It was rotten of me, and I almost welcomed the self-loathing that I began to feel.


Well, we've all been there, right?

~RP

6 comments:

Corey Wilde said...

Hehehe...I thought it said "passion-whacked."

Eunice said...

"Okay boys I have this treatment idea! We could just let all the patients have a dance!"

"Uh, Bob, you mean the male AND female patients together?"

"Yeah, great huh?"

"All of our insane, sex crazed INMATES?"

"Yep I even have the projected expenses right here."

*sigh* "Sure, Bob. Whatever."

Anonymous said...

What's with the huge space betwixt "borderland" and "between"? Is that supposed to actually represent the borderland?

Anonymous said...

"In bed with a man married to someone else..." Either the 50s were more progressive than we've been led to believe, or that sentence could use an extra comma.

Anonymous said...

Oops, no I just re-read that properly, it's my mistake.

Anonymous said...

That has to be the least sexy towel ever.