What Would Boris Karloff Read?

Boris Karloff poses with a fake book. Or at least I thought so. Read on. (Photo via A Certain Cinema)

At the used bookstore where I’ve worked for close to sixteen years, I like to happen upon books I call “prop books.” What I’m referring to are books with very stark and simple covers and nothing but the title on the front -- books that a character might read in a play or on a sitcom, when the director wants the subject to be extremely obvious. The title could be anything from Communism to Lose Weight in One Day, but they all have that same jokey stage look to them. They’re real books, of course, but they look fake.

That’s why I was so pleased when I came upon this fun photograph of Boris Karloff in an obviously concocted pose, reading what I automatically pegged as a prop book, only in this case, a prop book in the real sense of the name. The photo was taken on the set of Tower of London (1939), in which Karloff played Mort, the club-footed assistant of Richard III.


The book Karloff is reading is What Actors Eat When They Eat! and I guessed it to be a commentary on the grueling grind of working on a movie set. I took it as sarcasm, thinking it should almost have an ellipsis for better effect (What Actors Eat … When They Eat. Which Is Pretty Much Never.)

I was wrong. (Mark this on your calendar; it doesn’t happen often.) What Actors Eat When They Eat! is not only as real as Justin Bieber duct tape, it’s apparently highly sought after by book collectors. According to an L.A. Times blogger, it’s the Hollywood connection that has driven up the price -- often as much as $200-$400.

The book, published by small Los Angeles publisher Lymanhouse (which also published They Call Them Camisoles, silent film actress Wilma Carnes’ memoir about being in a mental institution), is actually a cookbook. The major part of its collector-y appeal is the fact that it contains personal recipes from a bevy of 1930s stars.

Recipes in the book include:

• W. C. Fields’ Brandied Peaches
• Carole Lombard’s Spareribs
• Jackie Cooper’s Curried Eggs and Macaroni
• Joan Crawford’s Charcoal Broiled Steak
• Finnan Haddie a la Davis (That’s Bette)

A few bloggers lucky enough to own the book have reproduced some recipes, so you can try Harold Lloyd’s Tamale Pie or Cary Grant’s Oven-Barbecued Chicken without spending a few hundred clams.

You can at least eat like Boris Karloff, even if you can’t afford to read like him.

Would you pay $400 dollars for a cookbook? Would Clark Gable’s method of cooking a dozen doves persuade you?

Quotable: Magus-Mania, Twitter hatred, and Whether Books Can Be Twits

Tom Adams' artwork for The Magus, which is not a kind of sandwich.

 It’s that time again. My slim laptop’s fat collection of bookmarks is bursting its seams, so here’s a selection of nifty things I’ve read about books, writing, and publishing in the last few months that you may have missed, and that I feel are worth documenting. Though I’ve singled out the quotable lines, the whole articles are worth a read. Give them a shot, and don’t be afraid to tell me what you think by leaving a clever comment that is itself worth quoting. (Or not. Say whatever, really.)

• “One way you can tell you’re getting old is when the good girl in the Gold Medal novel appeals to you more than the femme fatale.”

-- Mystery writer Ed Gorman, reviewing Bruno Fischer’s “sleek, dark whodunit” House of Flesh.

• “I’ll read The Hunger Games when I finish the previous 3,000 years of fiction written for adults.”

-- Joel Stein in the New York Times, explaining why he thinks adults should read adult books. (While this one’s from several months ago, I actually just stumbled across it, and reading the explosion of outrage in the comments section is a pretty good way to while away some time.)

• “...When I first encountered the book at 20, I disappeared for a week. A quick scan of the morning paper showed no Magus news, so I threw it away. At lunch, my sandwich didn't taste like Magus, so I spit it out.”

-- Writer Nick Dybek talking about John Fowles The Magus on NPR. You don’t have to have read the book to get what Dybek is talking about. You just have to have been obsessed, at least once, with any book, ever.

• "Twitter is unspeakably irritating. Twitter stands for everything I oppose," said Franzen, according to Attenberg. "It's hard to cite facts or create an argument in 140 characters … It's like if Kafka had decided to make a video semaphoring The Metamorphosis. Or it's like writing a novel without the letter 'P'… It's the ultimate irresponsible medium. People I care about are readers … particularly serious readers and writers, these are my people. And we do not like to yak about ourselves."

-- Jonathan Franzen, never one to shy away from controversy, in The UK’s Guardian. Needless to say, his remarks provoked some heated responses from Twitterphiles. Lipogram devotees have remained silent.

• “Ulysses is a twit.”

-- Brazilian writer Paul Coelho, who seems to blame Joyce for the downfall of English literature. Many bloggers were perplexed by his stance, including one at the University of Rochester, who wondered “Can a book even be a twit?” (For the record, in the same interview, Coelho takes an opposite stance from Franzen, re: Twitter (where he spends several hours a day, calling it his “bar").

When Archie Went MAD

 Archie's Mad House took on satire --and succeeded.

Archie and his friends have been around for over sixty years, making the fickle redheaded teen almost as old as Superman. Part of the secret to the comic book’s longevity may be the publisher’s willingness to diversify. To this day, Archie maintains multiple comics lines, and titles like Betty and Veronica and Jughead’s Double Digest are still going strong after decades.

Archie #1 is now valued at around $200,000. (via comicbook.com)

Over the years, the Archie Comics company has experimented with all manner of themes -- with or without the Archie gang -- and dropped them like a hot rock if they didn’t take off. Remember Cosmo the Merry Martian, Reggie’s Revenge or Jughead’s Time Police? That’s because they didn’t last long enough for you to recall. Even Jughead’s pet, Hot Dog, had his own comic for a whopping five issues. The folks at Archie Comics keep what works and ditch the rest. (It sounds like a no-brainer for publishing, but there are plenty of examples of publishers beating a dead horse long after a comic has lost its appeal.)

Jughead's Time Police: Don't feel bad --everybody forgot about it. (This and next images via Cover Browser)

In 1959, Archie Comics tried something new --sort of. The idea was inspired by a competitor, and they didn’t try to hide it. Archie’s Mad House debuted in 1959, when MAD magazine was in its heyday, and everyone wanted a slice of it. The first issues featured the regular Archie gang in stories that were more off the wall than usual, or that intentionally made no sense.

Early issues put the Archie gang into surreal situations.

Archie’s Mad House even had its own answer to Alfred E. Neuman: Clyde Diddit. (You can see the slogan “Clyde Diddit --who he?” on several early covers.) Over time, the title changed, morphing into Madhouse, Madhouse Glads, and several other incarnations, including Madhouse Ma-ad Freakout from 1969-70. After the Archie gang was dropped, the covers became goofier and goofier, depicting monsters, hippies, space aliens, and assorted other weirdos. 

Once the Archie gang was dropped, Mad House got wackier...

...and wackier.

Like MAD, Archie’s Mad House spoofed fads and trends of the day. In the ‘50s and ‘60s, that meant things like drag racing, hippie culture, superheroes, pop art, dance crazes, and beatnik slang. Teen culture was a huge part of the Mad House schtick, and it ultimately led to the creation of one of the most popular characters in the Archie universe: Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Sabrina was the brainchild of cartoonist Dan De Carlo, who created her for Mad House in 1962.

Archie's Mad House liked to spoof youth culture.

Those who only knew Sabrina after she joined the Archie gang in the ‘70s might be surprised at her earlier incarnation. The Mad House Sabrina is not only a sexpot, but quite the bad girl, using her magic to cause trouble --or ensnare boyfriends. The friendly, helpful Sabrina who would eventually have her own TV series is a far cry from the early teen witch who lounges around in revealing costumes, thinking evil thoughts and plotting revenge against her rivals.

Sabrina was an evil vixen when she debuted in Mad House (via Westfield Comics)

However goofy Archie’s Mad House might sound, it worked, and it kept on working until the ‘80s (ultimately morphing into Madhouse Comics Digest), making it one of Archie Comics’ longer series, and also the second-longest lived MAD magazine competitor in history. Only Cracked lasted longer, though Mad House trounced a pile of flash-in-the-pan imitators, like Nuts!, Get Lost, Whack, Riot, Flip, and Eh!

Brigid Alverson of Graphic Novel Reporter, has a neat take on why Mad House matters:

Because they satirized popular culture, the comics may seem dated to modern readers, but they are sort of a cleaned-up time capsule: Archie explains how to become a rock 'n' roll singer, Frankenstein turns out to be a hippie, and Agent X-48 is more interested in sales and gossip than stopping a supervillain. In one surreal Joe Edwards story, creatures called Blips explain how they morphed from blips on a radar screen to spies who hide out in abstract paintings, paisley patterns, and gag greeting cards to spy on Earthlings. It's as good an explanation as any for mid-1960s design.

What’s perhaps most notable, though, is how well Archie Comics adapted to cultural changes, a publishing choice that kept it successful for decades. When the world got weird, well, they got weird right along with it.


Read more about Archie's Mad House:

• Blake Bell’s interview with Josie De Carlo (wife of cartoonist Dan De Carlo, and inspiration for Josie of Josie & the Pussycats)
• History of Archie’s Mad House
• View the Mad House covers

1966: GQ’s First Nearly-Naked Cover Girl Is a Shocker

Who was the first celebrity to bare almost-all on GQ magazine? Read on.

GQ, or Gentlemen’s Quarterly magazine, used to be considerably more … well, gentlemanly. Today it’s as if the staff has decided that, hey, we’re not actually a quarterly anymore, let’s just dispense with the being gentlemen part too while we’re at it. Take a look at some recent articles, if you want evidence. “Supermodel Chanel Inman Knows Her Way Around a Stripper Pole” is a good start. “Are You the Office Sexist” is a good follow-up, especially as it's a humor piece. Sexism = hilarity.  (And for the record, if you have to ask, it’s you).

GQ Magazine in more gentlemanly times.

GQ today. Style alert: Popsicles and boobs are in fashion.

Kate Upton's Bomb Pop was more outfit than Rihanna was given.

The earliest issues of GQ (which morphed out of Apparel Arts, a trade mag for fashion retailers) display a savoir-faire that evokes the charm of a lost era. While we know there was plenty of misogyny in the ‘50s and ‘60s, it was to be found at home (and in the office) rather than on the cover of the magazine, which was firmly committed to fashion and style. Though the male cover models or fashionable celebrities sometimes appeared with women who were clearly used as mere photo props, the ladies were always plenty clothed and never more sexualized than their male companions.

"I'm grinning because I've seen the future, and it has more nekkid ladies."

Looking good, taking care of his bitches.

Imagine the difference if JFK had modeled in a Speedo with an ice cream cone.

Cary Grant. Pure class. Even the font is to dig.

The first hint of a more blatant sexism came with the Winter ‘65-’66 edition of GQ. The image of a woman’s face with a bow tied across her mouth and the words “Do Not Open Until Christmas” are jarring. The woman in question was Barbra Streisand, one of the first female celebrities to appear on the cover (though Carol Channing beat her to it), so while it’s possible the cover designer may have meant to suggest that Streisand’s voice is a gift, the overt imagery of a woman silenced is hard to ignore. (Don’t open your mouth until Christmas, Babs. You get a ten-minute set, then shut your trap again.)

And no talking during Hannukah, either.

It was a full year later that GQ featured a nude celebrity on its cover for the first time, and despite my aversion to some of the modern clothing-optional covers, I couldn’t be more pleased. It’s Phyllis, Phyllis Diller, wearing naught but a bow and a big grin. No one’s telling this lady to keep it quiet till Christmas. 

Phyllis Diller: GQ's first nude cover model.

Diller herself used to quip: “I once wore a peekaboo blouse. People would peek and then they'd boo.” In this case, I peeked, and then I cheered. Featuring the gawky body of a joyful comedienne is such a far cry from Kate Upton having her way with a Bomb Pop that I wish there were more covers like this. I know GQ won’t be ditching the sleazy covers anytime soon, so I’d like to plead with them to add more non-traditional (in the cover model sense) body types to the mix. If Phyllis Diller’s naked body sold magazines, anyone’s can. I vote for Lisa Lampanelli. 

Who would you like to see baring it all on the cover of GQ? With a Bomb Pop or a bow?
 

Book Review: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Ransom Riggs' YA novel from Quirk Books.

A peculiar book for peculiar readers.

I was a creepy kid. In the first grade, my favorite books in the library were on mummies and archaeology. While I was mildly obsessed with the pictures of dusty tombs and viscera-filled canopic jars, what I couldn’t stop turning to were actual photographs of preserved bodies found in peat bogs. They reminded me of raisins: blackened, dried-up skin, but still sort of juicy. One, the victim of a hanging, still had an intact rope around his neck.

Weird words obsessed me too, and I recall the first time I heard the word carcass (which fascinated me enough to color a picture of one for a second-grade art assignment). I learned mausoleum from a Trixie Belden book, though I pronounced it then to rhyme with linoleum. (From Trixie Belden #14, The Mystery of the Emeralds: The gate was ajar, and going through it, Trixie and Jim saw rows of moss-covered headstones. In the rear was a small but impressive marble mausoleum. "Ooooh! Cemeteries give me the shivers!" Trixie exclaimed.)

The Egyptian tombs, the bog carcasses, and the mausoleums had something in common besides the spectre of mortality (In the midst of life, we are in death was a concept I learned long before I ever heard the specific words). They are all things that seem otherworldly, yet are of this world. That otherworldliness, grounded in reality, goes a long way towards explaining what’s so appealing about Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, especially to a creepy kid-turned-adult like me.

Miss Peregrine's back cover.

The old photographs, on the cover and scattered liberally throughout the pages, are a huge part of the appeal. They too are both real and otherworldly. The black-and-white snapshots are of real people, strangers who are likely long-dead, that author Ransom Riggs found while scouring flea markets. While the author wove these odd and disparate images into a single story, it’s hard not to wonder what the real stories are. Why is the child in the bunny costume crying? Who are the weird twin clowns? It’s hard to know which might be more strange, the real (unknown) stories or the ones the author invented.

Riggs’ novel begins with the death of a young boy’s grandfather, and it’s a frightening and bizarre death. Clues left behind by the grandfather ultimately lead Jacob Portman to the abandoned ruins of an orphanage on a small Welsh island. See? Real-life creepy things already. Death, weird abandoned buildings, and mysterious orphans are only the beginning. In fact, the preserved body of a bog person even makes an appearance in a local museum. (My childhood self would have slept with this book under her pillow.)

Though the story does turn supernatural, the supernatural elements are the kind even the most skeptical parts of myself can manage to believe in. There are time loops. There are monsters -- hollowgasts -- that are the stuff of nightmares. The kids have powers, but they are not superheroic. Their powers are odd -- some are almost useless -- and serve to make them outcasts and freaks. In the context of an Old World-thinking Welsh village, these kids aren’t much different from the deformed or severely handicapped. They form their own world at the children’s home, which Jacob ultimately stumbles into.

Like the children themselves, the book has its flaws. Parts of the story beg believability. It’s not the strange stuff that seems so unreal, as disbelief can be suspended for the supernatural. It’s harder to believe that it’s a cinch to convince your Dad to up and take you to Wales, then leave you largely alone once you’re there. 

Ransom Riggs scoured flea markets for real photos to use in the book.

It may seem cliche to say “It’s too short!” as a criticism (a staple of reviewers who don’t wish to say anything too negative), but in this case, it really is a negative. After the world you come to know in Miss Peregrine changes dramatically, the story moves to high action, then ends too soon. If the book were expanded, the reader could spend more time in the book’s superior first half, learning more about the characters there.

The ending is grossly unsatisfying, and smacks of setting-up-a-sequel. The publisher may be to blame more than the author for the choice, but it’s still bothersome. There are ways to allow room for a sequel without damaging the story of the book at hand. That we haven’t seen the last of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is certain, in fact, a movie is in the works with TIm Burton said to be directing.

If nothing else, Ransom Riggs should be applauded for the creation of horror for young adults without any of the trendy tropes. Nary a vampire, zombie or even a teen witch is in sight. Both my creepy kid self and my creepy adult self approve.

Download and read the first three chapters of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children free at Quirk Books.



Are there elements from your favorite childhood books that still please you to find in fiction?

Lost Horror Films Article in Rue Morgue Magazine (and a Book Pitch)

To bastardize Poltergeist: I’m baaack. Where have I been? Working on a magazine piece that I’m particularly proud of, a five-page feature that Rue Morgue laid out just beautifully. I'm thrilled with how it turned out, so if you’re near a newsstand this month, take a look at “The Ghosts of Horror Past: 25 Films Lost to the Sands of Time” in issue #124. 

Rue Morgue magazine, with a feature article by your Book Dirt hostess.

But wait, you say. If the issue is already out, couldn’t you have returned to blogging sooner? I could have, but while deep in the middle of researching missing films I remarked that I had enough information on each title that I could practically write an article on each one. I honed each one down to a neat paragraph, but the idea weighed heavily on me: could this be a book?

I think it could. So, while I’m still high on the subject matter, I’m putting together a pitch package for a book on lost films. Pitching non-fiction, while it doesn’t require writing the book ahead of time, does require writing enough to show your chops. I’m close to finishing the introduction and sample entries, and aim to start seriously pitching in a few weeks.

In the meantime, if anyone has tips on maintaining a blog while meeting magazine deadlines (and pitching a book), I’m all ears.