Thirteen Women

New York: Old Wine Press, 1948. Reprint. hardcover. fine/near fine. David Berger. With b/w illustrations by David Berger. 339 pages. 8vo, textured gold boards with black-lettered spine, graphic illustrated d.w. by Politzer. New York: The old Wine Press, 1948. Thirty seventh edition. A fine copy in a near fine dust wrapper of this oddly scarce title -- could it really be the 37th printing? "Tiffany Thayer's books... as far as I can tell, are just plain awful. They're sleazy, pandering, full of wooden characters and plot devices, and suffer from Thayer's logorrhea, which appears never to have been moderated by any editor. Next to Thayer, Harold Robbins, (truncated) Danielle Steel, or even the average Harlequin Romance author looks like Leo Tolstoy. Despairing of the state of the novel in the late 1930s, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that no one read anything but the Book of the Month Club's latest pick although 'curious children nosed at the slime of Mr. Tiffany Thayer in the drug-store libraries.' Which is also, of course, what also makes them almost irresistable. If you're going to read a bad book, you don't want one that's half-heartedly bad, one whose author betrays any misgivings or sense of aesthetic standards. You want a full, unrepentant wallow -- and that's exactly what you get. In the case of Thirteen Women, you get adultery, both hetero- and homosexual-suicide, murder, rape, revenge, envy, gossip, corruption, show business, clairvoyance, yoga, blackmail, and chain letters. And I probably left something out of that list." --Brad Bigelow at Neglected Books. (Inventory #: 310721)