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THE CREAM OF CROSBY
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One of Goodman's latest and finest outpourings concerned a book called "The Unfair Sex" (which won't be in the book stalls till late April). It started: "Simon and Schuster is in a delicate position. Only you — the male booksellers of America — can help us. In an unguarded moment — and moved only by the innocent notion of making some money — we signed on a little book called 'The Unfair Sex.' We'd read a chapter or two and thought it very funny. When the entire manuscript came in, we realized that this seem' ingly innocuous book was actually a ruthless expose of the human male in his relations with the female, by a writer who had shrewdly veiled her identity under the nom de plume of Nina Farewell.
"What we had, we discovered to our acute dismay, was a book that was to woman, in her eternal battle with man, what Mahan is to sea power and Machiavelli to the art of politics. The book exposes all the top secret strategies that have enabled men, for centuries, to be first class powers.
"Naturally, as men, we cannot condone or promote such a book."
If that won't sell books to both sexes, I don't know what will. (I've peeked into it and it's a pretty funny book. There's a chapter advising girls never, never, under any circumstances to go to a man's apartment. Next chapter: what to do when you get there.)
Probably the worst shellacking any author ever took in advertising was Bob Hope concerning his book "So This Is Peace." This was an almost unreadable collection of gags — and don't say you weren't warned by the ads. One of Goodman's ads ran: "Buy this man's new book! Some people will laugh at anything, and you may be one of them." Another: "Those ghosts you hear groaning this Halloween did not write Bob Hope's new book. They just read it."
Some of Goodman's finest and most insulting prose was lavished on S. J. Perelman's "Westward Ha!" One ad ran: "Once in a blue moon, there comes a book so patently a work of genius, so brilliant in scope and thrilling in execution that it oozes greatness at every pore. But in the meantime publishers have to
keep on publishing books they think people will enjoy reading anyway. Books like this one."
Much of Goodman's stuff is simply a spoof of all the advertising fraternity. (Goodman is essentially an editor and would be horrified at the idea that he's a paid up member of the same fraternity.) One ad for a book called "Merely Colossal" which is about the motion picture business was adorned with the cartoon of a bosomy female under which was the legend in huge type: "WHAT WAS HER STRANGE SECRET THAT DROVE MEN mad!" The body type started out prosaically: "We really haven't the slightest idea. But since all movie ads start like this, we thought it would be a good way to lead into an announcement that the new book 'Merely Colossal' reveals the whole unlikely truth about The Industry."
I was especially taken with the candor of an ad about Walt Kelly's book "I Go Pogo," which read:
"NO BIGGER! "NO BETTER! "(But new)" ▲
"That fellow didn't even look at ml I've got a good mind to walk right back and pass him again!"