malaise*lithium

In Jefty is Five, Harlan Ellison tells the story of a boy who has not only ceased aging but seems to have stopped moving forward in time as well. Time passes normally for everyone for everyone but Jefty. For him it is always 1952. He listens to new episodes of long-silenced radio shows and sends away for new offers from mail-order programs that have been shut down for decades. It was a goddamned freaky tale, and it has stuck with me for years.

Many of my old books include advertisements and order forms for long-defunct lines and books no longer in print, forms only Jefty could use. Most of my Ellison novels do. Nearly every Bantam paperback I own includes one, but many other publishers included them as well. They’re a window into a world that has since disappeared. They promote the publisher’s cheaper lines, classics that no longer required royalties or else pulpier titles of mass appeal: mysteries, science fiction, and horror–all the more enticing for me.

I have a Pocket Library edition, a 1959 printing of The Great Short Stories of De Maupassant. The last two pages are reproduced below. Please click to view much larger versions (as is the case with all images that follow).

The pages tout copies of Gullivers Travels, The Golden Ass of Apuleius, The Return of the Native, and The Pocket Aristotle. The copy at the top of the ad claims that the books have been “prepared in formats of quiet distinction and priced extremely low.” That extremely low price is the most eye-catching thing about this offer. Seventy-five cents for David Copperfield, Thirty-five for Huck Finn. Don Quixote? Man, four bits.

The penultimate page of my 1956 Bantam printing of The Pearl features a compelling pitch for six Perry Mason mysteries.

“Just ONE Perry Mason mystery is jammed with suspense, mystery and lightning-fast action–so imagine the “kick” you’ll get out of SIX of them.

Each of them is a full-size, full-length book, absolutely complete. All six of these thrill-packed Erle Stanley Gardner mystery books are yours FREE on this sensational offer to mystery fans.”

“Well, I’m a mystery fan,” says I to myself. “What do I have to do?”

A bit of further reading tells me that once enrolled as a member, I’ll get my dose of Perry Mason and then some: the six novels in the offer and an additional triple-volume of other detective books. Further, I learn that I “need send no money now, but for each volume I decide to keep I’ll send [the publisher] $1.89 plus a few cents mailing charges…”

Not quite the deal I saw from Pocket, but that no-money down offer is pretty hard to argue with, and for all of my looking, I can’t find a single expiration date on any of these offers.

So I bite, and I herewith am engaging in an experiment. I’ve dug through the piles and culled four forms to send away. I’ve torn them right from the books they were printed in, because that’s what was intended. You might be wondering how I worked up the nerve to do so, and the most direct answer is that it involved a good deal of rationalization and an equally good amount of cheap wine.

From a New American Library Printing, Ward Six and other Stories by Anton Chekov, I’ve ordered Fables and Fairy Tales by Tolstoy and Diary of a Madman and Other Stories by Nikolai Gogol. Total price with shipping: $1.30.

From the Pocket Library I ordered The Golden Ass of Apuleius. Cost: Forty Cents.

From Bantam, one dollar and fifty-five cents for Bradbury’s R is for Rocket, Rod Serling’s Devils and Demons and Star Trek III by James Blish. I actually used to own Star Trek III, but my recollections indicate that I sold it and the rest of its boxed set at a garage sale (if that won’t give you an ulcer, I don’t know what will).

If Jefty can mail things off to one of yesterday’s tomorrows that never came to be, why can’t I? Perhaps only because I never have.

I’ll mail these off tomorrow. All are destined for P.O. boxes in New York. The only slip containing a delivery estimate is the one from Bantam, and that claims “about four weeks.” I’ll be sending the exact amounts requested on the forms, and mailing them to their honest-to-goodness 1950’s P.O. boxes. I have no idea what might come of this experiment. I expect nothing, but who knows? J9 points out that Pocket was long-ago acquired by Simon & Schuster, but I believe I’d rather charge ahead ignorant and blind on this one; it’s half the fun.

I’ll post the first round of results back to Malaise before the first week in June and a post of further (and hopefully final) results about, oh, August-ish–you know how the mail runs these days.