NONFICTION - April 3, 1994

OVER MY DEAD BODY: The Sensational Age of the American Paperback: 1945-1955 by Lee Server. (Chronicle Books: $16.95 ; 108 pp.). Anyone who thinks everything about the 1950s was fearfully dull isn’t familiar with “the brief but gloriously subversive era” featured in this vividly illustrated survey. Paperback books existed before the end of World War II, but, featuring what author Server describes as “frenzied blurbs and risque illustrations,” they moved into overdrive once our boys came back from overseas. With catchy titles and catchier cover lines (“Pleasure Alley: Sordid Love in a Sinful Slum” is a typical example) plus pulsating art, paperbacks became a power, turning Mickey Spillane, for instance, into a 150 million copies selling author. Server finds space to discuss paperback icons such as David Goodis, Jim Thompson, Chester Himes and Philip K. Dick, but the main emphasis is on covers so intense the book has a fine-print caveat, pleading that the images inside “are memorabilia. They reflect the design sensibility of the period and do not represent the opinions of the Publisher or the Author.” You have been warned.