Prather on Robert McGinnis Art

    

The Foreword below is by Richard S. Prather for the book "The Paperback Covers of Robert McGinnis". This reference book was written and compiled by Art Scott and Wallace Maynard and published by Pond Press. All I can say is that if you enjoy unbelievably great paperback cover art, you must buy this book! McGinnis is one of the true masters of his field and Mr. Scott and Dr. Maynard have brilliantly done their research. The picture of Shell above was done by McGinnis. Richard S. Prather: A Salute - and Long delayed Thank You - to Bob McGinnis I'll never forget the first time I saw a painting by Robert E. McGinnis on the cover of one of my books. It wasn't the first McGinnis cover I'd seen. I had by then seen a lot of them (alas, on books by a lot of other authors), and admired them all, lusted for them all, wanted them all (or at least one of those wonders for at least one of my own books). I had also by then seen and (mostly) enjoyed a myriad different covers for my own titles, not only many U.S. editions but several hundred foreign editions as well, and some of that artwork was very good indeed - I think particularly of Barye Phillips, who painted the definitive "Shell Scott" and created the Shell logo seen on millions of my paperbacks. But: Then I got my first McGinnis, and knew immediately that I was looking at the best and most eye catching cover I had ever seen on one of my books. Wonder of wonders, seventeen more, each equally and uniquely pleasuring, followed. I regret that now, nearly four decades later, I don't recall which McGinnis painting that first one was, or even what mystery of mine it magically improved. But I do remember well my surprise approaching shock and my uninhibited delight that finally "a McGinnis" was mine. So in the end it doesn't really matter which painting that first one was because the description "best and most eye catching" would have been true no matter which of the eighteen I first saw. Curiously, the above mentioned "surprise approaching shock" was due to the fact that, when it happened, I didn't have a clue that it was going to happen. Nobody - not even my friends at Fawcett Gold Medal, the best publisher I ever had - bothered to tell me. You would think that any author would be informed by his publisher, before and during and after the fact plus at every other opportunity, that future editions of his books would have their sales wondrously accelerated by the presence upon them of cover art by the incomparable Robert E. McGinnis himself, if only to enjoy hearing the author's fervent, "Thank you, thank you!" or even, "You're pulling my leg, aren't you?" Nope. Didn't happen. Go figure. At any rate, I was not only surprised and shocked but happy, very happy. Especially as Fawcett Gold Medal continued releasing more editions of my books with McGinnis artwork setting them apart from the ordinary, each new cover seeming even better than the last one. Yes, I was a most fortunate fellow, very happy during those very early years of the sixties. But: Into each life some floods must fall. Thus into all this bliss crept what might conservatively be described as more than a modicum of auctorial pain. For during the same period of time when my books with that splendid McGinnis artwork were being widely distributed throughout the USA by Fawcett, I was - for reasons not here germane - completing my transition from Fawcett Publications/Gold Medal Books to Simon & Schuster Inc., parent of Pocket Books, my new publisher.  During the last half of 1962 I completed my final two novels for Fawcett  (Joker In the Deck - which is graced by what's surely one of the best McGinnis inspirations of all eighteen aspirations and The Cockeyed Corpse); and at the beginning of 1963 I began writing he first of the thirteen books I did for PB. Moreover, Pocket Books began preparing, it seemed enthusiastically, to smartly package and expertly promote their dynamite continuation of my Shell Scott series. All of which sounded pretty snappy to me. But: For some strange reason, which still entirely escapes my comprehension, the Pocket Books people opted to create, for my new titles, covers that were not painted but photographed this resulting in drab depictions of women who resembled thin men and a Shell Scott who looked like a dork. I'm not giving away any secrets here. Anyone familiar with my work, and even remotely familiar with those early Pocket Books/Prather covers, must recall this guy with a pound and a half of white flour or powdered sugar in his hair and a vacant expression, understandably, in his eyeballs. I remember one photo in which he's holding onto a little gun like a manic chef about to stir cookies with his Colt .38 spatula. Even if you don't recall those dismaying covers, I do; I'll never forget them; they give me excruciating pain to this very day. Pain bearable only because of the unalloyed pleasure those eighteen McGinnis masterpieces gave me then, and still give me now. You see where I'm going with this, don't you? If there's any published writer on the planet with uniquely pleasurable/painful reason to really appreciate the beauty and brilliance and wonderfully provocative pulchritudinousness of a Robert E. McGinnis cover painting it's got to be yours truly. For I had, in the space of a mere year or two   in retrospect it seems almost instantly   experienced first The Best (McGinnis) and immediately thereafter The Worst (Shell Dork). So let me do at last what I should have done long ago, which is to say "Thank you, Bob McGinnis, for those eighteen wonderful covers, and the thousands of other splendid splashes of Beauty you've given to the world of publishing, and the world period:" I have of course been asked, by admirers of McGinnis who are also familiar with my work, what my own favorite McGinnis cover painting is. That's a difficult question to answer, and at different times I've given different replies, but I think now's the time to end the confusion and tell the whole truth. For a while, for several years in fact, my #1 favorite was the exceedingly beautiful lady making Strip For Murder a best seller even among people who couldn't read: the shapely redhead standing coolly in the lake's hot water (don't tell me it wasn't hot) while disrobing as artfully as disrobing has been done since Eve accidentally lost her fig leaf for the nineteenth time. But after a while I began thinking maybe, just maybe, the lady transforming The Wailing Frail into a hot collector's item should be #1; how could she not be, with her long flowing blonde hair and long flowing blonde body, her wise face and wiser form, her magnetic and charismatic and hoo boy! impact upon a man's eyes and aorta and etc.? Well, when I was through with her (temporarily), I convinced myself that the best McGinnis cover art was on Find This Woman, the Woman being sufficient all by herself to start three alarm fires in Christian bookstores and motivate preachers to rewrite their sermons... but there was also that sweet and saucy lass with enough blonde hair for two irresistible sirens, midway through a memorable game of strip poker, relaxing audaciously and flirtily fingering the joker of Joker In the Deck...and even after all of those beauties had been studiously considered there were still - forget it. I think you can see my problem. So the honest and final answer to this question is, perhaps not entirely grammatically but I swear entirely truthfully: All eighteen is my favorite. O.K. I have given you at least a hint above that, like many other published writers, I consider Robert E. McGinnis unique in the field of fine art, particularly cover art (which when he does it is fine art). But what is it, exactly, that sets him apart from most of his peers? At least from this writer's point of view, some of it is, to paraphrase what I've said elsewhere, that he paints members of the opposite sex in a way that makes them more opposite; somehow he makes brush strokes in another dimension (one I hope to visit at least briefly when   far far away in the future   I kick the bucket); clearly, at his most creative, he is in contact with angels, some of whom pose for him. Pursuing this mystical connection: I suspect that Mr. McGinnis and I share a belief seldom spoken of aloud by us men, for fear that we may be considered mentally unhinged. I have long believed that all women - tall or short, fat or thin, beautiful or less beautiful - are Goddesses. Yes, I really do mean authentic honest-to-God capital-G Goddesses, bright sparks of burning spirit with their blinding light temporarily dimmed behind sweet flesh in order that we dorks, at least sometimes, may approach them with less fear and trembling than we otherwise would. Extreme or wacky as this conviction of mine may sound to some, I think Robert E. McGinnis may be far out enough to share it; that is, I think he also believes pretty much the some thing. If, however, he does not, I suggest that he take another long look, now that I've enlightened him, at those Goddesses blazing on my eighteen covers, and the thousands of other lovely and luminous ladies he has created, shaped, transformed and stripped of their earthly disguises. Do any of them look to you like mere women? Sincerely yours, Richard S. Prather Back to Main