I useed to have that book -- I think, Platypus.
But the book I'm remembering was a collection of illustrated features, not text.
I imagine the item I'm thinking of was about the Chase Vault. It's specifically the Ripley item that I hope to identify, because it seems to have made such an
impression.
There's a fairly long essay by me, "Pictures and an Inner Vision," available to be read here:
[
efanzines.com]
In it, I wrote about many images that I remember from childhood and early adolescence. If I had been able to identify the Ripley item, I probably would have included it in my "gallery," which ranges from a photograph of a cobra rearing up by a human skull, to a reminiscence of a face painted by Botticelli appearing in an ad (couldn't find the source), to Schomburg's glorious endpapers for the Winston science fiction novels for kids, to a famous alluring record album cover, to a melancholy desert painting. Such things either shaped my imagination or manifested how it was already forming. Again and again, in the article I mention images that seem to have appealed to me massively and spontaneously, i.e. nobody explained to me why I should appreciate them, I just did -- images that might not have meant much to lots of other people, just as some of the pictures that were important to them would have meant nothing to me.
I can't even say that I remember the Ripley image(s). I am sure the picture(s) would have aimed for an eerie effect and would have been in black and white done in comic strip style. But whatever it looks like -- and
it is out there somewhere, surely -- it interested me in a way that, so far as I know, none of the other pictures in the book did. What this suggests is that early on I was interested in the atmosphere of (certain)
places. Now the picture was no doubt intended to evoke "horror," and I responded to that; but I have never liked the most stereotypical "horror" picture of all -- I probably don't even need to say what it is; we here have all seen endless variations on it: the image of a terrified glamour-model being menaced by something ghastly, such as a skeleton, a zombie, a giant lizard, a giant spider, a vampire in opera cape, etc. We might have been attracted to such paperback art because we figured the book might contain stories we would like -- and again and again those would in fact -not- have been stories about "sexy babes" being menaced by some supernatural creature. But that's what the publishers seemed to think would sell. Maybe that image -did- sell to casual readers hoping for a generous amount of semi-pornography. But I'm not sure I have ever known a fan of "eldritch horror" who seemed particularly interested in that approach. How about you? -Is- that something you like? But if you "collect" "horror" you probably have cheesy books that look like that in your collection. Or maybe you did what I would likely have done and torn the covers off. Feh!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 1 May 23 | 01:19PM by Dale Nelson.