Signature Strengths (Sternberg Press): édition anglaise

by Boy Vereecken

Description

When first introduced, mass-market paperbacks sparked a publishing revolution. Critics despised them as lowbrow diversions, which did not impact their popularity. But the business model barely worked. Prices were so low, the books needed to sell in incredible numbers to make a profit. An industry norm emerged to pump up sales, whereby most of the novels were wrapped with images of women in provocative settings and states of undress. Many readers were duly provoked to purchase, but this show more recurring allure eventually lost its sway. Simultaneously, an opposing theme of essentialism was asserting itself in grocery stores. The No Frills brand presented goods in unadorned packaging. It was as if the very intention to sell had been excised from the label's straightforward design and terse declaration of contents--SALAD DRESSING, FRUIT PRESERVES, LAUNDRY DETERGENT. No Frills stripped the cloying appeal of traditional marketing and replaced it with a candid offering of canned beets and corned beef, pure and plain. Inspired by this direct approach, Terry Bisson and art director Frank Kozelek developed the No-Frills book series in the early 1980s. Signature Strengths, conceived and edited by Boy Vereecken, reproduces in full the four books published in the series--Western, Mystery, ScienceFiction, and Romance--as well as critical evaluations of the fascinating experimental endeavor in genre writing and mass-market publishing. Copublished with La Loge, Brussels show less

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bluepiano 143 reviews

In 1981 an editor at Berkley Books was inspired by the concept of generic no-brand supermarket goods to issue a series of generic--and genre--paperback novels. The titles in the No-Frills novels were only genre names (Romance, Mystery, and so on), the' authors were perhaps at their insistence not credited, and the cover graphics were like those on packages of generic peas and toilet paper. This book is prefaced with a brief history of the series, contains the text of all four of the books in it, ends with a contemporary review, and is dotted with some vaugely relevant stock illustrations.I gleefully recommend it .

The books were pastiches written to the brief specs shown on their covers and all have the form-fitting characters and show more situations of the genres being satirised. (The satire is subdued in Mystery; its author admitted to admiring books in the genre and seems not to have been so deeply imbued with cynicism as the others.) That they are taking the mickey, though, mightn't be immediately apparent, least of all I deeply fear to habitual readers of genre ficttion despite the publsiher's blurb on each being 'NO-FRILLS BOOKS . . . After you've read one, you won't mind the others'.

In the spirit of things I've tossed more details from the books into Common Knowledge, and you can see the original covers and read plot outlines @ http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/no_frills_books. I will just mention that Romance has the most astonishingly preposterous plot I've ever come across and Science Fiction the most lamentable simile that I have: 'All around, night clung like roofing tar to jutting rocks.' show less

Jan 25, 2020 (Edited)

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