Eugen Daubigny

New York: Pageant Press International Corp.. Near Fine in Very Good+ dj. (c.1969). First Edition. Hardcover. [nice clean copy with minimal shelfwear; jacket shows some wear at ends of spine, small tape-repair at bottom of rear flapfold]. Vanity-press novel by an ex-Army Sergeant Major, who (in a hardly-at-all-self-aggrandizing cover blurb) "in addition to being a superb writer, is one of the most colorful on the American literary scene. He is in the class of Hemingway and Fitzgerald -- only more intellectual." This raging intellectual (who's also "much traveled and erudite," in case you were wondering) has graced us here with "a soul-baring adventure in love and violence. It is one man's quest -- through liquor and sex -- to find his 'hole-y grail'" (whatever the hell that means). The title character, "a 'blue-collar' philosopher and intellectual, drinks his way into the local bar scene and the lives of the habitués -- especially into that of an attractive but frustrated young widow, Katy Remington. Eugen, a lusty war hero, challenges Katy's problem and mounts it." !!!!! Even without the massive unsubtlety of that description, I'm pretty sure all porn readers -- whether soft- or hard- -- know what "attractive but frustrated" is code for, but Katy's got more on her mind than just boinking: she enlists our philosopher/intellectual in a scheme to rob the rich guy who owns the bar where they've met. "The ensuing action reaches a new literary peak in suspense and violence -- the ultimate in psychological suspense." According to the jacket blurb, he had written one novel prior to this one ("Fragment of Blue"), but if it was ever published, it's apparently eluded the grasp of every library whose holdings are recorded in OCLC. I also find it lightly amusing that of the nine U.S. libraries recorded as holding a copy of this book, seven of them are in Georgia. Do you wonder where Mr. Hardin lived? I don't. .