Friday 15 October 2010

Leo Orenstein

This post is a follow-up to one at The Dusty Bookcase about Leo Orenstein. In particular I'll add a bit more information on his published work.

His first novel, The Queers of New York, was published in September 1972 by Simon & Schuster of Canada, Ltd as a Pocket Book original. A couple of aspects of the book stand out for me (aside from the obvious.) The first is the absence on the covers of any information about the book with the back cover used for an absurdly detailed biography of the author. The second is the publisher - not a small obscure publisher but the venerable Simon & Schuster with the famous Pocket Book logo.

Note the phrase "as a young man, he worked as a magazine illustrator" in the biography. This gives the impression that one might see his work in Chatelaine. Below are two examples of his work from a different sort of publisher - Fireside Publications Limited of Toronto. Undated but likely circa 1950. Both books are magazine sized with 64 pages.



Baron Munchausen - art by L. Orenstein

back of One of Cleopatra's Nights - art by L. Orenstein

One of Cleopatra's Nights - art by Jackson Heise

1 comment:

  1. What a queer (forgive me) back cover. You'd almost think that the publisher doesn't want us to know what the novel is about. And, lest the we think it is in any way autobiographical, we're told that the author has been married twice and has two sons. "Paul took the above photo of his father"... just in case you missed the credit above.

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