Pulp International - Paul+S.+Nouvel

Mar 12 2021

What do you mean my squirming is throwing off your aim? Screw you! I hate this idea! When do we switch places?

French illustrator Jef de Wulf painted so many covers for Editions de l'Arabesque that he was almost an in-house employee, and here we see him again on the art chores for Paul S. Nouvel's 1960 thriller Crapahut. You also see the original art, and can see the hole left for the publisher's logo, because why waste paint when you don't have to? Crapahut, of course, translates into English as “outhouse.” Actually, that's not correct. We don't know what crapahut means. We think it's a place. A place you can smell from miles away.

Update: We got two answers on this, the first from Jo:

About the book named Crapahut, I can tell you it's a soldier's training, very hard and difficult. It's a slang word used first by military people (warrior's path?). You can use it also to speak about a long and difficult hiking in the mountains without any military sense.

The second answer came from Jean-Marie:

«Crapahut» from military slang, we have the verb «crapahuter» that means: walk, during war or battle if possible… with haversack very heavy, with arms, with enemy all around, into jungle, for 5, 10, 20 kilometers. Very hard. «Ha! qu’est-ce qu’on a crapahuté avant d’arriver à Danang,,, »

Thanks, Jo and Jean-Marie. Another mystery solved.

France Editions de l'Arabesque Paul S. Nouvel Jean-Michel Sorel Jef de Wulf cover art literature

Vintage Pulp

Dec 13 2020

I won! I knew I would once they restricted track and field to beautiful French actresses! Eat my dust Anouk Aimée!

Catherine Deneuve absolutely flew in this race. It wasn't nearly as close as the art makes it look. Espions!.. à vos marques was written by Paul S. Nouvel, aka Jean-Michel Sorel, and published in 1964 by Éditions de l'Araesque. The cover is unsigned, but it's probably by Jef de Wulf. If we get more info we'll update this. We can't wait for the triple jump. Hopefully, Catherine will win that too.

France Editions de l'Arabesque Paul S. Nouvel Jean-Michel Sorel Jef de Wulf cover art literature

Vintage Pulp

Dec 17 2016

Sing? Are you serious? I can barely breathe in this outfit.

We never want to go too long without an offering from the great French pin-up and paperback artist Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan, so above we have his cover for Macadam Sérénade, a thriller written by Paul S. Nouvel for Éditions de l'Arabesque. Nouvel was a pseudonym. The man behind it was French journalist/author/translator/editor Jean-Michel Sorel, who also wrote as Larry Layne, Arnold Rodin, Silvio Sereno, Tugdual Marech, Jan Mychel, Jean-Michel, Yvon Brozonech, Swani Abdul Hamid (we love that one), and many other identities. In all he produced more than one-hundred forty novels—and probably could have squeezed in a couple more if he hadn't been so busy thinking of pen names. 1955 on this.

France Editions de l'Arabesque Paul S. Nouvel Jean-Michel Sorel Aslan Alain Gourdon cover art literature

Vintage Pulp

May 2 2015

They’ve gotten themselves into hot water for the last time.

There’s no safe place in pulp—especially not the bathtub. Above and below is a collection of vintage covers featuring various unfortunates who chose the wrong time to be naked and defenseless. Well, most of them are naked. A few have clothes on for reasons we cannot discern. Art is by Willard Downes, Barye Phillips, Robert Bonfils, Jef de Wulf, and others. See another good example here.

Vintage Pulp

May 31 2013

Form and fashion through French eyes.

Below are five more pieces from the genius Alain Gourdan, aka Aslan, whose women had exaggerated curves and a pretty sharp fashion sense. In addition to bookcovers, Aslan did a long running series of pin-ups for the French nudie magazine Oui that allowed him to dispense with clothing altogether. We’ve collected quite a few of those and will get some posted later. In the meantime, see other Aslan bookcovers here and here.

France Oui Magazine Aslan Alain Gourdan Manuel O’Shara Paul S. Nouvel Andre Dinar Charles Desmond cover art literature