This lovely little book from 1948 is titled The Bed Side Tales: A Gay Collection. The witty cover, shows a man in bed with a woman tarted up for more athletic bedtime activities — except that he is blind to her supposed charms, lost in a book.
There can be no question that this cover, by Peter Arno, is a wink. While the word "gay" still had not entered the popular language (although it had come to have its homosexual connotation by the 1920s) certainly a cartoonist for the New Yorker would have certainly been aware of what he was doing when he created this book cover.
The stories are a wild collection of fiction from a wide selection of writers from the first half of the 20th Century. Names everyone will recognize: Hemmingway, Dorothy Parker, S J Perelman, Damon Runyon, H L Mencken and John Steinbeck to name a few. And then some who are less remembered or forgotten: Clarence Day, Oscar Levant, Corey Ford, Paul Gallico, and Erskine Caldwell.
It's a shame not many people remember Oscar Levant. I remember watching him on Jack Paar. He was unafraid to say caustically funny things on the air:
"Everyone in Hollywood is gay, except Gabby Hayes — and that's because he is a transvestite."
and
"I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin."
But best of all, as a fellow hypochondriac I loved his epitaph:
"I told them I was ill."
I collect New Yorker covers (not those framed reproductions sold on the street, or through the New Yorker Cartoon Bank but actual covers from the magazine's early years. If you follow the link be sure to check out his cover from Roosevelt's 1933 inauguration, it's hilarious.
I still take issue with the fact that subscriber's copies of the New Yorker have an address label that can no longer be peeled off without taking the artwork with it (anyone at Conde Nast listening?). And of course, news stand copies have the dreaded bar code. I have one cover by Arno from the politcal conventions of 1948 . And now, thanks t my friend John in Providence, I have this delightful not-so-little volume with an Arno cover and many funny stories. 
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