Re: Salinger's covers
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Sun, 01 Feb 1998 16:22:21 -0500
> For me it's the red color in that first paperback edition and no, I can't
> explain--it's just a perfect red modeled I think on Holden's heart! will
Yes, the red tilts the scale for me -- it's so lurid, but heartfelt, too.
I also enjoy the 1954 Signet paperback of Nine Stories with the
diamond-shaped cover design.
There's a whole small cottage industry of histories of American paperback
design, in terms of covers, marketing, book size and quality, and so on.
In my case I'm absolutely enraptured by the trends in cover design. (It's
ironic, too: my brother's wife is a prominent designer of book jackets,
though I don't know that she shares my pleasure in the lurid qualities!)
One good history is called Under Cover: An Illustrated History of American
Mass Market Paperbacks, by Thomas Bonn (Penguin, 1982); another is
Paperbacks, U.S.A: A Graphic History, 1939-1959, by Piet Schreuders (Blue
Dolphin, 1981). There's a new one out in the bookstores recently, though I
don't have it and can't cite the title readily.
It is pretty well educational if you have any interest in how paperbacks
evolved into what they are today.
--tim