Re: Salinger's covers

Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Sat, 31 Jan 1998 16:19:19 -0500

> covers and that the story itself is the most important part, don't judge a
> book by it's cover and all...
>
> She just scoffed.  Some people just don't get it.

I "get" it, but for those of us who have seen the movie "Repo Man," in
which all consumer products are labelled generically (e.g., "Beer," "Food,"
and so on) there's an eerie resemblance between those generic packages and
the new white-cover/rainbow issues.

Regardless of how impure it is to feel this way 8-), I just love the
original paperback of Catcher, with the picture of Holden in Times Square
done by Jim Avanti, with all that text on the cover ("This unusual book may
shock you, will make you laugh, and may break your heart -- but you will
never forget it.")  Hype aside, that little sentence is quite prophetic.

(Ah, and there's a bonus for me, too: in pulling out this copy, to quote
from the jacket properly, I discovered that of the two old Signet
printings, one of them is the 1953 first printing!)

--tim