Re: Newbie

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@hotpop.com)
Mon, 22 Nov 1999 11:33:51 +1100 

I too get a real kick out of those old book and magazine covers and have a
growing collection (`how many things does this girl collect?' Classic
examples of 1950s design, Silent Film memorabilia, Native American
handicraft, interesting lamps ... the list goes on and on, but unfortunately
the space doesn't (: ) Actually, I heard that it wasn't the picture Salinger
was so angry about but the seedy `The Most SHOCKING Story You'll Read This
Year' type caption on it - which admittedly is very hokey and makes the
story sound like a tawdry Beats Jr paperback rather than the noble fiction
we all know it is. I imagine Salinger, having finally escaped from the
`slicks' would have hated being demoted back to this level of literature.

Camille

Tim wrote:
> Ironically, it was an illustration by one of the foremost American
> paperback designers of the time, James Avati, who was a hot commodity
> at the time.  Salinger, it is said, blew his stack when he saw it --
> perhaps a tad too literal for him or too tawdry. I don't know, and
> since he's not talking, I can't really guess.  I know only that he
> loathed it.
>
> It showed an innocent boy with a suitcase that had travel stickers on
> it, in what looks like an imaginary part of Times Square, with peep
> shows and a newsstand and lots of people, and he looks lost amidst
> the crowd.
>
> (I have always been entranced by paperback art, lurid or not, and, as
> luck would have it, my brother's wife is the James Avati of the 1980s
> and 90s, so I have a vested interest in following the field and its
> trends.)
>
> You can read more about Avati at:
>
> http://www.ils.unc.edu/rarebooks/avati.html
>
> and see the original Catcher paperback cover at:
>
> http://scam.com/avati.html
>
> Ironically, Avati was born about five minutes from where I'm living
> right now.  And sadly, he's in his late 80s and suffering from
> macular degeneration, which for a visual artist is akin to a runner
> losing his legs or a writer the part of the brain where her words
> originate.  Life is cruel that way, eh?
>
> --tim o'connor
>