covers (was Re: bananaman)

Mattis Fishman (mattis@argos.argoscomp.com)
Thu, 09 Oct 1997 12:37:35 -0400 (EDT) 

Dear Fish-of-a-feather,

"D." in his inimitable style opines:
:    ...One would presume that JDS took the "less is more" attitude
: than might belie his interest in Zen and other Eastern religions....

The word "belie" here through me for a loop, as I would have associated
the "less-is-more" attitude with Zen ("I too, am familiar with ways of Zen
adepts" - has anyone read The Empty Mirror?), so I would have thought
that unadorned covers underscored his interest in miminalistic values.

On second thought, I think that belie is the better word, but perhaps in
the context that his insistence on dictating anything so trivial as cover
art, cheesified or not, belies an adherence to indiscrimination.
Imagine Seymour out shopping for clothes with his mother in that
wonderful store:

  "Here, Seymour try on this lovely cashmere sweater"
  "Ah, Mom, if I wear that people will only want to know me because I look
like a section man"
  "Well, how about this nice burgundy shirt?"
  "I want people to appreciate me for my internal, spiritual, qualities,
please Mom, only white shirts, with black monograms"

A cover is important to a book - but only as a cover. It serves a marketing,
or simply aesthetic purpose, and people who work in graphic arts try
to do their work with as much integrity and inspiration as any
creative artist, authors included. In my own experience, while creating
advertisements, leaflets and posters (in a previous occupational incarnation)
it was annoying to the point of insulting when, after being given the
task of creating the visual means of communicating whatever message,
uninformed critics would want to change a typeface here, a color there
(and I, lacking Mssr. De Bergerac's ability to pay myself a thousand times,
usually just mumbled "the customer is always right...").

This probably sounds like a rant, a consequence of the limitations of email.
All I mean is, hey, let the poor fellow with the brush paint his stars out
for your cover, do you think the paint will splatter on Seymour's saintly icon?

Old JD had a problem with understanding gift horses, and perhaps with
how to judge books.

All the best,
Mattis