Re: covers (was Re: bananaman)
randy royal (randyr@mailhub.jaxnet.com)
Thu, 09 Oct 1997 16:20:47 +0000
sam bryant: i got a colored rectangle version of nine stories, with each
story title on acolored rectangle. its a nice copy from my local used
book store.
> 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"
seymour seems to be the type who would willingly shop at thrift
stores.
> 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?
i read in tolkien's bio that the first american edition of the hobbit
had a painting of an emu on the front cover!! tolkien was really
pissed and the publisher (i think ballentine?) apologized and said
that the artist never did have time to read the book. the point is
mattis, that the starving artist or what have you, should know what
he's doing to some extent
> Old JD had a problem with understanding gift horses, and perhaps with
> how to judge books.
>
> All the best,
> Mattis
>
randy