Monthly Archives: April 2013

The Great Cover-Up

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I was single and living in a Manhattan brownstone when I bought a paperback book because of its intriguing cover. I was not familiar with the author (who, at that time, had just one successful novel under his belt) and the title of his second novel didn’t grab me. But the 1976 Signet paperback with an embossed girl’s face, totally black except for one drop of bright red blood at the corner of the girl’s mouth, was unlike any I had ever seen. So I bought Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, and read one of the scariest books ever.

How scared was I? During the day, I would immerse myself in the book. Every night, I would place the book outside my apartment and lock the door. The story was perfect gothic horror and the cover conveyed the spirit of the haunting tale.

After Salem’s Lot, I became more aware of book jacket designs. Some designs are iconic. They include the original covers for In Cold Blood ; The Godfather ; Catch-22 ; Brave New World ; Clockwork Orange ; The Great Gatsby ; The Grapes of Wrath and Psycho. Great covers don’t belong solely in the adult fiction realm; iconic covers for nonfiction include The Mind’s Eye ; We Must Love One Another or Die ; What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and Visual Shock. Iconic covers for youth literature include The Cat in the Hat ; Goodnight Moon and Stuart Little.

EBooks also rely on eye-catching covers but that’s a topic for another Blog entry. About eBooks, I’ll simply quote famed book designer Chip Kidd: “Much is to be gained by eBooks: ease, convenience, portability. But something is definitely lost: tradition, a sensual experience, the comfort of thingy-ness — a little bit of humanity.”

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” is good analogous advice about how we view people. Of course, it also applies to books. However, especially in today’s marketplace where we are bombarded with choices, we often select a book by its cover. That makes the cover a critical component of a book’s ability to sell. Unless we are looking for a specific author or title, the book cover reaches our senses before anything else. It’s like any other kind of non-specific shopping: we have some idea of what we need or want, we go to the marketplace and, even before we start reading labels (or book jacket blurbs), we reach for the item that intrigues or pleases our visual sense.

Authors would be wise to pay as much attention to the design of their book cover as they are to their manuscript. And readers should take an extra moment to appreciate the creative cover art of the book they are reading.

When Words Fail Us

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In a 24/7 news world, we ricochet from one tragic story to the next. Children gunned down. Beautiful days ripped by deadly explosions. Communities ravaged by nature’s deadly force. Reason eludes us. We are reduced to the reality of our mortality and the power of chance over choice. Disasters render us speechless.

In hard times, many seek solace in scripture. Beyond holy texts, great authors also help us navigate the depths of our despair. Geoffrey Chaucer, Zora Neal Hurston, Toni Morrison, Michael Ondaatje and Jennifer Lash are just some of the novelists whose books effectively capture the human experience of grief. Their characters, milieux and story lines may not match our particular experiences but they mirror the ways we grieve, tapping into our human strengths and frailties.

Great non-fiction literature also gives voice to unspeakable pain. One such work is A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis (originally published under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk in 1961, following the death of his wife). Lewis, a noted theologian as well as a celebrated author, candidly reflects on his grief as he moves through its stages. Many consider A Grief Observed the best book about coming to terms with grief. Questions of faith along with the daily challenges he faced living without the love of his life find eloquence at the master’s pen.

Examples include: “Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.” “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” and “Getting over it so soon? But the words are ambiguous. To say the patient is getting over it after an operation for appendicitis is one thing; after he’s had his leg off is quite another. After that operation either the wounded stump heals or the man dies. If it heals, the fierce, continuous pain will stop. Presently he’ll get back his strength and be able to stump about on his wooden leg. He has ‘got over it.’ But he will probably have recurrent pains in the stump all his life, and perhaps pretty bad ones; and he will always be a one-legged man. There will be hardly any moment when he forgets it. Bathing, dressing, sitting down and getting up again, even lying in bed, will all be different. His whole way of life will be changed. All sorts of pleasures and activities that he once took for granted will have to be simply written off. Duties too. At present I am learning to get about on crutches. Perhaps I shall presently be given a wooden leg. But I shall never be a biped again.”

Lewis did not intend his book to represent everyone’s experience. In chronicling his own, however, his gift with language, wedded to his philosophic and spiritual views, gives us words to help process and express our own grief.

Recommended

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Great fiction exploring death, grief and mourning includes Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale; Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God; Morrison’s Beloved; Ondaatje’s The English Patient; and Lash’s Blood Ties. Nonfiction literature includes Lewis’ A Grief Observed (originally published under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk; republished under Lewis’ name).

Amusing Muses

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My daughter, Kenna, suggested I write about writers’ pets. The menagerie in our home includes a calico cat named Katje, a dwarf hotot rabbit named Oliver and a betta fish named Tidus. Past residents included Arrow (English Pointer), Dusty (mini-lop), guinea pigs Mücki and Rosette, and a goldfish named Sunset. All have been amusing, but only one has been a muse for me, resulting in my prose poem, Katje Must Be Fed. My niece, Leisa, also has a variety of pets but it was her first pug that inspired her to write the children’s picture book, Pugsley’s Imagination.

Dogs have been favored by the likes of Steinbeck, Cheever, Doctorow, Vonnegut, Sendak, Wharton, Dorothy Parker, Stephen King, Virginia Wolf and Robert Penn Warren (who saluted Tolkien by naming his dog Frodo). Cats were companions to such literary luminaries as Twain, Dumas, Beckett, Huxley, Kerouac, Collette, Eliot, Plath, Sartre (his cat was Nothing) and Raymond Chandler (whose Persian purred while perched on his manuscripts as Chandler edited). Polar opposites Hemingway and Capote owned both cats and dogs (the progeny of Hemingway’s famous six-toed cats still roam the Hemingway House & Museum in Key West, FL).

As far as I can tell, authors choose cats more often than dogs to share their lives. This may not be a matter of personalities (authors’ or species’) as much as it is a result of lifestyle. An author living in the countryside might like to take thoughtful walks with a canine companion while a city-dwelling author might view dog walking as stealing writing time. Cats tend to be more independent — or less needy — than dogs, depending on how you feel about felines vs. canines.

Then again, look at which authors have chosen dogs and which have chosen cats. Do you see any trends? And what can we imagine about writers with more “exotic” tastes in pets? Those would include some obvious ones such as Beatrix Potter (rabbit) and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (raccoon). But how do you explain Flannery O’Connor (peacocks) or Lord Byron (peacocks, crocodile, crow, heron, fox and bear — oh my!)?

451 Degrees – Part 2

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Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451, presents a repressive society of the future where books are illegal and firemen burn any house that contains them. Bradbury titled his most famous book after “the temperature at which book paper catches fire, and burns.” The cultural landscape Bradbury created is reminiscent of Nazi Germany and other societies throughout history, from ancient eras to contemporary times, in which censorship of thoughts resulted in mass book destruction.

Lest you think America’s celebrated Constitutionally-protected right to “free speech” has shielded this country from similar attempts at suppression, be aware that in the past dozen years alone, Harry Potter books were burned in several American states, “non-approved” Bibles, books and music were burned in North Carolina, and copies of the Qu’ran were burned in various states.

It doesn’t take burning to threaten books and the treasures they possess. Every year, attempts to ban books abound throughout our country. Thought-provoking expression and concepts are often banished from classrooms, libraries and public discourse simply because someone has taken offense at a word, a phrase or an illustration; isolated fragments are pulled out of context and attacked, often by people who haven’t bothered to read the full text or consider different viewpoints. This is true of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, a perennial title on “Most Challenged Books” lists since its publication in 1960, and of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, recently banned in Chicago Public Schools (see last week’s Book●ed blog 451 Degrees – Part 1 for details).

Fahrenheit 451 is prescient and worth a read (or re-read) six decades after its first publication. Bradbury envisioned many technical and cultural developments that are common today. The book’s uncanny foresight magnifies the strength of its message: When we ban books, we repress thought; we reduce the ability to think; we diminish what it is to be human. If we do not defend the freedom of books to exist and be read, we could find ourselves fulfilling Bradbury’s dystopian nightmare.

We do not need to endorse books with viewpoints, language or imagery that are at odds with our own — but we should not fear them. Every book eventually stands on its literary merits. Poorly written books, those with gratuitous attempts to shock or titillate, will fall from their own weakness. Every book should be given a chance: to start a dialogue, to teach, to enlighten and to enhance humanity.