Hi, all.
I hope you’re enjoying long days and warm nights. Giving you a very short book this month because my brain has felt deep-fried of late and I am enjoying time spent outdoors and not thinking so hard!
The Clothing of Books, Jhumpa Lahiri
I don’t actually like this particular book’s clothing, but that’s not the point. The point is, covers mean something. Lahiri is a great writer, and I’d love to see her give the subject more space than this essay-length book. As it is, she just scratches the surface of a topic worth excavating.
I’ve been thinking about book covers because I have a piece about them in the works and also because (if you haven’t cottoned on by now) I am mildly obsessed with what objects can mean. Books are status objects, designed to appeal to particular audiences and used by readers to make statements about their tastes and identity. (And that’s before we get to the actual stories they contain.) Think about what you’d want to be seen reading on a train, or—the 2021 equivalent—what gets posted to the ‘gram, Tiktok, or Goodreads, all of which have their own bookish communities. Even if we don’t intend our reading material to say something about us, other people will read into it. Haven’t you ever judged someone by their book cover?
Lahiri offers a uniform as an answer to the plethora of book jackets that may be misleading, ugly, or simply a poor fit, citing Penguin’s classic covers, so iconic they have their own postcards, or the Italian Adelphi imprint. The stories become subsumed by the brand, but Lahiri argues (as many school principals have before) that a uniform is also equalizing—a vital aspect for an author who has experienced her works and herself being exoticized, marginalized, and miscategorized by their covers and marketing machinations.
Persephone Books manages to provide both an iconic uniform and individual personality in a polite riposte to the maxim “don’t judge a book by its cover.” Their dove-grey volumes contain brightly patterned endpapers that match the period or subject of the story, which is typically written by a neglected woman author of the 20th century. It is, as the kids say, a vibe. Although the aesthetic is more nostalgic than radical, a gentle manifesto that proffers the lulling comfort of strong tea and mild progressivism, I would quite happily dwell inside it for the rest of my life. Now what does that say about me?
Covers are the nexus of a lot of interests: marketing, money-making, storytelling, and design, all trying to communicate a whole lot, very quickly, in a very small space. The process sometimes produces clever art, and sometimes just banality. Either way, it matters what covers are trying to say, the assumptions they are based on, and the respectability politics they invite in terms of what kinds of stories get valorized, dismissed, or discriminated against. It’s easy to read a cover, which is designed for quick consumption and obvious appeal. It’s harder to read—and really understand—a book.
If you like it
And want to go deeper, try The Illustrated Dust Jacket, a beautiful survey of illustrated covers and their artists in their heyday of 1920-1970. Or if you’re more interested in seeing the drama of material culture and status objects play out in fiction, dig into The Spoils of Poynton by Henry James.
If you don’t
Not in a visual analysis mood? No worries. Danielle Henderson’s The Ugly Cry made me ugly laugh a lot over the day in which I devoured it recently. It’s a funny, fast-paced memoir of her childhood that is deeply felt but never maudlin. The straight-up sorcery of an extremely talented writer.
Recommended booklist on Bookshop.org
Things I’ve written lately:
Local Kombucha Brewers You Should Know, Park City Magazine
The Best Local Bakeries In and Around Park City, Park City Magazine
Summer Arts Events Roundup, Park City Magazine