Books, Design and Culture
Canadian designer Steve St. Pierre has returned with a new set of “fictional book covers for unwritten memoirs”.
You can see some of Steve’s covers from the original 2016 ‘Jacket Everyday’ project, sadly no longer online, here.
Comments closedDon’t miss Dwight Garner’s New York Times review of Martial Bliss.: The Story of the Military Bookman, Margaretta Barton Colt’s account of running an antiquarian bookstore in Manhattan that sold only military titles. If you ever worked in an independent bookstore, you’ll probably relate…
Comments closedHistorians and journalists were devoted to the store, and leaned on it for their research. No one is lonelier than the author of a forgotten book. Ms. Colt speaks for many writers who walked into the Military Bookman when she says of one, “He loved to come to a place where the denizens knew what he had done”…
…Ms. Colt, who had previously worked in publishing, didn’t suffer fools — or ghouls. Here she is on one customer: “Lean and mean, with a crew cut, he was a real right-winger, collecting Holocaust memorabilia while being a Holocaust denier: a misanthrope with a sour sense of humor and guns in a secret closet.”
The store kept sometimes mischievous notes on its customers. These had observations like “tire-kicker, quote-dropper, reservation-dropper (particularly heinous), unredeemed check-bouncer (even worse). Also: cheapskate, picky, SS tendencies, questionable dealings, edition or d/j freak, and other sins and misdemeanors.” (The “d/j” refers to dust jackets.)
If it sounds as if the patrons were a band of brothers, yes, they were mostly men. The store maintained a comfortable chair for wives and girlfriends. Ms. Colt, who loved her work, writes terrifically about trying to maintain her sang-froid in this testicular environment.
(My memoir will be largely myth-making, dubious memories, and bullshit. Maybe some artistic license too… )
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James Lovegrove reviews Tove Jansson, Life, Art, Words by Boel Westin, the first authorised biography of artist and writer, and Jansson’s own childhood memoir, Sculptor’s Daughter, first published in 1968 and now available in English for the first time, for The Financial Times:
The stories have… exerted an influence on many modern writers, for adults as well as children. Ali Smith, Jeanette Winterson and Maggie O’Farrell are self-professed Moomin fans. Philip Pullman has called Jansson a “genius”, while Frank Cottrell Boyce drew important life lessons from the Moomins at an impressionable age. “Jansson valorised coffee and pancakes and reticence and the mystery of others,” he wrote in a review of Moomin picture book The Dangerous Journey. “But more to the point she showed me how it might be just those small pleasures that keep us together when we start to grow apart.”
The young Boyce, however, was also drawn to the Moomins because he sensed an existential darkness at the heart of the books. Jansson wrote in the dominant mode of 20th-century children’s literature, fantasy, but hers was fantasy shot through with a quiet anguish. Apocalypse through natural disaster – flood, volcano, potentially earth-shattering comet – looms in the background of her stories. Characters are solitary, lonely, sometimes on the brink of despair, and acknowledge the fragility of things with an accommodating liberal shrug.
Kate Kellaway also reviews both books for The Observer:
1 Comment[T]he greatest revelation, reading the memoir, is that what drove Jansson’s imagination was fear. This is a book of perils. The dark is a faceless monster with “distinct hands”. Snow is like “grey hands with a hundred fingers”. An eiderdown behaves like a fist. Ice breathes. Snakes in the carpet are almost real. The words “safety” and “dangerous” repeat themselves. The external world was always an internal landscape for Jansson. Reading her is like a return to childhood: things happen that are inexplicable when adults are in charge. It’s unwise to pretend to know what is coming next. Life, she indicates, is best approached gingerly, with respectful regard.
Iranian cartoonist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi, best known for her memoir Persepolis, talks to CBC Radio’s Eleanor Wachtel about her life, her work and a new film adaptation of her book Chicken with Plums:
CBC Radio Ideas: Wachtel on the Arts with Marjane Satrapi
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Designed by the brilliant Michael Salu, the cover for Diana Athill’s forthcoming collection of letters, Instead of a Book, features a stunning portrait of the author by acclaimed British photographer Rankin (co-founder of Dazed & Confused in case you were wondering).
To coincide with the release of the new book in October, Granta are also reissuing paperback editions of Athill’s books Stet, Yesterday Morning and Instead of a Letter with cover designs incorporating Rankin’s photographs.
I don’t think I have made any secret of my love of Stet, Athill’s book about her time as an editor at Andre Deutsch. But I have always been disappointed by the discouraging cover on the tatty copy on my bookshelf, and it makes me incredibly happy to finally see an edition that seems to capture something of Athill’s personality.
Athill’s writing is unflinching and it is remarkable to see that reflected in Rankin’s stark portraits. According to Michael, who art directed series and designed all the covers, “the idea was to not to shy away from age and experience, but to celebrate it and Diana’s distinct personality.” Certainly, it is hard not to be taken by the keenness of Athill’s eyes. One gets the sense she does not suffer fools gladly. There is something of a retired headmistress about her. But I love how in the photograph for Instead of a Letter, Rankin captures Athill’s thumb hooked under her necklace. The author doesn’t appear to be particularly aware that she’s doing it, but it is beautiful and poignant touch.
The type is set in Gill Sans. Of course.
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Paula Fox, storied author of Desperate Characters, talks about writing and her memoir Borrowed Finery with Eleanor Wachtel in this archive interview for Writers & Company from 2002:
CBC RADIO WRITERS & COMPANY: Paula Fox Interview 2002
The cover above, from Fox’s collection of stories and essays News From the World published earlier this year by W. W. Norton, was designed by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich.
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Artist Patti Smith, author of Just Kids, in conversation with Jonathan Lethem, author of Chronic City, earlier this year:
(via MobyLives)
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