Not knowing the person behind the cover, I don’t feel free to critique it. The publishing house handles all interactions. They send me the results of the artist’s labors, and let the artist know of my reaction. But there’s no way to interact directly with the artist. He or she remains a mysterious, hidden figure. A distance remains between us.
—
Every author has a reaction to his or her covers, but few speak of it openly. A few months ago I came across a brief but pointed text on the subject by the Italian author Lalla Romano. In an essay titled “The Einaudi Covers” (“Le copertine Einaudi”), published in the collection Un sogno del Nord (A Dream of the North), she analyzes and evaluates the covers of her primary publishing house. She writes: “Because I come from painting, the look of the book is not just an intriguing element but something fundamental. It is very hard to love an ugly book (as object), often all the more ugly because it wants to be beautiful.” I was struck by her words.
Lalla Romano, like me, searches for the “perfect resonance with the style of the book.” She participated, like Woolf, in the decision, suggesting certain images, designs, paintings. From an exchange between author and artist springs the ideal exchange between jacket and text.
We don’t live in a world in which a cover can simply reflect the sense and style of the book. Today more than ever the cover shoulders an additional weight. Its function is much more commercial than aesthetic. It succeeds or fails in the market.
In modern mass publishing, a cover contains a lot of information beyond the title of the book, the name of the author, and a design. It lists past awards and honors, quotes from critics and other writers who have liked the book, information pertaining to bestseller lists. It has become a label that lists the ingredients. Sometimes a wraparound band is added, a sort of belt on top of the jacket to indicate, for example, that the book has gone into a second printing, or fourth, or ninth; or to draw to the reader’s attention some other “hot” news, information, reviews.
I think that publishers today have overloaded covers with unreasonable expectations. They must grab and win the attention of dazed and disoriented browsers in big bookstores, who must pluck this book and only this one from overstuffed shelves or a table blanketed in volumes. All of the energy and strategy behind a book cover underlines a depressing fact: the terrifying number of books published in the world every year, and the few that are actually bought and read.
Despite the exalted role of the covers, in the end, they don’t get much respect. Book jackets are often blamed if a book doesn’t sell. I often hear editors say: “The book is beautiful. Too bad the cover was wrong.”
To be badly dressed is always a condemnation. But, just as with the wrong clothing, one can take off a book jacket—in the case of a hardcover, quite literally—and put on another. In America, if a first edition doesn’t sell well enough, the cover is changed for the paperback edition, and in Italy they do the same. Every once in a while, I’ll like a proposed cover, but then the publishing house informs me: “We’ve decided to go in another direction.” The cover remains something removable, interchangeable. Regardless of its power, if it doesn’t sell the book, it has no value.
4.
The Naked Book
Let’s move in a different direction and speak of the naked book.
I did not own many books as a girl. I would go to the library, where books were often undressed: without jackets or any images. I would find only hardcovers, and the pages that they contained.
I am the daughter of a librarian, and I too worked for many years in the public library where I grew up, from which I used to borrow books. I know that it is costly, also challenging, to protect the covers of volumes that will be read repeatedly by many. Book jackets are easily damaged and, even though there are ways to protect them—with plastic covers, for example—it is always easier to strip them. Hardcovers are made specifically to live in a library, while paperback pocket editions are more temporary.
I have read hundreds of books, almost all the literature of my schooling, without a summary blurb on the flap, without an author photograph. They had an anonymous quality, secretive. They gave nothing away in advance. To understand them, you had to read them.
The authors I loved at the time were embodied only by their words. The naked cover doesn’t interfere. My first reading happened outside of time, ignorant of the market, of current events. The part of me that regards book jackets with suspicion seeks to rediscover that experience.
When I purchase a book today, I acquire a range of other things: a picture of the author, biographical information, reviews. All of this complicates matters. It causes confusion. It distracts me. I hate reading the comments on the cover; it is to them that we owe one of the most repugnant words in the English language: blurb. Personally, I think it deplorable to place the words and opinions of others on the book jacket. I want the first words read by the reader of my book to be written by me.
Today the relationship between reader and book is far more mediated, with a dozen people buzzing around. We are never alone together, the text and I. I miss the silence, the mystery of the naked book: solitary, without support. It allows one to read in freedom, without previews or introductions. I believe that a naked book, too, can stand on its own feet.
Unfortunately it can’t be sold that way. Almost no one wants to buy something unknown, not even a book, without prior information. In some ways today’s reader resembles a tourist who, thanks to the guidebooks—this is, thanks to the impact of the book jacket—begins to inform and orient himself before disembarking in an unknown place. Before discovering it, before being there. Before reading.
The bound galleys of my first book published in the United States resembled a naked book to some degree. No image, just essential information. There was something generic rather than individual about them. In the past, when I would go on tour to pro-mote a book, I would read from the bound galleys. When I was forced to use a copy of the actual book, I would remove the jacket. As I have said, the dressed book no longer belongs to me.
Sixteen years ago in America, when my first collection of stories was about to be released, critics and bookstore owners received imageless bound galleys. Why? Perhaps because even the publishing house, at the time, wanted the advance copies to be pristine, without added distractions or noise, hence without a jacket. This seems right.
These days, unfortunately, even the bound galleys contain what to me is superfluous information. The galleys of my last novel list the size of the printing run, my previous prizes and honors, and the titles of my other books. No matter how “essential” it appears, the packaging seems rigged somehow. I thought that the final cover was not there, but leafing through the galley, I came across a reproduction of it on the first page, followed by the flap copy. It was all there, just slightly hidden. There is no escape. For me, there are no more naked books.
5.
Uniformity and Anarchy
In Italy, I have gotten to know another type of book cover: that which belongs to an editorial series. These covers, so different from American designs, have a powerful effect on me. I find their simplicity and seriousness admirable. They seduce me, just as my cousins’ school uniforms did.
The covers that form part of a series are sober, at once generic and immediately recognizable. By now, in an Italian bookshop or at a friend’s house, I recognize straightaway the white books belonging to Struzzi Einaudi, the mellow colors of the Adelphi series, the dark blue of Sellerio.
At the moment I am reading two books, both published by Adelphi: La Pelle (The Skin) by Curzio Malaparte, and L’Inconveniente di essere nati (The Trouble with Being Born) by Emil Cioran. They are two very different writers but, dressed in Adelphi jackets, the two books resemble each other, as if they were members of the same family, of the same bloodline. The books share the same size and, most important, are products of the same aesthetic sensibility. Both covers bear a framed image, then the title of the book and the nam
e of the author. They are printed on fine paper, which is glued to the book only at the back. I like the fact that the rest of the jacket can be removed from the bound pages, like a tent, and that beneath this light sheet of paper there is a firmer undercover in white. Behold, the naked book.
An editorial series is a system for organizing a large number of books. A library arranged this way is visually harmonious. The husband of an Italian friend of mine orders his bookcases by series, in chromatic order. The effect is marvelous. According to his wife, however, aesthetic virtues aside, it’s not a good system. Beautiful to look at, she says, but one can’t find anything.
On my desk in Rome I have a row of books from Adelphi’s Piccola Biblioteca series. In the mess of my work surface they form an elegant, reassuring island. I own seven. Each bears a number on its spine. When I look at them I feel the need to own the whole series, starting with number one, even though there are more than six hundred.
In my bathroom in Brooklyn, meanwhile, I have grouped, in small frames on the wall, a number of postcards that reproduce covers from the early years of the original Penguin paperback series launched by Allen Lane in 1935: Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, Iris Murdoch, R. D. Laing. These distinctive images have by now come to adorn T-shirts and coffee mugs. Their insignia is tantamount to a literary badge of honor. In high school and in college, reading an orange-spined Penguin Classic felt reassuring, virtuous. I assumed they were works of quality, of substance.
The authors published in the series belong to one another, and they all belong to the publishing house. Each book represents the choice, the taste of the editor, but the series confers on the book an identity, a sort of citizenship. A series says to its authors: You are one of us.
This raises an interesting and much debated question. Is the series more important, or the individual books within? I have not yet made up my mind. The series serves the individual text, and also vice versa. On the one hand, the series seems to me a discreet wrapper, less invasive than a wholly unique book cover. On the other, it has a somewhat formal, even pompous, effect.
I think of each editorial series as an exclusive world, a sort of closed circle. I wonder, How does one get in? And yet, at least in Italy, and in England in the case of the original Penguin paperbacks, the editorial series include contemporary authors. Adelphi’s Piccola Biblioteca includes Friedrich Nietzsche and Yasmina Reza, Benedetto Croce and Jamaica Kincaid. In Europe an editorial series is not something musty. On the contrary, I find it can comprise a community, current, international, eclectic, alive.
And yet, an editorial series is also classic, trusted, unchanging. Its value is its continuity, with subtle changes. The uniform vigorously resists fashion, confusion, instability. It exists, something like the naked book, outside time.
—
I write these words in a library in Rome. It is a magnificent Italian palazzo filled, nonetheless, mostly with American books. I believe I was destined to have discovered it. Here is where I, an anglophone writer, dreamt up and wrote my first book in Italian.
I am surrounded in this library by my past. I think of my father’s long life as a librarian, of the library I went to as a girl, of all the libraries I have frequented and loved in America.
And yet I think and write, here, in Italian. It is here that my writing has taken a new direction.
As I write in Italian, I look up from time to time, to gaze at the books that keep me company. I see the rows of spines. They are organized according to a precise classification. What is lacking, however, is a visual order. I see a jumble of jacketless books, with hard plain covers or protective plastic jackets.
There are books from different ages, different genres, some published recently, some more than a century ago. One sees an amalgam of styles, diversity of thought. One sees little uniformity. There is visual confusion, but also a sort of joyful exuberance. It reminds me of a motley crew, a party made of odd individuals who enjoy one another’s company.
It is an inclusive environment. It suggests that any book can join in and take up residence on a shelf. The books belong to the collective and, at the same time, belong only to themselves. Needless to say, American book jackets reflect the spirit of country—little homogeneity, lots of diversity.
If I rise to stretch for a moment, I spot an American editorial series here and there—a set of biographies, or one book in several tomes. Only in this context, books that wear uniforms are the exception, not the rule.
The volumes of an American editorial series—the highly regarded Modern Library, the Library of America—convey that they are classics. The series is an homage to praiseworthy and by now untouchable authors. Uniformity, in this case, is a sign of belonging to the literary canon: unchanging clothes for timeless words.
Jackets of this kind are a strong recognition, a sort of prize, almost always conferred posthumously. Nine out of ten times, the author is dead. A contemporary book by a young author would not be worthy. Unlike the European series, where living and dead authors coexist, the American series seems to me almost a mausoleum.
6.
My Jackets
My books tell stories, but what stories, meanwhile, do my covers tell?
Upon close inspection, my covers tend perfectly to mirror my own double identity, bifurcated, disputed. As a result they are often projections, conjectures.
All my life I have been in conflict between two different identities, both imposed. No matter how I try to free myself from this conflict, I find myself, as a writer, caught in the same trap.
For some publishing houses, my name and photograph are enough to quickly commission a cover that teems with stereotyped references to India: elephants, exotic flowers, henna-painted hands, the Ganges, religious and spiritual symbols. No one considers that the greater part of my stories are set in the United States, and therefore pretty far from the river Ganges.
Once, after I complained that the cover of a book in which the protagonist was born and raised in the United States seemed too “exotic,” that a less “oriental” approach was better suited, the publisher removed the image of an enchanting Indian building and replaced it with an American flag. From one stereotype, that is, to another.
For me, therefore, a wrong jacket is not just an aesthetic issue, because it retriggers a series of anxieties felt ever since I was a child. Who am I? How am I seen, dressed, perceived, read? I write not only to avoid the question, but also to seek the answer.
I have the good fortune to have been translated into several foreign languages. Given that I am now the author of five books, I would guess that this means, in all, around one hundred different book covers. One hundred different interpretations.
If I place the different jackets of just one of my books all in a row, it becomes obvious how they change in tone, spirit, identity. I see a lively one, a gloomy one, a bright one. I see birds of various kinds. I see designs, both intricate and minimalist. I see a jacket with just the title, my name, and nothing else. I see explicit allusions to the political aspects of the novel—guns, the hammer and sickle. I see landscapes that evoke Calcutta, and I see a bunch of flowers on a table. I see two boys who are diving into water.
On the one hand, it is lovely to see them together, to take in the abundance of styles, the variety. On the other, I ask myself: How is it possible that one book, the same book, can generate this panorama of images? All of these covers have been inspired by the same story. Translations notwithstanding, every sentence is the same. And yet they seem like twelve different books, with twelve diverging themes, written by twelve different authors.
The differences also reflect each nation’s identity and collective taste. It is very rare for the editor of my book in one country to like the book jacket of another. They usually say, politely, “how interesting,” then add that it would never work in their country, for their readers. A cover that one person cherishes is devoid of meaning to another. What does this mean? I fear that, even in a globalized world, it signals an in
ability to recognize oneself in the other.
Like the language in which the text is written, the book jacket can constitute a barrier. During the period in which I was writing this essay, I found myself in a bookstore in Holland. The books all around me were in Dutch, a language in which I can’t read a word. It made no sense to open any of the books and glance at the first page. As I looked at the books, I could take in only their visual impact. They remained objects to me, as if the bookstore were a museum in which one could look but not buy. I found the covers attractive, but mostly, I found them foreign. I quickly realized, in the Amsterdam bookstore, that I was somewhere else. Each country’s jackets form a distinct geography, an unmistakable landscape.
Everyone likes to judge a book cover. In the first place, it is easier to evaluate the cover than the content. Besides, it’s fun. All one needs to do is look and react. I’d like to share some of the comments by friends in Italy to draft versions of the American and British jackets for my last novel, The Lowland:
It looks like a cookie tin.
It reminds me of an adventure book for adolescents.
It looks like a Persian carpet.
It seems like a political thriller.
Looks like a book written by the pope.
—
My latest book, In altre parole (In Other Words), is written in Italian. Its arrival introduces a new and unexpected element in my literary identity. It speaks of the Italian language, and my relationship to it. It does not share much with the books that preceded it. It is a meditative book, autobiographical, without much of a setting.
The first cover, the Italian one, is one that I like. It shows a woman seen from the back, facing a sort of wall. And yet the image is light, open, ambiguous. It communicates, I think, the sense of my literary project, even though I never spoke with the illustrator. I didn’t expect it, it came as a surprise, but I consider it nevertheless the right cover for this book. In this case, the adventure has a happy ending.