Dust Jacket Coward
There’s something funny about some books; funny peculiar that is. Here’s what I mean. I once had a book about European witchcraft in the Middle Ages; it was a topic I happened to be studying as a second year history undergraduate. Now, much and all as I enjoyed being a student of the past; and much as I enjoyed acquiring a modest library, the dust jackets on some volumes just upset my equilibrium – and this book about witchcraft was one example. My bookcase had pride of place in my bedroom (ermahgerd I was a nerd!), but this book was always left downstairs, face down; it would never be bedtime reading.
It was not so much the loathsome hags depicted on the cover that scared the living lights out of me as the fate I knew awaited them in that unforgiving time – I was still suffering from post-traumatic stress after reading descriptions of some horrendous methods of interrogation and execution rubber stamped by the Inquisition. This was the stuff of horrific nocturnal violations.
Some years later I stayed in a room where a biography of Padre Pio stared out at me last thing at night and first thing in the morning wearing that maddeningly incongruous expression that lies exactly halfway between downright holiness and downright evil; you look at that expression and think, this could go either way. The stigmata is not what you want to be looking at before you surrender to the sandman because, despite your best efforts, you bring it with you – like when you look at the sun and close your eyes and see a big white ball for ages. Then, of course, you spend a fitful night and awaken at dawn to see him looking at you with that brown cowl and those brown mittens. You need to get up and go to another room where you can turn on the telly or the radio. You don’t care; you just want some background noise to distract you from what lies beneath those mittens.
Now I have just remembered – serendipity you might call it – it was around this time that I also experienced another saintly encounter. It must have been in one of those coffee table art books. It was The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian – that’s the one where he is tied to a tree to face a bow and arrow squad. He has a few in him already, and there is a gang of thugs loading up for another session. I’m guessing he was like a pin cushion and very dead by the time they were finished making a martyr of him. Years later I saw the original in The National Gallery in London and learned that it was painted by brothers Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo. They must have been gas crack – sure you’d only do that for the money.
Staying with the theme of suffering for your religious beliefs I have just remembered one more disturbing saintly image I encountered. This time it was in a German magazine that I stupidly browsed through while waiting in a hairdressing salon in the village of Ruhpolding in Bavaria. It was like Mary Poppins had accidentally stumbled onto the set of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Her name was Therese Neumann; she had the full stigmata; and I mean the full enchilada. The photographs in the magazine were ghastly. She looked out from the page with that Padre Pio expression – ecstatic, it would seem, even though blood was flowing from her eyes. To be honest, I am not even comfortable typing this. However, I’ll soldier on. I never slept a wink for the remainder of my stay in Bavaria. Every time I closed my eyes I pictured her walking towards me; I was ready to throw myself into the arms of Nurse Ratched. I almost kissed the ground when I landed back in the city of good old Matt Talbot. He was only in the halfpenny place with that bit of a chain around his leg.
Another work on the English Literature course that played on my cowardly disposition was Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. The dust jacket turned my liver to jelly, my heart to custard and my brain to a blubbering mess, rendering me incapable of gleaning anything from this fine piece of literature. Yes; I was too scared to learn. I would not even countenance reading this play, upstairs, alone. No, I had to be in the maelstrom of downstairs activity with Radio Nova blaring from the kitchen and the telly on in the living room. I was a sponge to all noise pollution as I skim read this play; silence was the very last thing I needed.
Next came The Turn of the Screw and What Masie Knew by Henry James. If I looked at the kids on the cover I couldn’t help being creeped out by any other kid I met that day. They could see into my soul – they could read my mind – those staring eyes told me that they knew stuff, powerful stuff – stuff that I could never know. The longer I dallied in the grip of their stares the more supernatural power they had over me; I had to get away from all staring kids. And those kids with the quizzical stare – they were the worst of all – they were conjuring up new ways to hurt me with screws. This was not my best baby-sitting time.
Now, in 2016, I have Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum lined up in the queue but I keep pushing it to the back because of the gruesome cover – a bunch of people being burnt at the stake. They seem resigned to their fate as they kneel in the flames which are being stoked by some pretty rough looking medieval types. I am not the better for recently reading about the fiery demises of Jan Hus and Giordano Bruno among others in Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve. It’s too soon for my weak constitution to revisit such sizzling scenarios.
Backing away from the heat then, what I would like is for all books to have a plain cover with just the title and the author printed in large, clear, black lettering. That’s all, although hardback would be nice, with thick pages and large print. This way, not even a smidgen of interpretation is being done for me. No artist’s impressions of the most unsettling scene in the work; no sickening depiction of an historical event. It’s all mine to interpret, imagine and misunderstand as I please. Having said that though, the cover to the first edition of Tolkien’s The Hobbit is a perfect example of ‘less is more.’ It piques the curiosity without giving any clues; it’s also beautiful.
What I do not want though is to see a novel cover sporting a scene from the latest movie or television series adaptation; it’s distracting. In recent years I have seen this done with F. Scot Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. The latest example I have seen is Vera Britten’s Testament of Youth, but that’s another moan-fest for another day.
©Copyright Berni Dwan 2014
There’s something funny about some books; funny peculiar that is. Here’s what I mean. I once had a book about European witchcraft in the Middle Ages; it was a topic I happened to be studying as a second year history undergraduate. Now, much and all as I enjoyed being a student of the past; and much as I enjoyed acquiring a modest library, the dust jackets on some volumes just upset my equilibrium – and this book about witchcraft was one example. My bookcase had pride of place in my bedroom (ermahgerd I was a nerd!), but this book was always left downstairs, face down; it would never be bedtime reading.
It was not so much the loathsome hags depicted on the cover that scared the living lights out of me as the fate I knew awaited them in that unforgiving time – I was still suffering from post-traumatic stress after reading descriptions of some horrendous methods of interrogation and execution rubber stamped by the Inquisition. This was the stuff of horrific nocturnal violations.
Some years later I stayed in a room where a biography of Padre Pio stared out at me last thing at night and first thing in the morning wearing that maddeningly incongruous expression that lies exactly halfway between downright holiness and downright evil; you look at that expression and think, this could go either way. The stigmata is not what you want to be looking at before you surrender to the sandman because, despite your best efforts, you bring it with you – like when you look at the sun and close your eyes and see a big white ball for ages. Then, of course, you spend a fitful night and awaken at dawn to see him looking at you with that brown cowl and those brown mittens. You need to get up and go to another room where you can turn on the telly or the radio. You don’t care; you just want some background noise to distract you from what lies beneath those mittens.
Now I have just remembered – serendipity you might call it – it was around this time that I also experienced another saintly encounter. It must have been in one of those coffee table art books. It was The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian – that’s the one where he is tied to a tree to face a bow and arrow squad. He has a few in him already, and there is a gang of thugs loading up for another session. I’m guessing he was like a pin cushion and very dead by the time they were finished making a martyr of him. Years later I saw the original in The National Gallery in London and learned that it was painted by brothers Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo. They must have been gas crack – sure you’d only do that for the money.
Staying with the theme of suffering for your religious beliefs I have just remembered one more disturbing saintly image I encountered. This time it was in a German magazine that I stupidly browsed through while waiting in a hairdressing salon in the village of Ruhpolding in Bavaria. It was like Mary Poppins had accidentally stumbled onto the set of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Her name was Therese Neumann; she had the full stigmata; and I mean the full enchilada. The photographs in the magazine were ghastly. She looked out from the page with that Padre Pio expression – ecstatic, it would seem, even though blood was flowing from her eyes. To be honest, I am not even comfortable typing this. However, I’ll soldier on. I never slept a wink for the remainder of my stay in Bavaria. Every time I closed my eyes I pictured her walking towards me; I was ready to throw myself into the arms of Nurse Ratched. I almost kissed the ground when I landed back in the city of good old Matt Talbot. He was only in the halfpenny place with that bit of a chain around his leg.
Another work on the English Literature course that played on my cowardly disposition was Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. The dust jacket turned my liver to jelly, my heart to custard and my brain to a blubbering mess, rendering me incapable of gleaning anything from this fine piece of literature. Yes; I was too scared to learn. I would not even countenance reading this play, upstairs, alone. No, I had to be in the maelstrom of downstairs activity with Radio Nova blaring from the kitchen and the telly on in the living room. I was a sponge to all noise pollution as I skim read this play; silence was the very last thing I needed.
Next came The Turn of the Screw and What Masie Knew by Henry James. If I looked at the kids on the cover I couldn’t help being creeped out by any other kid I met that day. They could see into my soul – they could read my mind – those staring eyes told me that they knew stuff, powerful stuff – stuff that I could never know. The longer I dallied in the grip of their stares the more supernatural power they had over me; I had to get away from all staring kids. And those kids with the quizzical stare – they were the worst of all – they were conjuring up new ways to hurt me with screws. This was not my best baby-sitting time.
Now, in 2016, I have Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum lined up in the queue but I keep pushing it to the back because of the gruesome cover – a bunch of people being burnt at the stake. They seem resigned to their fate as they kneel in the flames which are being stoked by some pretty rough looking medieval types. I am not the better for recently reading about the fiery demises of Jan Hus and Giordano Bruno among others in Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve. It’s too soon for my weak constitution to revisit such sizzling scenarios.
Backing away from the heat then, what I would like is for all books to have a plain cover with just the title and the author printed in large, clear, black lettering. That’s all, although hardback would be nice, with thick pages and large print. This way, not even a smidgen of interpretation is being done for me. No artist’s impressions of the most unsettling scene in the work; no sickening depiction of an historical event. It’s all mine to interpret, imagine and misunderstand as I please. Having said that though, the cover to the first edition of Tolkien’s The Hobbit is a perfect example of ‘less is more.’ It piques the curiosity without giving any clues; it’s also beautiful.
What I do not want though is to see a novel cover sporting a scene from the latest movie or television series adaptation; it’s distracting. In recent years I have seen this done with F. Scot Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. The latest example I have seen is Vera Britten’s Testament of Youth, but that’s another moan-fest for another day.
©Copyright Berni Dwan 2014
