Judging Books By Their Covers

I’m reading Angela Carter’s Nights At The Circus at the moment and I am completely overawed by her sumptuous, inventive prose. Why have I never read her novels before? She’s the kind of writer I love best; the beauty and the quality of her prose actively gives me pleasure to read it, but I’m compelled onwards by the fantastic flights of the story she tells. It’s a rich book to be savoured, but it’s also a seductive book that won’t let you put it down. The only thing I have against it, is that I don’t like the cover. The baroque decoration that is Carter’s prose deserves something more vibrant and enticing than a cartoonish drawing of a plump lady’s legs, descending from behind the title and author. Fevvers, the main protagonist of the novel is a trapeze artist, and the drawn-up knees and crossed ankles are evocative of her trade, but I find it a little uninspiring and plain. I note as well that it’s part of a series of book covers, all similarly drawn, that must be part of a collective re-issue of Carter’s work. It’s not that I wouldn’t buy them because of their covers (I have a nasty feeling that after this taste of her work, I’ll be visiting amazon online all too soon), but I do wish that they were different.

Of course covers are difficult to judge, appealing wholly to our subjective tastes. But covers are also a clear indication of genre and intended readership. It’s no coincidence that Penguin modern classics are an attractive but subtle duck-egg blue with reportage style black and white photographs on the front, whilst chick-lit comes in pastel shades with embossed lettering. Publishers have a good idea which visual buttons to press, and given the way that bookstores like to display books face forwards these days, a lot of effort and thought goes into cover design. There have been occasions when I’ve not bought a book because I’ve disliked its cover, and I’ve certainly chosen one book over another on the feeble grounds of aesthetic attractiveness. I’ve been drawn to try new authors because I’ve thought the book appealing, and I’ve also been thoroughly confused by those sets of similar covers (à la Carter) that are designed to indicate the work of one author but whose lack of differentiation means I’ve bought books I already possess. I have to say that I am even more pleased with my purchase, if a book I’ve wanted turns out to be a beautiful object as well. This may sound shallow – it probably is! – but my son is much worse than me, and quite blatant about it; his reading choices are entirely determined by the picture on the front of the book. When you really think about it, the impact of the cover is disproportionately significant, no matter what well-meaning maxims might suggest.

It’s always been a lot of nerve-wracking fun to pick pictures for the covers of the academic books I’ve published. I don’t think I’m the only serious-minded professional to fall for the lure of a pretty cover, so I’ve regularly gone for a bit of art rather than a simple block design, but it’s always been very hard to come to a decision. When I wrote a book that covered the whole of the twentieth century in French literature I reeled a little at the prospect of a whole century’s art to choose from. However, not wanting a photograph on the cover cut down the possibilities quite significantly. I ended up choosing a picture of the Eiffel tower painted by Robert Delauney (and there’s another love story I could tell you all, concerning his marriage to another artist, Sonia). The latest book, however, (the one that’s with the publisher at the moment) was a very particular challenge as it concerns the erotic in contemporary fiction and film. Finding something suggestive (in all senses) that wasn’t going to offend or alarm readers was really tricky. We decided to go for something by the modern British artist, Lucie Bennett, and whilst I’d better not indicate what we did choose at this pre-publication moment, I can say that we very nearly went for Pink Pixie (in the Jungle series). Unlike Angela Carter’s books, I think the simple line drawings work here, because no one in their right minds could honestly describe academic prose as sumptuous. Hopefully the clean lines will suggest that what my colleague and I were writing is accessible. The actual cover is a very vibrant colour and will certainly attract attention if nothing else! It is a little tense at times, however, waiting for publication and wondering what people will think.