Three with characteristic Penguin Modern Classics covers...
..and one with what I would assume was on old 1970s cover if it weren't for the sticker.
It better be a sticker, and not one of those horrible printed-on-the cover jobbies.
Thursday, 20 November 2008
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Not bad, but a bit rushed-looking (for a reason). The Flood is probably the best, though it is a little reminiscent of Rabbit at Rest. Terra Amata looks offputtingly grim and seedy, like Houellebecq or something.
It's interesting though: here is an author who is new to most of us but whose books we are led to believe we really must read - so with half a dozen to choose from, how do we select which one to try first other than by looking at the covers? There aren't even blurbs available yet.
le clezio deserved it as many intellectuals around the world
like arrabal ,chomsky or i.allende
c.merril accused horace endahl for bad literature taste and that he doent know philip roth
i can not imagine any professor of literatur in swedish universities that hasnt read american literature
c.merrils attack to the professional identity to horace engdahl is with out any justification
www.arelis.gr
it contains erotonomicon that socked greek society with its
antiamericanism and anticolonial spirit and the poems new york olympia and exhibition of orthodromic retrospection
These are wonderfully simple. Not sure about the last cover "Interigation". Just a bit off and weird for it's own good. I'd still pick it up—for that very reason that it looks like an old penguin.
It's funny, but there are good number of covers out there that are really done more for other designers than the general public.
I'll probably end up buying all of them--and the Vintage ones--without knowing any more about them, being a hopeless sucker for both classics lines.
I guess there are "designers' designers" in the same way there are "writers' writers".
I'm a big fan of Penguin (I love both their covers and the notes/introductions inside) but I think I prefer Vintage for this particular author.
"I'll probably end up buying all of them--and the Vintage ones--without knowing any more about them, being a hopeless sucker for both classics lines."
Yep, same here. I've got another of his novels already, Onitsha, which turned up in my local Waterstone's. Quite a surprise. Just haven't got round to it, but these and the Vintage are on the wishlist.
Tuesday: yes, the Vintage covers are more intriguing, but I do like them all.
Stewart: 'Onitsha' I'd not even heard of, though I read something the other day to the effect that he has written something like 41 books.
Of the forty-odd books, only about half are novels, as I understand it. The rest being childrens' books, travel diaries, essays, etc.
Onitsha is a 1997 translation (by Alison Anderson) of a 1992 novel, published by University of Nebraska. Or Bison Books, as they seem to prefer. No doubt dropping the University of... and getting a typical publisher name gives the impression of being less stuffy. University presses in the States seem to put out a number of titles that fly under the radar. Nebraska also publishes The Round and Other Cold Hard Facts.
Small presses too, of course. Curbstone, I see, have slapped a red 'Nobel Winner' strip on their Wandering Star and Godine have a new order of their slowburner (until now, that is) The Prospector.
I've got a whole bunch of some good (but somewhat loud-looking) science-fiction classics from Nebraska/Bison: mostly 18th/19th Century and very early 20th-Century stuff. They do seem to have an interestingly varied list.
I've picked up all the Le Clezios in the last week and look forward to digging in shortly. What's interesting, about the content, is the Le Clezio likes big descriptive paragraphs peppered with small insets of words, quotes, poems, word arrangements, etc.
"It better be a sticker, and not one of those horrible printed-on-the cover jobbies."
It's printed on the cover. To hold, it really does look like a grubby old book ut the Nobel statement go against it.
I've read Terra Amata now, and enjoyable it was.
I do wish Penguin had made The Interrogation a PMC too. It looks stupid next to the other three.
Yes, it seems a weird choice to have one left out. Maybe it's really bad, and they couldn't bring themselves to call it a classic?
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