Wednesday 15 August 2012

They follow you around the room next door

I've complained before about (auto)biographies that just use straightforward, boring photos of the authors/subjects on the covers. There's no interest or wit in them. Much better is the sort of cover that plays off some characteristic of the subject, or isolates some aspect of them. Here's a perfect case in point, due out in December.


I like this a lot, though if you didn't know who Feldman was, this might suggest he was a serial killer. The cover also wisely leaves off the fact that the book is introduced by Mike Myers, possibly written in broad faux-Scottish.

(It's odd that this first sees print 30 years after Feldman's death: he died during the filming of Yellowbeard, which at least saved him the pain of seeing the final film. If only I'd been as lucky.)

3 comments:

Brian Busby said...
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Brian Busby said...

Mr Myers has been known to get me laughing, but I do question his judgement in deciding to pen the Intro (and The Love Guru). And why an Intro at all? Padding perhaps? I see that the page count is a mere 160. The cynic in me suspects that the thing was cobbled together from notes and brief sketches left behind by the brilliant Mr Feldman.

That said, I do like the cover.

JRSM said...

The long delay between the unexpected death and publication, and the brevity of the book, makes me think you're right. Which would be a shame, as a properly written memoir by Marty Feldman would surely be really entertaining.