Thursday, 5 March 2009

Fun with Maps

I've never Twittered--it's about as appealing as Morris dancing--and this fine post on it at The Age of Uncertainty pretty much nails my feelings (with the addition that I have not owned, and never will own, a mobile phone). But, having said that, reading said post and then wandering off through the net via some of the replies, I came across this lovely cover.

It's for Iain Sinclair's new one, Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, and it's a dustjacket that folds out, and out, into a great big map. Now, I may be a hopeless nerd, but I think that's rather cool. I just wish I didn't find Iain Sinclair to be such a pain in the hole, because then I could justify buying it.




UPDATE: In the comments below, John Self of Asylum mentioned another book with a great fold-out dustjacket, the Picador first edition of Mick Jackson's thoroughly enjoyable The Underground Man. John was kind enough to share these images of said jacket in its various states of unfoldingment.



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13 comments:

  1. Ian Koviak5 March 2009 at 17:28

    that is nice. love the typography...

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  2. JRSM5 March 2009 at 17:44

    I wish more designers had the freedom to do this: off-hand, the only other fold-out dustjackets I know of are the Chris Ware covers for 'Jimmy Corrigan' and the McSweeney's comics collection.

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  3. Steerforth6 March 2009 at 01:30

    I'm not too keen on Iain Sinclair's dense prose and wouldn't live in Hackney if you paid me, but the jacket is great.

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  4. Ben6 March 2009 at 05:38

    Iain Sinclair is actually one of the very few modern writers I really, really rate, although I can easily understand why many can't be arsed with him.

    I like how the map makes Hackney look like an island - some carefully delineated, stand-alone place, rather than one fuzzily defined neighbourhood in the middle of a big, chaotic city.

    Reminds me of all the maps of Venice I was looking at when I went there a couple of months ago...

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  5. JRSM6 March 2009 at 15:43

    I've really, really WANT to like Sinclair, and the dodgy bookseller stuff in 'White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings' was great, but the rest of his stuff just drives me up the wall.

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  6. Anonymous9 March 2009 at 15:39

    The Jonathan Cape first edition of Mick Jackson's excellent The Underground Man (now then Mick, when are you going to give us something else excellent, eh?) had a fold-out jacket which expanded into a map of sorts of the tunnels which His Grace had dug under his property.

    I am now going to hit you with a double-whammy by telling you that I sometimes Twitter using my mobile phone. So take that!

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  7. JRSM9 March 2009 at 17:19

    I've never even seen that version of 'The Underground Man'--mine has a cartoonish Dickensian illustration on the front. Now he just seems to be churning out pale Gorey imitations. And Twitter on the mobile? My head bleeds.

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  8. Ian Koviak11 March 2009 at 09:12

    Helen Yentus', Words Without Borders.
    this reminds me of it.

    http://helenyentus.com/work.html

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  9. JRSM11 March 2009 at 14:59

    I really must do a post on Helen Yentus: her work is so good.

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  10. Anonymous11 March 2009 at 14:59

    Well if you're very good, and if I can find it (given that I moved in with my wife two years ago and most of my books are still in boxes), I will take some pics of the cover in its various stages of foldedness. Here is the edition I am talking about. The fold, as I remember it, is along that dark line above Jackson's name. So you have to take the whole cover off and then it folds upwards to become about twice the size.

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  11. JRSM11 March 2009 at 15:10

    John, you may not be able to see it, but I'm positively VIBRATING with goodness.

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  12. Anonymous11 March 2009 at 15:25

    Oh, very well then. Here, here and here are a few hastily snapped pics of the cover (which I found more easily than I expected). Oh, and it's not Cape, it's Picador. I suppose I assumed it wasn't Picador because it's not crap.

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  13. JRSM11 March 2009 at 15:29

    Yay! I'll bung them into this post, if you don't mind.

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