Penguin Things Round-Up Addendum

I was interested to read here that Penguin is planning an edition of Alice in Wonderland designed by Yayoi Kusama. I didn't know much about Kusama until I read this intriguing interview (and was especially interested by the bit about her having committed herself to a mental hospital in 1975, and having lived there ever since), but I did know of her previous Alice-related art, the 'Alice in Wonderland Happening' of 1968, in New York's Central Park.

Quite how this will translate to a book design I do not know, but I'm intrigued to find out.

As a follow-up to the last post, here are a few more of the hardback classics covers, not terribly well scanned.

 

Again, I'm assuming these are the work of Coralie Bickford-Smith, as she designed the earlier books in this set. There are also several similar books from Penguin India in a similar vein, all great Eastern religious works, with (I assume) a different deigner but a similar approach.

The Unexpected Intrusion of Television

UPDATED: See the end of the post for comments by John Parot.

It's all over the internet, at least if you visit the distinctly nerdy places I do: Penguin got some contestants on an irritating sounding become-the-next-great-modern-artist TV show to design a book cover, and then rushed the result into print. This is the underwhelming result:

The artist, John Parot, described his inspiration as "my reality and gay culture", apparently, which is part of my problem with this thing: it's about the artist and not at all about the book, which is a self-indulgent mistake. I don't mind the type, to be honest: at least it's hand-drawn, with all of the irregularities that entails, rather than being some free distorted font slaped on there. Overall, though, it's not much good, and the banner across the top makes it even worse.

Still, you only need to look at some of the other possibilities, and you can see how much worse it could have been. And I can't quite believe I just linked to the site of a "reality" show. Excuse me while I slit my wrists. Take a look at some of these hideous contenders, and you may feel the need to do the same:

This reminds me of the time Penguin asked musicians to design covers for them, and got a bunch of murky, shitty rubbish.

UPDATE: John Parot commented on this post, and I think it's fair to reproduce what he had to say here, to give his side of the story: 

Hi! I thought I'd enlighten some of you haters. You misunderstood some things. I was asked to create a book design for the Penguin Classic "The Time Machine". When we met with the representative we were asked to create a cover that would win new readers to these old classics. My inspiration for the piece was not my "gay culture" or gayness or whatever it was called. On the T.V show the producer showcased my professional artwork. They sited that in my profession artwork I reference my gay reality and it is a constant theme. This book and the design has nothing to do with being gay.

I grew up in a Library, my Dad is a historian and librarian. I grew up collecting paperbacks and have seen many covers. For this cover I was thinking of the gorgeous Milton Glaser Illustrations in the sixties as well as the classic psychedelic sci-fi of the 70's That is where the "jumble of purple/pink" colors comes from. It is stylized time machine. not the one described in the book, but one i wanted new readers to go into. Since the book is psychological as well as fantastical, I decided my machine would have a profile of a person, to echo the struggles of the main character.

What surprises me the most of all of you is no one has commented on the decline of the book cover from the 50's to the present. John Grisham covers anyone? The nineties were darker then some of the clunkers that were on the show last night! Finally, I love my cover and so do my new friends at Penguin. I would love to chat more on the subject. Come meet me. I will be signing copies of my design at the Vroman's:  Wed, June 30th.

Vintage Love Film

In August, Vintage UK are doing some repackaging of their own: a number of books which have been made into famous films are being rereleased with unusual, text-only covers that exclude the author names and barely include the book titles. (I'm missing at least two--the covers for Brighton Rock and Cathc-22 haven't leaked out yet.)

I like these, for the most part, though it seems a bit insulting to exclude the author. However, it's hardly the first time a writer would be fucked over in a Hollywood context. A couple of the choices are a bit odd, though. Atonement was hardly a classic film (Keira Knightley in the green dress was a plus, but the maddening way that the the litte girl who grew up to become Vanessa Redgrave had exactly the same haircut for her entire life, so you could tell that the various actresses were playing the same character, was one of many maddening elements), and if this Alice is riding on the back of the Tim Burton version, well...

Tutis? Balls.

I had been intending to forswear any more Tutis-bashing, but a combination of technical and medical difficulties have prevented me getting the images I was going to write about. So here are some more cheap shots at the world's most incompetent "publisher" of classics.

One artist Tutis has regularly ripped off, using his images for their covers, no matter the inappropriateness, is Luis Royo. Now, I loathe Royo--his stock in trade is hideous softcore paintings of Gothy warrior women with few or no clothes, often humping demons or monsters of some kind or other, invariably with their mascara running. Here are the covers of several of his books, to show you what I mean (click for bigger, if you dare).

Anyway, Tutis seem to have decided he's worth plundering for their covers. In a rare display of restraint, however, they seem to have only used those of his paintings which feature fully dressed men, rather than masturbating sorceresses. And of course, nothing says 'Jack London' or 'Balzac' better than space warriors or wizards.

 

 

 

That last book is also available in another edition. In an inspired spirit of literary crossover, it features small metal models of the Mad Hatter's tea party from Alice in Wonderland.

 

That's not the only Tutis title to try this kind of literary mash-up: who knew that Dorothy of Oz had met Charlotte Brontë?

 

What remains mystifying--among many other things--is that they don't just slap any old image on the cover. Sometimes they go out of their way to change the picture to fit different books. Not in any way that actually fits what the book is about, but still...

 

Still, they do have another edition of Kipling's Kim, and at least that one has a cover which recognises that, at heart, it's just a simple story about multicoloured zombies with Walkmen.

 

The madness doesn't end there, inevitably. Here are some more uniquely interpreted classics, kicking off with an anti-slavery novel (with added gun-toting blindfolded ballet dancers), and proceding via a biography of Chopin (not the pianist, but the guitar-playing, jeans-wearing folksinger) and a pirates (on bicycles) adventure, to the previously undiscovered fact that America's presidents actually run the country from a secret base on Easter Island.

 

 

 

 

Swahili Alice

I've got a much more substantial post on its way, but I came across an oddity here, and thought I'd share it, since I've been putting quite a few Alice in Wonderland illustrations up here recently, as well as talking last week about John Tenniel.

The page linked to above shows a number of illustrations done for a 1940 Swahili version of Alice (printed in England), obviously based very heavily on the Tenniel originals. The page itself is in Russian, but I found that a PDF of the Swahili book, with all of the illustrations, is available free from the Internet Archive.

So, here's a brief look at Elisi Katika Nchi Ya Ajabu, with some of the Tenniel originals for reference. As always, click for legible versions.








I'm not sure who did the adapted illustrations: the only person credited in the book is an E. V. St Lo de Malet, who I assume is the translator: perhaps there's a Swahili reader out there who can enlighten me?

A Handful of Further Searles

Just a quick one here, as life away from the internet is using up all of my energy at the moment. I've been trying to get hold of a copy of the newish NYRB edition of Angus Wilson's Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, which uses a Sir John Tenniel illustration of the White Knight from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.



However, my usual enablers have been unable to get me a copy of this version, so I was happy to come across an old Penguin edition, with a cover by old favourite Ronald Searle.



Searle also did another Wilson cover I'd not seen before...



..and I also found two more of his Penguin designs I missed in the research for my earlier big Searle post.

I'm a Real Boy!

The reliably excellent NYRB have a new translation of Carlo Collodi's children's classic Pinocchio coming out, with an introduction by Umberto Eco and afterword by Rebecca West. Argh! If only I didn't already have a copy!



When I first saw this eye-catching cover, I assumed it was a Photoshop job (not that there's anything wrong with that--I use photoshop all the time in my job), but it was pleasing to learn from a recent NYRB blog post that in fact it's a photograph from a sculpture.



The sculpture is 'Pinocchio' by Tim Rollins and K.O.S (see more here).

Pinocchio is a great book, full of odd twists and strange logic and anthropomorphic animal con-men. It's also full of stuff that never made it into the Disney version.

The NYRB edition has interior illustrations by Attilio Mussino, which first appeared (I think) in this 1929 Macmillan edition.



The edition I have read is the Penguin Classics version.



The cover and the interior illustrations are by Charles Folkard, and first appeared in the 1930s: here they are used in a Blue Ribbon Book edition.



Searching for good images of old editions of Pinocchio ends in a deluge of tatty old Disney books. A few others emerged from the dross, though. Here's an elegantly simple 1892 edition, the first in English as far as I can tell, published by Unwin.



Then there's this 1914 American Lippincott edition, with a more human-looking hero on the cover and the interior art, all by Maria Kirk.



And here's a cartoony version from 1937, put out by the Limited Editions Club, with art by Richard Floethe.



Finally, just because I want to, here's some more Charles Folkard art, done for Alice in Wonderland. (Click for much bigger versions).








Alice must surely be unique as a book interpreted by so many excellent artists, in so many different styles. For a few other versions, look at these posts here, here and here.