James Hanley's 'Boy'

Yesterday's post about the Obelisk Press showed their groovy but inapt cover for James Hanley's Boy. Here are a few of the other cover treatments this book has undergone.

Before continuing, I ought to say two things. First of all, this is one of the saddest, most depressing books I've read (and it's also great). Secondly, the discussion of the final cover below gives away the ending of the book, so stop reading now if that will bother you.

Here's the original cover from the 1931 Boriswood edition: this is the one that brought down the censor on Hanley's head.



The scandal and renown the book gathered drew the attention of Jack Kahane, who printed it in Paris as an Obelisk book (as shown at bottom here in an image from this).



The book was finally published in an unexpurgated form in the UK by Andre Deutsch, in 1990. As the story is that of a boy who stows away on a ship, and effectively becomes a slave on that ship, they chose an appropriate, if uninspired, image of roiling waves. Unfortunately the font chosen for the title makes it look more like a showbiz story.



Finally, there's the handsome new Oneworld Classics edition. Here's where I give the plot away: the victim-hero of the book ends up being murdered and thrown overboard. This image obviously fits that, but also nicely combines Boy's mixture of grimness and beauty. That the boy in the photo has a ribcage that looks fragile enough to break under the slightest pressure adds to the sadness.

Obelisk Innards

Further to my earlier post about Neil Pearson's history of Obelisk Press and its creator, Jack Kahane, here are some of the book covers featured within that excellent volume. Aplogies for the less-than-perfect photographs, buyt if you want a better look, you have no excuse for not buying the book. Click on the pictures for more detail.


Richard Aldington's Death of a Hero, and a wildly inappropriate (yet cool) cover for James Hanley's Boy.





Cecil Barr was a psuedonym for Jack Kahane himself.


It's worth noting that many of Obelisk's covers were designed and illustrated by Kahane, his wife, Marcelle, and their son, later known as Maurice Girodias, founder of the Olympia Press.

Obelisk

One of the best TV drama series of the 1990s (the original Cracker aside) was Between the Lines, about a trio of police officers involved in internal investigation, with all of the proeblems and conflicts of interest that entails. The main character, pants-man Detective Superintendent Tony Clark, was played very well indeed by the actor Neil Pearson.

Pearson has done a lot of great work since (including a memorable role in Drop the Dead Donkey), and he has also turned his hand to writing with great results. Liverpool University Press has recently published his Obelisk: A History of Jack Kahane and the Obelisk Press.

Mancunian Kahane set up Obelisk in Paris in 1929. The basic plan was to release excellent and controversial literature in English that took full advantage of France's liberal censorship laws, literature that would have been suppressed in the UK and America. This literature was funded by a series of pornographic pulp works which Obelisk also produced. Among the writers Obelisk published were Richard Aldington, Cyril Connolly, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, James Joyce, Lawrence Durrell and Frank Harris.

Obelisk books were bought by English and American tourists, ex-pats and soldiers, and then smuggled or posted home under plain wrappers. Hence this simple but effective cover design, as though uncovered by some sharp-eyed customs officer:



Here are a couple of lovely-looking Henry Millers that Obelisk put out.



Note the warning at the bottom of the Tropic of Cancer cover.



UPDATE: Pedro Marques of the fascinating Montag points out that "Tropic"'s cover is by Kahane's son, the 15 year-old Maurice Girodias, the very same who would become famous as Olympia's (and "Lolita"'s) publisher.