Spines, Legs, Horrible Films, Cigarettes

A book coming out in January, that appears to be a satire on creative writing classes, with a rather nifty cover:

Interestingly, though the book is published by Cape, part of Vintage UK, it actually calls back to the once-characteristic plain white spines of old Picador paperbacks.

First Novel is not the first book by that title. In 1999 Harvill published a book by the same name written by Mazarine Pingeot, the "secret daughter" of arch-shit and former French president François Mitterand. The book was no good, and was seemingly only published because she was the "secret daughter" of arch-shit and former French president François Mitterand, and piles of this book could be found in remainder bookshops for years afterwards.

It uses a well-known photo, 'Sense' by Tono Stano, that was later bought and fucked with by MGM to become the poster for the famously crap film 'Showgirls'.

And just so that, if I get hit by a bus later today, that's not the last image I ever post, here's a cover design from Picador a couple of years ago that I somehow missed when it came out: the clever cigarette-pack packaging of Stuart Evers's Ten Stories About Smoking.

The Boca Breeze

In July I posted these four tremendous new covers for B. S. Johnson reprints. A helpful commenter told me they were the work of La Boca. by chance, I was just admiring their Louise-Brooks-meets-puffy-paint-in-a-shredder cover for the Booker-nominated The Teleportation Accident. So it seems a good time to do a round up of their various cover art jobs.

Click for a bigger version

Those Nicholas Blake (pen-name of Cecil Day-Lewis) covers make me want to try his Nigel Strangeways amateur detective books again, even though past experience suggests that his non-Strangeways crime novels are far superior (see especially the sadly neglected The Private Wound, out of print now for 25 years.)

Purple Yellow Blue

No credits for these as yet, but they're the eye-grabbing new covers for Picador UK's re-releases of some of the B. S. Johnson backlist. See here for their full-on edition of The Unfortunates, the famous unbound book in a box. UPDATE: They're designed by La Boca.

That Trawl cover is so much more appealing than my tacky old Panther edition, which is typically boob-tastic for that publisher and era.

Keenan Attacks Bolaño

The UK editions of Roberto Bolaño's have been a bit overshadowed by some of the extraordinary US cover designs, especially that for 2666 (see here). But for the latest posthumously discovered work by the strangely prolific Bolaño, Picador UK have got Keenan (last seen working wonders for Atticus Books here) to design a slipcased hardcover edition. As The Third Reich's main character is a German wargamer, Keenan has used a wargames theme for the whole package, to pleasing effect. (Click for much bigger versions.)

This speaks to my dubious past as a nerdy high school role-playing- and war-gamer: all those little plastic and metal figures rampaging through games of Warhammer, Axis and Allies, Risk, etc... That I should grow up to bang on about such an un-rock'n'roll subject like book design, and write a blog about such, should have comes as no surprise.

My only criticism of this package has nothing to do with the design: it's the second reviewer's quote on the back of the box that I find hilarious. The Sunday Times said, "Readers who have snacked on a writer such as Haruki Murakami will feast on Roberto Bolaño." Such a ludicrous comparison tells you nothing except that whoever wrote that review has presumably only ever read two authors in translation. I'll let you guess which ones.

14 Picador 40s

Over the years the once-classy-looking Picador series has come to look a bit neglected: absorption into the Macmillan behemoth, often so-so cover designs, and a steady bleeding of their top authors to other publishers have all contributed to this. (The Australian arm of the company is something of an exception to this, with a strong set of authors and books.) But for the imprint's 40th anniversary, they are redesigning a number of their top books with dramatic monochrome covers in black, grey and white. Click for much bigger versions. Designers as yet unknown. Neil Lang, senior in-house designer at Picador, designed these. Note that 4 of them have been updated--see the end of the post for the final versions.

The only disappointing one here, since it's just the boring old cover in silhouette

And from the Australian contingent:

UPDATE: The updated final versions referred to above...

Double-Meaning DeLillos

A Piece of Monologue's Rhys Tranter found these upcoming Picador UK Don DeLillo covers. They're so bold and clever. Designer as yet unknown... The illustrations are by Noma Bar, and the design is by itsnicethat.

 

(Originally seen at Ampere's And)