Subject
Re: Cover Art on VN Paperbacks (fwd)
Date
Body
From: rodney welch <rwelch@scjob.sces.org>
I rather disagree regarding the cover art of the VN paperbacks,
at least as far as the Viking Internationals are concerned. The one for
Pale Fire was simply superb: a shaky photograph of a man half-in,
half-out of the creeping beam of light from a window. This
Shade-Kinbote image is placed over what I think is a rotogravure image of
a girl's head of hair: a reminder that the duality at the heart of
the book is a result of the loss of a child -- and the desire to
re-create in one life what is missing from another.
But I'm getting ahead of myself -- I've just had a wonderful
weekend carefully, happily re-reading this incredible masterpiece for the
fourth or fifth time in life and the first time in five or six years.
What a reacquaintance! More questions, comments, oddball inquiries, and
florid encomiums to come...
RW
Donald Barton Johnson wrote:
>
> From: "Paul L. Maliszewski" <plmalisz@mailbox.syr.edu>
>
> Does anyone know if Nabokov ever commented or wrote about the cover art
> that appeared on his books or book design generally? Over the last year
> I've been picking up every Nabokov paperback I can find. While most of the
> illustrations are uniformly awful and unfortunate, they're also pretty
> interesting, like a lot of uniformly awful things.
>
> I have heard somewhere that VN didn't want a girl pictured on the cover of
> Lolita. If that's right, what is the original source for this preference?
> I haven't been able to find anything in Boyd. And I've also heard second-
> or third-hand that VN somewhere mentioned Kafka's insistence that a bug
> never be used to illustrate "The Metamorphosis."
>
> Are these stories strictly apocryphal, or did VN have stated opinions
> about illustrations on books? I'm looking for any and all comments by VN
> on this subject, however brief.
>
> Paul Maliszewski
I rather disagree regarding the cover art of the VN paperbacks,
at least as far as the Viking Internationals are concerned. The one for
Pale Fire was simply superb: a shaky photograph of a man half-in,
half-out of the creeping beam of light from a window. This
Shade-Kinbote image is placed over what I think is a rotogravure image of
a girl's head of hair: a reminder that the duality at the heart of
the book is a result of the loss of a child -- and the desire to
re-create in one life what is missing from another.
But I'm getting ahead of myself -- I've just had a wonderful
weekend carefully, happily re-reading this incredible masterpiece for the
fourth or fifth time in life and the first time in five or six years.
What a reacquaintance! More questions, comments, oddball inquiries, and
florid encomiums to come...
RW
Donald Barton Johnson wrote:
>
> From: "Paul L. Maliszewski" <plmalisz@mailbox.syr.edu>
>
> Does anyone know if Nabokov ever commented or wrote about the cover art
> that appeared on his books or book design generally? Over the last year
> I've been picking up every Nabokov paperback I can find. While most of the
> illustrations are uniformly awful and unfortunate, they're also pretty
> interesting, like a lot of uniformly awful things.
>
> I have heard somewhere that VN didn't want a girl pictured on the cover of
> Lolita. If that's right, what is the original source for this preference?
> I haven't been able to find anything in Boyd. And I've also heard second-
> or third-hand that VN somewhere mentioned Kafka's insistence that a bug
> never be used to illustrate "The Metamorphosis."
>
> Are these stories strictly apocryphal, or did VN have stated opinions
> about illustrations on books? I'm looking for any and all comments by VN
> on this subject, however brief.
>
> Paul Maliszewski