Subject
Re: Cover Art on VN Paperbacks (fwd)
Date
Body
From: "Peter A. Kartsev" <petr@glas.apc.org>
VN did take the cover art problem very seriously and I think more often
than not he disliked the publishers' designs. As for LOLITA, here's the
quote:
"Do you think it could be possible to find today in New York an artist who
would not be influenced in his work by the general cartoonesque and
primitivist style jacket illustration? Who would be capable of creating a
romantic, delicately drawn, non-Freudian and non-juvenile, picture for
LOLITA (a dissolving remoteness, a soft American landscape, a nostalgic
highway - that sort of thing)? There is one subject which I am
emphatically opposed to: any kind of representation of a little girl."
(Selected Letters, Vintage, p.250)
The same collection contains VN's opinions on jacket designs for all the
other books, see Index, under title headings. I want to mention
specially the cover of the first Penguin edition of "Invitation to a
Beheading" (1963). Nabokov sent the publishers Dmitri's design, which
they accepted. I find it perfect for the book, and perhaps the best
Nabokov cover I've ever seen.
Peter A. Kartsev
Moscow, Russia
> 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
VN did take the cover art problem very seriously and I think more often
than not he disliked the publishers' designs. As for LOLITA, here's the
quote:
"Do you think it could be possible to find today in New York an artist who
would not be influenced in his work by the general cartoonesque and
primitivist style jacket illustration? Who would be capable of creating a
romantic, delicately drawn, non-Freudian and non-juvenile, picture for
LOLITA (a dissolving remoteness, a soft American landscape, a nostalgic
highway - that sort of thing)? There is one subject which I am
emphatically opposed to: any kind of representation of a little girl."
(Selected Letters, Vintage, p.250)
The same collection contains VN's opinions on jacket designs for all the
other books, see Index, under title headings. I want to mention
specially the cover of the first Penguin edition of "Invitation to a
Beheading" (1963). Nabokov sent the publishers Dmitri's design, which
they accepted. I find it perfect for the book, and perhaps the best
Nabokov cover I've ever seen.
Peter A. Kartsev
Moscow, Russia
> 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