That's What I'm Talkin' 'Bout

My friend J sent me this book. It's more remarkable than that sounds. This is a person I've never met in person. We ran into each other on an internet forum and have been trading e-mails since last fall, even though he no longer frequents the board we met on. The only other bulletin board I know him to lurk on is one I hardly ever go to.

It's one of those things where we have just enough in common for friendship, and enough things to argue about to make it interesting.

By argue, I don't mean combative barbs. I mean argue in the Debate Team sense. The kind of discussions you'd find on a college campus if the Politically Correct police weren't on patrol.

Anyway, this friend has sent me books before. Raymond Carver and John Cheever, always just out of the blue, always good shit.

So when I was getting a slow start on 'Geronimo Rex' by Barry Hannah (I'd just read 'Ray' and liked it quite a bit, so I'll come back to it), and 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' showed up in my mail, I decided to switch dance partners.

I'm not far in, and I'm trying to post this pretty quick so I can get back to it. I guess some people say it's controversial, but that adjective can probably be applied to...I'm looking, trying to see if anything on my bookshelves...

Nope, everything I read is controversial. If you get enough narrow minded bigots together anyway. Hard to see a big book burning party getting worked up for the technical books, except they're about yeast culturing and other aspects of making beer, mead and cider. The Temperance Union, Mothers Against Delightful Draughts, that crowd could burn those. Call in the anti-piracy zealots for my Real Book, so not even my sheet music is safe.

One time while reading a book I said to Frau Lobster, 'You gotta love a guy who names a character "Blister."'

Frau Lobster told me I read some fucked up shit. Thinking back to the past few books I've read have included a book told from the narrative view of a pederast in prison living vicariously through a college girl with similar proclivities via the mail; the story of a murderously corrupt dermatologist and associated social deviants and dope fiends in 1950s Los Angeles; the story of a Native American serial killer cult...

I guess Frau Lobster has a point.

So the current fucked up shit I'm reading is (so far) in the form of letters written to an estranged husband by the mother of a Columbine-style student killer. And I'm loving it.

But getting back to my friend who just sends people books because he thinks they might like them. As if that isn't generous enough. These aren't cast-offs he couldn't finish and thought maybe someone else could stand to read. It's not the 'eat this before I give it to an animal' approach. He actually goes out of his way to have them shipped to me, usually via Amazon.

This time, though, he decided the American cover (I'm paraphrasing, but sure I'm close) 'sucked ass.'

Well, that'd put it in league with most book covers. Being a graphic designer by trade, a major temptation of self-publishing is I've got about 19:1 odds of coming up with a better cover for my own book than I'd likely get from Double Day or whoever.

Here's the American hardback and trade paperbacks next to the one J sent me. He had it sent through Serpent's Tail, the publisher of tke UK trade pb. The one I'm showing here (the only UK cover I can find on line) is near identical to what I got. The blurb on this pic that I can't make out is a two line blurg on my copy, a pimp by Jenni Murray about it being a courageous and resonant book. At the top it mentions it winning the Orange Prize for Fiction (I hadn't heard of it either, so don't feel bad). Turns out Jenni Murray is a judge for the prize, so I guess the top banner and bottom blurb are saying the same thing in a way.



No, I won't say the cliché about judging a...

I do have some observations, things that I would suggest as a sort of literary Rheinheitsgebot of book covers. Not binding law, just common sense that is very often missing from whatever misguided souls come up with the kind of covers I really hate.

1) Thou shalt not make the author's name bigger than the title of the book. Not even if they sell more books than J.K. Rowling, Dan Brown, Clive Cussler, Stephen King, John Grisham and Thomas Harris put together.

2) The words 'a novel' do not belong on the cover of a novel unless it has a title so misleading that the book would be mistaken by an educated person for a cookbook, sex manual or government report. Exceptions could be granted to such books as 'The Contortionist's Handbook' on this basis. And maybe to something like 'The Pleasure of My Company' since Steve Martin is so famous for non-book stuff that a reasonable person might take it for a memoir. That is, a reasonable person who hasn't read past the second paragraph of the book.

3) Including praise for the book by authors of other books is bullshit. Don't do it. Especially since most consumers are aware that most of these endorsements are as valid as the paid-for 'two thumbs up' you'll see on movie ads even when Used-to-Be-Siskel & Ebert have panned the flick.

4) Adding that it's about to be a major motion picture is not helpful. Since most motion pictures are varnished shit, the fact that Hollywood loved a book is not a selling point.

5) Don't put a sales count on the cover. It's like the old McDonald's sign saying how many billions of people they'd improperly fed. I don't care if the book is a POD print and my copy is one of six not owned by family members of the author. That is, I don't care if the book turns out to be any good.

6) A good cover on a book that doesn't sell well, it's not the cover. Max Barry's hilarous novel 'Syrup' tanked despite being a brilliant debut. When his second book, 'Jennifer Government' broke out (to use industry lingo), they trashed the awesome cover from the hardback and put a cover on the trade that doesn't make any sense. The double 'x' thing might have been a legitimate gripe, crossing the line between clever and stupid. That's one tweak.

7) If a book's been made into a movie, don't put pictures of the movie stars on the cover of the reprints. Even if the film was better thant he movie, a film is almost never remotely faithful to the book, so don't lie.

There's probably more rules I could come up with. I don't know how many of these jive with J's opinions, but I can see two or three offenses on the U.S. covers for 'Kevin' that aren't present on the UK production.