New Directions paperbacks have fascinated me as objects since I first saw an old copy of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Coney Island of the Mind on a bookshelf in a friend's attic on College Hill when I was a teenager. They've always struck me as the literary equivalent of a punk rock zine, with their black and white covers like photocopied collages cut from magazines by a kid in his basement.
The cover art for New Directions's 1961 edition of John Hawkes's The Lime Twig shows a fever dream, the blurred faces of a street crowd with only a woman's face in focus, her eyes and mouth in shadow like a skull or specter. The severe title helps enforce this uncompromising vision and prepare the reader for a serious bit of post-modernist horror.
The back cover, as with most New Directions paperbacks, includes a nice black and white author photo. Hawkes is shown in a woodland setting smoking a pipe. You can see a white mark on his wrist where his watch has blocked the sun. Writer's tan! The back is also jammed with text, not only a synopsis of the novel, but also quotes from Flannery O'Connor and William Kennedy. The whole layout looks more like a press release than a retail copy of a book. The spine is just as austere.
As is common with books of the period, the design and cover art are uncredited.It looks like New Directions has added color to their covers. I still prefer the old DIY look.
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I was searching for an online resource of NDP cover art and found your post.
ReplyDeleteI've always thought that if I were to give it up and go back to school, I would do a masters on the subject.
Nice to see this post.
Thanks, Will! Great to hear you enjoyed the post. I'm sure I'll get around to reviewing more NDP covers for Nice Jacket in the near future. If you ever get around to writing that thesis on them, send it my way!
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