August 23, 2010
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By Jason L in Book Cover Design, Ten
Post by Jason L.
We know it is forbidden, but we do it anyway; judging a book by its cover is often the first step to feigned interest on the part of the pseudo-reader. Sometimes they’re lucky and get away with what they expect and the blurb matches the illustration, but once in a while fate rears its karmic head to prove the adage true, suckering readers into buying a book that’s not as pretty as the UV varnish on the front.
With classics, however, these false book covers act as a second language, a hidden layer, a joke between the fan and the book, while simultaneously giving the book a contemporary feel for the unbeknown reader. Here’s our list of 10 misleading classic book covers for the critical eye that reads between the lines to find another layer.
1. Romeo and Juliet
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Hidden layer: Suicidal penis measuring.
Tags: Alice in Wonderland, Animal Farm, Book Blog, Book Cover, Book Cover Design, Frankenstein, Literature, Lord of the Flies, Misleading Book Covers, Moby Dick, Romeo and Juliet, The Cures of the Drinking Class, The Illiad, The Inferno, The Scarlet Letter
August 20, 2010
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By Meg Dt in Author, Ten
Post by Meg Dt
While it may be an awful cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words, sometimes, when you look into a photograph, the moments that are caught on camera – a sideways glance, an awkward smile, or downcast face, speak to us. They may not be a window into the inner thoughts of the subject. They may not fully reveal their hopes or insecurities, or unravel some secret locked away behind an otherwise formal pose. But as Dorothea Lange has said, “While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see”.
We look into, not at, some of the most memorable photographs of authors probably not on the dust jacket.
1. J.D. Salinger
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One photograph you won’t find on the dust jacket anyway is that of J.D. Salinger. The famously reclusive author was snapped as he discovered a hiding photographer, but behind Salinger’s fury over the intrusion, his eyes reveal a real fear of exposure – perhaps the condition that allowed for the spiritual quality of his later novellas.
Tags: Arundhati Roy, Author, Author Photos, Christopher Hitchens, David Mitchell, Elmore Leonard, Ezra Pound, JD Salinger, Joshua Ferris, Neil Gaiman, Photo, Portrait, Toni Morrison, William S Burroughs, Writer, Writer Photos
August 18, 2010
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By Jason L in Author, Ten
Post by Gill Ab and Jason L
Back in the day, as I painstakingly penned literary essays and then typed them up on my shiny new laptop, I convinced myself that this time-consuming method was the mark of true creative genius. Today who has the time or patience for such indulgences? Yet sometimes as my fingers hit the keyboard, I look back and long for the satisfaction that only ink-stained hands can bring. And although I’m miles from attaining literary greatness (as far a part as the beginning of a book is from its end) it seems some well-known scribes share our passion for the written word.
1. JK Rowling and Moroccan Leather
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In 2007 JK Rowling, auctioned off one handwritten and personally illustrated copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard for a children’s charity. Considering it fetched a cool $4 million from Amazon, it seems that inking one’s novel is not an ill-advised move. Rowling’s distinctive scrawl complements the whimsical nature of her writing. Six other handwritten copies were given to Rowling’s friends.
Tags: Authors Who Use Longhand, Longhand Written Novels, Novelists Who Write By Hand
August 16, 2010
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By Meg Dt in Author, Character, Six
Post by Meg Dt
The popularity of the author-character genre, may be not so much a post-modern phenomenon as a mythologizing of canonical works, in which the famous or historically ‘great’ authors of the literary canon have been absorbed into the bite-sized culture of popular literature, where ‘classic’ or ‘literary’ works are often elided in favour of short, highly digestible texts – a culture exemplified by the prevalence of books like Bayard’s How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read (2007).
Good thing too, because as Mark Twain has said “a classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read”. In fact, it seems that even in the age of instant literary gratification, hypertext, e-books, (ahem) blogging, iPads and profuse eyestrain inflicted by blazing screens, the author is more undead than ever before.
Too busy Facebooking to dive into the canon? Well you can just dip your toe in. We take a look at six novels that are easier to read than the classics, but feature the greats as characters (so you can still feel like you’re superior because you’re reading, while everyone else watches Grey’s Anatomy). One features the author as a character, the other is the author’s best known/best loved work. Which one should you read? We’ll be the judge of that.
1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
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Arthur Conan Doyle in Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
In Julian Barnes’s 2005, Booker Prize shortlisted
Arthur & George, Arthur Conan Doyle is the Sherlock-Holmesian version of himself, solving the mystery of George Edalji’s wrongful conviction (as he did in real life). But if murder mystery is your kind of thing, may we suggest the Conan Doyle classic
Hound of the Baskervilles, which is not just about a scary black dog.
Tags: Author-Characters, Authors As Characters, Writer-Characters, Writers As Characters
August 13, 2010
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By Admin in Character, Novel, Ten
Post by Karen Mac
“A testimony can be false,” my dear friend Derrida writes, “that is, [a testimony can be] mistaken, without being false testimony – that is, without implicating perjury, lie, a deliberate intention to deceive”. I write this here – that is, in part to showcase that I have indeed read his Hallowed French Bastardship, and in part… Nah, that’s pretty much it.
The point is though, that first-hand accounts of narrators are used (among other things) to give the novels they shape the trappings of authenticity but may in fact be false testimony. ‘Truth’ (a word that gets rather caught in the throat within a fictional universe) is made subjective to individual, legitimate, singular perspectives. Being told by liars, lunatics and letches, we reassemble the skewed version of events in novels as we read them out of a misplaced loyalty to the voices we come to love.
Below is a list of unreliable narrators that have manipulated their way into our good graces. We dare you to disapprove.
1. Huckleberry Finn in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn
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Mark Twain wrote of his novel that it is "a book […] where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat". The young Huck is a champion liar. He creates an alternative ‘right’ and ‘true’ that appeals to childish selfishness and heart-rending compassion, because of Huck’s strange combination of innocence and world-weariness. The world he sets himself against is one in need of an alternative. I prefer his version.
Tags: Bella Swan, Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Huck Finn, John Fowles, Mark Haddon, Narrators, The Collector, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Top 10 Unreliable Narrators, Twilight, Unreliable Narrators, Untrustworthy Narrators
