In college, when other girls talked about their deep dark fantasies – “I want to be trapped in an elevator with a mysterious stranger” or “I want to be caught alone behind the grandstand with a mysterious stranger,” I would always nod silently, pretending to empathize when really all I was thinking was, “What the hell?” Of course, that was what they were thinking after two bottles of Boone’s Farm and a tendency toward confession inevitably led me to reveal my own deep dark fantasy: “I want to be trapped…in the classical history section of Barnes and Noble. With a highlighter.”
“And a mysterious man?” they’d ask hopefully.
“Is he carrying a good reading lamp?”
And then somehow I’d never get invited back. But whatever. This is just my long way of saying, I’m literature’s bitch. And I blame it all on the book cover designers. The ugly truth is that I’m drawn to the shallow end of the book-buying pool. I want my books, like my men, to be quiet and to not smell like mold and not give me papercuts. But mostly, I just want them to be pretty.
The other day, I had Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, in my hands at Barnes and Noble. I read the first ten pages. I loved it. I was ready to lay out my $14 but as I walked toward the front of the store, I saw that the same book was on sale for $3 less but in a different edition. While the edition in my hand had a beautiful, delicate cover, the sale version had the movie poster, all bombastic and overwrought, with a big picture of Kal Penn smack dab in the middle. Despite the presence of Kal, who is dreamy, the cover was hideous and the paper quality seemed poor. I stood there debating – do I save $3 and try to live with an ugly cover or do I behave like an incredible idiot and pay $3 more just to have the pretty? The inner turmoil was too much. I put both copies down and bought a beautiful new novel whose title I can’t remember because once I got it home, I realized it wasn’t any good. Attractive but dumb – just like every guy I dated in tenth grade.
My home library is filled with books like that – gorgeous covers that conceal books in which I have very little interest. At times, though, I must admit that buying those books actually has opened new doors for me, expanding vistas I otherwise might never have explored. I know an awful lot about the aftermath of World War I because of the elegant imagery on the cover of Margaret MacMillan’s book, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World. I know about Ernest Shackleton and I know about the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and the odd but enduring friendship between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt – all because I couldn’t say no to a book’s pretty face.
The lesson here, if there is one, is that maybe I shouldn’t always dismiss the value of my shallow side. For every accidentally-read chick-lit tome, there’s an Everything Is Illuminated or a complete collection of Dorothy Parker stories to be discovered and savored. That seems like something with which even my college fantasy man – the one with the really good reading lamp in that dark Barnes and Noble aisle – could agree.
8 comments:
I've got four different editions of Working by Studs Terkel.
I know exactly what you're talking about.
Kevin -- It's good to know I'm not alone!
I was always like this. Remember when I worked at Borders I would only buy books that were published by Vintage becuase they looked good. You would tell me to read so and so and I wouldn't for the simple fact the book looked ugly or it was a Mass Market book.
I always judged a book by it's cover, just like I judge people I see walking down the street or in the mall. It's the only way to know what to expect.
No way are you alone; I am a choosy slut of books, judging not only covers but fonts and weight, and coveting any edition that includes the words annotated, illustrated, anniversary, oversize, absolute, special, or first. I also like it when books come in slip cover boxes, or have those little ribbon placemarkers. Oh, and French flaps. Damn those Fench flaps. I know have two editions each of Alan Moore's From Hell now because of French flaps.
And I had problems with sharing the deep dark fantasies; where others were content with something like "He makes a lot of money and cooks and buys me flowers and shoes. Oh, and he's pretty", I would launch into something "He's part Henry DeTamble from The Time Traveler's Wife but without the Chrono-Displacement Disorder (but if he traveled space and time like Dr. Who, that'd be great), part Mr. Darcy, that goes without saying, part Robert Benchley, because he was a charming writer and seemed like such a nice friend to Dorothy Parker, and maybe a little Petruchio from Taming of the Shrew but only if it was Raul Julia's performance of him. Oh, and he's pretty. And plays guitar"
Whoever I was trying to tell all this to would usually cut me off halfway, because they either had no idea what I was talking about or thought I was asking for too much. Or both. The mild social despair that this caused usually just drove me to buy more books.
Katharine, I think we must be separated at birth. I'm exactly the same way. And hello, by the way, to a fellow Robert Benchley fan. I love that man.
Hello Mr. Steve B -- You always managed to find good books though based just on the covers. I was always very impressed.
I have three editions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
You really CAN'T judge a book sometimes, you know? There's seriously a skillion covers out there by the guy who did covers for Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series and I just want to thump them all.
...Not that I liked Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. But when we could have Monica Furlong's "Juniper" cover, why have 8 squintillion covers that all look exactly the same?
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