Feb 05 2010
The Emperor’s New Books?
The Believer is one of the magazines we carry on our ever bustier magazine rack.
Believer book reviews are insightful about not only the specifics of the book but why it might be important to a greater body of literature. In a new take on the ’anonymous review,’ Justin Taylor was asked to invert the standard ‘anonymous review’ formula — if instead of the reviewer having the cloak of anonymity, we were to keep the book under review anonymous from its critic, and thereby shield it from any and all prejudice– whether positive or negative, wheter directed at the author, the publishing house, the blurbers, the cover art, etc. I swore several oaths to stay true to the project (Eds: ‘No googling‘) and soon enough a book arrived at my house. Its covers, front matter, and endpages had all been stripped, and the spine blacked out by a Sharpie.’
After his reading, Taylor found himself ‘freed from the tyranny of the preprogrammed response, set adrift, context-free, at sea with an alien test. Every reviewer–every reader–should hope to be so lucky.’
We’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover or a person by their clothes, but I really like book covers and clothes and I like to distinguish between book covers I kind of like and book covers I love. Also, didn’t the author have some choice over the book cover just like I had some choice over the shoes I put on this morning? I guess judge people. . .within budget.
Of that opinion is pop philosopher Chuck Klosterman (what?! I really like his book covers), who wrote (and based his whole career around the fact that) ‘ There are two ways to look at life . . .The first view is that nothing stays the same and that nothing is inherantly connected. . . The second is that everything pretty much stays the same (more or less) and that everything is completely connected . . . In and of itself, nothing really matters. The problem is that nothing is ever in and of itself.’
Does anything mean what it really means out of context? Is it wrong to judge a book by its cover or is it wronger to lack to judgement? Would the obviously gay guy from 10th grade have come out if he went to high school in San Francisco? Maybe this is just an existential question for a slightly snowy yet somehow warm winter day (If the snow doesn’t stick and only turns into puddles was it ever snow in the first place? etc., etc.,)
Oh yeah, the anonymous book was Book of Jokes by Momus. I guess sometimes there is a third option, that context matters more than the thing itself.
2 responses so far
Oddly, unless the author is already Big and Important, most of them have almost no cntrol over their covers.
Really interesting premise here. I do have to wonder what my response would be to any book whose cover, author, publisher, and all other attendant details, were concealed.
Book jackets and covers are endlessly cool, though; even the ugly ones are interesting to parse, from a semiotic angle. There are just so many talented people working in publishers’ art departments.