“Oh, I don’t know – I’ll just work on it till I get it right, I guess.”
As cool water poured over me, he empty, uncertain feeling in the center of me gradually became bearable. George was somewhere in the vicinity, doing whatever he was doing, and when I saw him next I would be clean, calm, self-possessed; I would stop acting like an eighth-grader. I thought for a while about what to wear and decided that there was no point in pretending I went around dressed for a party whenever we weren’t working; I pulled on a clean pair of cutoffs and looked through my shirts. But the only ones that were clean were so totally functional I couldn’t stand them. A bold thought entered my mind: Wear one of Augusta’s. She might give me a hard time later on, but … I opened the door of my room and peered out, making sure that George wouldn’t catch me in my bra, and hurried into her room. The thought of wearing one of Augusta’s mannish cowboy shirts with the mother-of-pearl snaps filled me with a dizzy sense of power; I didn’t take her favorite, but they were all fascinating, all too big for me in a way I found irresistibly casual. I put one on, knotted it around my waist, looked myself over in the mirror above her dresser. Almost, for once, satisfactory. Back in my room I laced up my sneakers, did the best I could with my impossible hair, and sneaked out into the living room and listened. Where was he? There were no sounds from downstairs, no voices drifting in the windows; I could hear the quiet scrape of sandpaper that had been going on all day. With the thought that I might as well go all the way if I was going to get in trouble, I went back into the bathroom and found in a corner of the medicine cabinet Augusta’s tiny bottle of Interdit. Then I felt silly. She would smell it and give me an unbearable look – and did I want George to, after all? Here it was four o’clock on a hot day and he had come over to do a job. I put it back.
That left nothing to do but go downstairs and look for him. I found him in the dining room, supplied with a stack of blank paper, a handful of pencils, and a ruler; Augusta’s sketch was in front of him, and he was reworking it. He looked as if he had already found his place in the house and settled in.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.” He smiled, preoccupied, and kept drawing.
“What are you doing?” I looked over his shoulder, one hand on the table, one on the back of his chair.
“Trying to make some sense out of this. I’ve got a feeling she doesn’t really want it to look like that, anyway.”
As he talked, his hand continued to draw with a control that impressed me; he put in a vertical line with the ruler, using just enough pressure on the pencil so that its point gently stroked the surface of the paper. Then he began to draw some gingerbread decorations freehand. As I watched, a piece of wooden scrollwork took recognizable shape before me; I had seen its like repeated a dozen times around Augusta’s house but had never actually examined it. When had he had time to commit its form perfectly to memory?
“Mind if I watch?”
“No.”
I sat on the table, my knee almost at his elbow, and wondered how long it would take him to look up for more than a glance. That’s really good,” I said.
“Thanks.”
He continued to draw methodically without the slightest hurry or impatience. I was beginning to consider how long this part might take, when he put down his pencil and ruler picked up a ball-point pen, and without a pause put his left hand around my kneecap to steady it and wrote on it in tiny capitals, HI KAREN HOW ARE YOU? The hand made me self-conscious, but the writing tickled. I took the pen and his left arm and wrote FINE, becoming tensely aware that because of the way I was holding his arm, his left hand was against my thigh. I had meant to write more than FINE, but I stopped there and let go of his arm so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea.
“How long do you think this’ll take?”
“Oh, I don’t know – I’ll just work on it till I get it right, I guess.”
“Did you get her to agree with you about the roof?”
“Well … I don’t know if ‘agree’ would be the right word,” he said, giving me a mischievous smile. “But I’m building it, right?”
“You’ve got the idea, George.”
They were made for each other, I thought, but not as jealously this time. I got up and searched through the house for my Lord Peter book, finally finding it sitting with a wrinkled cover on top of my damp bathing suit from the day before; I tucked it under my arm, wandered into the kitchen and got two glasses of iced tea and a bag of potato chips, put everything on the dining-room table, and sat down across from George to read.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Does this come out of my paycheck?”
“Not if you’re nice.”
He tickled my ankle with his foot.
“I’m very nice,” he said.
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It’s an appealing image – especially with the various shades of blue, particularly the sky edge with a pink horizon – but on second glance, Rick Lovell’s cover painting for Family Resemblances is also a bit of a visual pun, reminiscent of the work of Guy Billout. Look, and look again: A house is reflected mirror-like from the driver’s window, but in the distance, in the upper left corner, stands a gazebo, distorted, as if rushing by.
Jay McInerney authored three novels published as Vintage Contemporaries: Bright Lights Big City, Story of My Life, and – below – Ransom, for which Rick Lovell’s stunning cover art is equal parts simplicity and symbolism…
The principles of Japanese advertising, he said, were really quite simple. Gaijin were glamorous. If you were selling a luxury product – liquor, perfume – you used a gaijin, preferably a blond model, a New York, London, or Paris backdrop, and an English slogan. If you were selling a household product, you used a domestic-looking Japanese model. The interesting cases were those in between. Miti had decided that the sauna, being a service, ought to have some racial identification as well as gaijin glamour.
Miti asked Ransom what he thought of Sadaharu Oh, the home-run heir apparent.
Ransom said he was a fine ballplayer.
Miti said, Hank Aaron is a Negro, isn’t he?
Ransom said he was, unsure of the significance Miti ascribed to this fact. He went back out to his deck and struggled with the sauna copy, the construction of which was brought back to him that evening as he worked through Lesson Nine of Level Two with his Mitsubishi class, Ransom reading and the class repeating, books closed.
I make a deal.
“I make a deal.”
You make a deal.
“You make a deal.”
He makes a deal.
“He makes a deal.”
She makes a deal.
“She makes a deal.”
Mr. Smith makes a deal…
______________________________
With a pair of Samurai swords suspended above a gently flowing stream, a bird – a rainbow-colored Japanese red-crowned crane – stands in the middle of a gently flowing stream, the swords reflected in the water in the undulating form of a Japanese wooden foot bridge. More symbolism: Just as the swords are reflected as a symbol of Japanese culture, so is the crane: It appears as a red-hued bonsai tree, seeming to float upon the water’s surface. The orange-yellow moon (yes, it can appear that way) suspended to the side, above, balances the the scene. And completing the image, soft and undulating green hills recede into the distance, separating the blue of sky from blue of water.
“Tell her you are suffering from amnesia and looking for clues.”
I haven’t read the book, but I remember the movie.
I saw the movie.
I really liked the movie.
I really like Marc Tauss’ cover art, too…
Open the drawers of your desk and you realize it could take all night.
There is a vast quantity of flotsam:
files,
notebooks,
personal and business correspondence,
galleys and proofs,
review books,
matchbooks,
loose sheets with names and phone numbers,
notes to yourself,
first drafts of stories,
sketches and poems.
Here, for instance, is the first draft of “Birds of Manhattan.”
Also the “U.S. Government Abstract of Statistics on Agriculture, 1981”,
indispensable in researching the three-part article on the death of the family farm,
on the back of which you have written the name Laura Bowman and a telephone number.
Who is Laura Bowman?
You could dial the number and ask for her, ask her where she fits into your past.
Tell her you are suffering from amnesia and looking for clues.
____________________
The term “odeon” (via the Century Dictionary), refers to, “…A kind of theater in ancient Greece, smaller than the dramatic theater and roofed over, in which poets and musicians submitted their works to the approval of the public, and contended for prizes; — hence, in modern usage, the name of a hall for musical or dramatic performances.” I especially like the way a neon-lit Odeon, and, the World Trade Center, contrast with one another in shape, size, and color, their orange and blue nicely complimenting the violet color of the empty sky above. The fact that protagonist Jamie Conway (I suppose he’s Jamie Conway?!) has his back turned towards the viewer – amidst the city’s exciting glow – imparts upon the scene feelings of solitude and anonymity.
A work of art can be distinctive in, of, and by itself. Yet, its impact and power can be enhanced by setting it within just the right kind of “frame”, and not just a physical frame.
In science-fiction and fantasy pulp art of the 1950s and early 60s, prominent examples of how art could be framed – visually framed, that is – were the Galaxy Science Fiction and Beyond Fantasy Fiction, pulp magazines which utilized the same general cover design. Cover illustrations were set within the lower right corner of the cover “landscape”, with all textual information – magazine title, names of authors and stories, and mundane but necessary information like selling price and date of issue – located within the top and left margins. This design could capture a passing reader’s attention with great effect, and, give the publications a somewhat “arty” (pardon the pun!) look. Hey, if the only thing you know about a story is its title and the name of its author, the cover art has to be its biggest selling point!
A memorable example of this style of cover design took prominence from the mid-1980s through early 1990s, in Random House’s Vintage Contemporaries series, which eventually comprised 89 novels as both reprints and works by contemporary authors.
In a general sense, two cover designs were used for the series: A more traditional style, with a work of art occupying the entirety of the cover and text superimposed upon it, and, the style alluded to above, in which a cover painting comprised only a portion of the front “real estate”. This latter style involved placing the illustration within the cover’s right center and “framing” it by white space alone its top, bottom, and left margins. The author’s name was situated in the upper right corner, as white text on a colored rectangular field – said color being repeated on the upper spine, with the author’s surname again superimposed in white. On the front cover, the book’s title was set just below the author’s name, just above the main illustration. Another cover element was a rectangular grid of subtle gray dots to the upper left of the cover painting, which kind of broke up the monotony of white space, and at the same time, balanced the cover art.
All this might read kind of technical, but when you actually look at the Vintage Contemporaries covers, they stand out for the catchy and pleasing effectiveness of the overall design. Well, that’s why I bought a few of them – !.
You can read much more about the design history of the Vintage Contemporaries covers at TalkingCovers, a blog created by Sean Manning (Vice President and Executive Editor at Simon & Schuster), which was active from May of 2012 through November of 2013. (Though quite fortunately, it’s still “up and running” and entirely accessible!) As described in its descriptive blurb: “Talking Covers is a blog where authors, designers, and artists join to discuss a particular book cover. It is edited by Sean Manning. He is the author of the memoir The Things That Need Doing and editor of the nonfiction anthologies The Show I’ll Never Forget, Rock and Roll Cage Match, Top of the Order, and Bound to Last. He has written for The Village Voice, Esquire.com, The Daily Beast, Deadspin, USA Today, The Awl, and elsewhere, and he is a frequent guest commentator on WNYC’s music talk show Soundcheck.”
Mr. Manning’s post about Vintage Contemporaries, created on September 12, 2012, can be accessed right h e r e.
To quote just a little bit:
“Editor Gary Fisketjon launched Vintage Contemporaries, a paperback imprint of Random House, in September 1984. There were seven initial titles. By decade’s end, there would be close to 100. The line was a mix of reprints and originals, and nearly thirty years later the checklist found in the back of the books reads like a ballot for some Cooperstown of late-20th Century fiction.”
“The person who came up with the uniform, De Stijl layout, and the one whose name can be found on the back of those hundred or so books – that was Lorraine Louie.”
“The series was a critical and commercial success; Bright Lights, Big City sold 300,000 copies in two years, and publishers raced to start their own knock-off imprints. But by the early nineties, personnel and tastes within Vintage Contemporaries had changed and the design was phased out.”
It’s a long, pithy, and fascinating post, highlighted with numerous examples of Vintage Contemporaries covers, as well as comments by authors, editors, and artists involved in the production of the series. They comprise, in order of appearance in the post (scrolling from top to bottom):
Comments by Mark Tauss, artist Far Tortuga, by Peter Matthiessen The Chosen Places, The Timeless People Dancing Bear, by James Crumley Dancing in The Dark, by Janet Hobhouse
Comments by Jay McInerney, author Bright Lights, Big City Ransom Story of My Life
Comments by Thomas McGuane, author The Bushwacked Piano To Skin A Cat Nobody’s Angel Something to Be Desired
Excerpt from Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life by Carol Skelnicka Where I’m Calling From What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Fires Cathedral
Comments by Maxine Chernoff, author Bop
Comments by Rick Lovell, artist Airships, by Barry Hannah Fiskadoro, by Denis Johnson Norwood, by Charles Portis The Car Thief, by Theodore Weesner The Sportswriter, by Richard Ford
Comments by Richard Ford, author A Piece of My Heart The Ultimate Good Luck Rock Springs
Comments by Joy Williams, author Taking Care Breaking & Entering State of Grace
Comments by Paul Hoover, author Saigon, Illinois
Comments by Jill Eisenstadt, author From Rockaway
Comments by Steve Erickson, author Days Between Stations Rubicon Beach
Comments by Chris Moore, artist Platitudes, by Trey Ellis (with comments by Trey Ellis, author) Angels, by Dennis Johnson Myra Breckenridge and Myron, by Gore Vidal Steps, by Jerzy Kosinski Lulu Incognito, by Raymond Kennedy Ellen Foster, by Kaye Gibbons
Comments by Patricia Mulcahy, editor
Comments by Michael Downing, author A Narrow Time
Comments by Peter Davies, author The Last Election
Comments by Lowry Pei, author Family Resemblances
Comments by Gary Krist, author The Garden State
Excerpt from A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates by Blake Bailey Revolutionary Road The Easter Parade
Comments by Mary LaChapelle, author House of Heroes
Comments by Susan Daitch, author The Colorist
Comments by Valerie Martin, author A Recent Martyr The Consolation of Nature
Mr. Manning’s post opens with an image of the checklist of Vintage Contemporaries titles. Rather than copy and paste directly from his blog, I’ve OCR’d these scans to come up with this list of all titles in the series. They’re listed alphabetically by book title, each title followed by author’s name, price, and ISBN.
Airships, by Barry Hannah – $5.95 – 394-72913-7 All Girl Football Team, The, by Lewis Nordan – $5.95 – 394-75701-7 Angels, by Denis Johnson – $7.95 – 394-75987-7 Anywhere But Here, by Mona Simpson – $6.95 – 394-75559-6 Asa, as I Knew Him, by Susanna Kaysen – $4.95 – 394-74985-5 Bad Behavior, by Mary Gaitskill – $7.95 – 679-72327-7 Beginning of Sorrows, The, by David Martin – $7.95 – 679-72459-1 Bop, by Maxine Chernoff – $5.95 – 394-75522-7 Breaking and Entering, by Joy Williams – $6.95 – 394 75773-4
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Movietime!
Bright Lights. Big City, by Jay Mclnerney – $5.95 – 394-72641-3
Bushwhacked Piano, The, by Thomas McGuane – $5.95 – 394-72642-1 California Bloodstock, by Terry McDonell – $8.95 – 679 72168-1 Car Thief, The, by Theodore Weesner – $6.95 – 394 74097 1 Carnival for the Gods, by Gladys Swan – $6.95 – 394-74330- Cathedral, by Raymond Carver – $6.95 – 679-72369-2 Chosen Place, the Timeless People, The, by Paule Marshall – $6.95 – 394 72633-2 Clea & Zeus Divorce, by Emily Prager – $6.95 – 394 75591- Colorist, The, by Susan Daitch – $7.95 – 679-72492-3 Commitments, The, by Roddy Doyle – $6.95 – 679-72174-6 Consolation of Nature and Other Stories, The, by Valerie Martin – $6.95 – 679 72159-2 Dancing Bear, by James Crumley – $6.95 – 394-72576- Dancing in the Dark, by Janet Hobhouse – $5.95 – 394-72588-3 Days Between Stations, by Steve Erickson – $6.95 – 394-74685-6 Debut, The, by Anita Brookner – $6.95 – 679-72712-4 Easter Parade, The, by Richard Vales – $8.95 – 679-72230-0 Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, by Richard Yates – $8.95 – 679 72221-1 Ellen Foster, by Kaye Gibbons – $5.95 – 394-75757-2 Family Resemblances, by Lowry Pei – $6.95 – 394-75528-6 Fan’s Notes, A, by Frederick Exley – $7.95 – 679 72076-6 Fat City, by Leonard Gardner – $6.95 – 394-74316-4 Fires, by Raymond Carver – $7.95 – 679-72239-4 First Love and Other Sorrows, by Harold Brodkey – $7.95 – 679-72075-8 Fiskadoro, by Denis Johnson – $6.95 – 394-74367-9 From Rockaway, by Jill Eisenstadt – $6.95 – 394 75761-0
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Movietime!
Garden State, The, by Gary Krist – $7.95 – 679 72515-6
Great Jones Street, by Don DeLillo – $7.95 – 679-72303- Handbook for Visitors From Outer Space, A, by Kathryn Kramer – $5.95 – 394-72989-7 House of Heroes and Other Stories, by Mary LaChapelle – $7.95 – 679-72457-5 I Look Divine, by Christopher Coe – $5.95 – 394-75995-8 Last Election, The, by Pete Davies – $6.95 – 394-74702- Last Good Kiss, The, by James Crumley – $6.95 – 394-75989-3 Last Notes from Home, by Frederick Exley – $8.95 – 679-72456-7 Latecomers, by Anita Brookner – $7.95 – 679-72668-3 Love Always, by Ann Beattie – $5.95 – 394-74418-7 Lulu Incognito, by Raymond Kennedy – $7.95 – 394-75641- Mama Day, by Gloria Naylor – $8.95 – 679-72181-9 Mezzanine, The, by Nicholson Baker – $7.95 – 679-72576-8 Mohawk, by Richard Russo – $8.95 – 679 72577-6 Myra Breckinridge and Myron, by Gore Vidal – $8.95 – 394-75444-1 Names, The, by Don DeLillo – $7.95 – 679-72295-5 Narrow Time, A, by Michael Downing – $6.95 – 394-75568-5 Nobody’s Angel, by Thomas McGuane – $6.95 – 394-74738-0 Norwood, by Charles Portis – $5.95 – 394- 72931-5 November, by Janet Hobhouse – $6.95 – 394-74665-1 One to Count Cadence, by James Crumley – $5.95 – 394-73559-5 Pages from a Cold Island, by Frederick Exley – $6.95 – 394-75977- Piece of My Heart, A, by Richard Ford – $6.95 – 394-72914-5 Platitudes, by Trey Ellis – $6.95 – 394-75439-5 Player, The, by Michael Tolkin – $7.95 – 679-72254-8 Players, by Don DeLillo – $7.95 – 679-72293-9 Rabbit Boss, by Thomas Sanchez – $8.95 – 679 72621-7 Ransom, by Jay Mclnerney – $5.95 – 394-74118-8 Ratner’s Star, by Don DeLillo – $8.95 – 679-72292-0 Recent Martyr, A, by Valerie Martin – $7.95 – 679-72158-4 Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates – $8.95 – 679-72191-6 Risk Pool, The, by Richard Russo – $8.95 – 679 72334- River Dogs, by Robert Olmstead – $6.95 – 394-74684 8 Rock Springs, by Richard Ford – $6.95 – 394-75700-9 Rubicon Beach, by Steve Erickson – $6.95 – 394-75513-8 Running Dog, by Don DeLillo – $7.95 – 679-72294-7 Saigon, Illinois, by Paul Hoover – $6.95 – 394-75849-8 Selected Stories, by Andre Dubus – $9.95 – 679-72533-4 Soft Water, by Robert Olmstead – $6.95 – 394 75752-1 Something to Be Desired, by Thomas McGuane – $4.95 – 394 73156-5 Sportswriter, The, by Richard Ford – $6.95 – 394-74325-3 Stars at Noon, The, by Denis Johnson – $5.95 – 394 75427-1 Steps, by Jerzy Kosinski – $5.95 – 394-75716-5 Stories in an Almost Classical Mode, by Harold Brodkey – $12.95 – 679-72431-1 Story of My Life, by Jay Mclnerney – $6.95 – 679 72257-2 Suttree, by Cormac McCarthy – $6.95 – 394-74145-5 Taking Care, by Joy Williams – $5.95 – 394 72912-9 To Skin a Cat, by Thomas McGuane – $5.95 – 394-75521-9 Ultimate Good Luck, The, by Richard Ford – $5.95 – 394-75089-6 Visit From the Footbinder, A, by Emily Prager – $6.95 – 394 75592-8 Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair, by Lewis Nordan – $6.95 – 679-72164-9 What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Carver – $6.95 – 679-72305-6 Where l’m Calling From, by Raymond Carver – $8.95 – 679-72231-9 Within Normal Limits, by Todd Grimson – $5.95 – 394-74617-1 Wrong Case, The, by James Crumley – $5.95 – 394-73558-7
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