October 2nd, 2009 / 6:35 pm
Behind the Scenes
My favorite book cover ever
That, friends, is a fucking cloud unicorn.
Jacket art is an interesting thing. Besides blurbs, it’s one of the factors that most influences your casual, agendaless bookstore browser (as well as your rating on Jimmy Chen’s list, or so I like to believe). It is with this in mind that I’d like to share with you the greatest piece of cover art ever made. I came across this Kosygin-era collection of Ballard short stories last week while buying flannel in a thrift store, and I haven’t even really been able to get past the cover yet to start reading the stories. Besides the cumulo nimbus unicorn and rose and torso-less cloud lady, there is also a jauntily colored glider flitting around that mighty rock formation to the right. Directly underneath that monolith is what looks like some kind of Dodge Dart that probably gets 13 miles to the gallon and two people talking, probably about the Jets and their improbable 3-0 start (Ballard was something of a futurist, after all). Actually, you probably can’t see that part, due to the poor quality of my photography skills. How does it all tie together? Knowing Ballard, probably with the unicorn partially dismembered and violated.
JGB: Gone too soon.
Tags: J.G. Ballard
NIce. Excellent work, Drew.
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based on the cover, i would never buy that book, sorry.
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Based on the cover, I would buy ten copies of this book.
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there is a good chance i dreamt this
i might be asleep right now in fact
this might be better (or just different)
http://blog.blowfish.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/crash-cover.jpg
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October 3rd, 2009 / 9:07 amMatt Jasper—
I want that edition of Crash. I’m pretty sure it exists in the wide-awake world, though it does seem too good to be true.
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Yeah dude, that one is pretty fantastic. I wonder how much creative control he had on these things.
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/looceefir/3930567793/
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I love that cover. Check out this Raymond Chandler pulp cover:
“I smashed the bed-spring against his cheek”
http://issuu.com/jasp555/docs/farewelletch
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[...] pivotal figure in the literary canon and a disgusting human being.” . . . A closer look at a truly stunning cover for a collection of J.G. Ballard stories — a cover that includes a “torso-less cloud [...]