August 3rd, 2010 / 6:46 pm
Web Hype

Meta Book Covers

I. Surrogate Book as Book

One is given not just a hypothetical cover of the book, but an entire surrogate book as a manifested object residing in space. This may point to modern painting’s preoccupation with the represented vs. the actual, or it may be some self-reflexive fetishism of books themselves, as if to congratulate the reader for picking one — that one — up.

II. Look Inside! Page Flip

Perhaps publishers have little confidence in their readership, thus invoking the momentum it takes to turn the first page. Amazon’s “Look Inside!” [see related post] concedes, rightfully or not, that short of judging a book by its cover, one can judge it by its first 8 – 10 pages. Compare this with the hardcover edition of You Shall Know Our Velocity, whose text begins on the front cover as, I feel, a kind of unabashed remark on book design, marketing, and anticipation.

III. The Non-cover

For those who find the page flip too subtle, there’s the inside of the god damn book. There’s a certain charm and metaphysical weight to the first two examples, but this feels rushed and unthoughtful; both backgrounds and their spacial implications seem arbitrary, almost panicked for some conceptual space. The slightly faded yellowed paper evokes that used book store mustiness, perhaps as prophetic redolence of their discount rack fate.

IV. Violated Constituents

For those of you waiting for or lamenting the “death of print,” how about a visit to the emergency room first? This masochistic and violent take is alarming and a little confusing. I can see the predictable titular thinking in Trauma, but there’s nothing practical about a book missing its middle — like some exquisite corpse game gone horribly wrong. One imagines Louis Menand walking around with the real cover, a framed signed galley, and a pocket full of shredded paper. [Per 2nd comment, Scorch Atlas has been added, given the elaborate degree by which the insides have been altered.]

V. The Razor’s Edge

These cut outs remind me of the Advent calendar, like small windows leading to gifts unknown. It’s funny how obsessed book publishers are with the malleable artifice of surface (McSweeney’s takes this a step further in The People of Paper, wherein certain words are actually physically excised from the page, a feat in printing). If the invitational slit in body of work is in any way symbolic, I expect the memoir to have pictures.

The book covers are all clever, but the irony-loop of images of the altered object as a stand in for the actual object is dizzying. Imagine a guy who can’t sleep because of an Ambien pill under his mattress — a modern version of The Princess and the Pea tale. Besides being terribly uncomfortable, I’d stay up all night thinking about how self-reflexive the situation was. I’d get so tired I’d hallucinate visions of a book with a cover, not a book with a cover about the pictorial capacity of it being a cover.

Tags:

42 Comments

  1. d

      Give me a meta-book-cover with a bird on it.

  2. d

      Give me a meta-book-cover with a bird on it.

  3. daniel bailey

      i feel like scorch atlas could fit into category IV.

  4. daniel bailey

      i feel like scorch atlas could fit into category IV.

  5. Trey

      the cupboard put out a little (really very small) journal-bound chapbook-ish thing a while ago that does I and IV. well, explicitly I and then sort of IV, except instead of on the cover there are pages ripped from the middle. A New Map of America, it’s called.

  6. Trey

      the cupboard put out a little (really very small) journal-bound chapbook-ish thing a while ago that does I and IV. well, explicitly I and then sort of IV, except instead of on the cover there are pages ripped from the middle. A New Map of America, it’s called.

  7. L@rstonovich

      http://jamesgreerbooks.blogspot.com/2010/06/booksthatchangedmyworld.html#more

      “…The picture above is one of my few literary treasures: it’s the cover of the tenth printing of the Shakespeare & Co. edition, a copy of which I own. I used that cover, minus the type, for my first novel, Artificial Light. Which was itself printed by a small, adventurous publisher. I am not comparing Artificial Light to Ulysses. “

  8. L@rstonovich

      http://jamesgreerbooks.blogspot.com/2010/06/booksthatchangedmyworld.html#more

      “…The picture above is one of my few literary treasures: it’s the cover of the tenth printing of the Shakespeare & Co. edition, a copy of which I own. I used that cover, minus the type, for my first novel, Artificial Light. Which was itself printed by a small, adventurous publisher. I am not comparing Artificial Light to Ulysses. “

  9. Igor

      jimmy baby we get it we get it

  10. Igor

      jimmy baby we get it we get it

  11. Steven
  12. Steven
  13. Danforth

      Are these really meta, in that the covers say something about the act of covering a book? Or are they just book covers with photos of book covers on them?

  14. Danforth

      Are these really meta, in that the covers say something about the act of covering a book? Or are they just book covers with photos of book covers on them?

  15. d

      Give me a meta-book-cover with a bird on it.

  16. daniel bailey

      i feel like scorch atlas could fit into category IV.

  17. Trey

      the cupboard put out a little (really very small) journal-bound chapbook-ish thing a while ago that does I and IV. well, explicitly I and then sort of IV, except instead of on the cover there are pages ripped from the middle. A New Map of America, it’s called.

  18. L@rstonovich

      http://jamesgreerbooks.blogspot.com/2010/06/booksthatchangedmyworld.html#more

      “…The picture above is one of my few literary treasures: it’s the cover of the tenth printing of the Shakespeare & Co. edition, a copy of which I own. I used that cover, minus the type, for my first novel, Artificial Light. Which was itself printed by a small, adventurous publisher. I am not comparing Artificial Light to Ulysses. “

  19. Igor

      jimmy baby we get it we get it

  20. Steven
  21. Danforth

      Are these really meta, in that the covers say something about the act of covering a book? Or are they just book covers with photos of book covers on them?

  22. Pemulis

      King Dork had a pretty bitchin’ cover, too. And The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction takes the cake.

  23. Pemulis

      King Dork had a pretty bitchin’ cover, too. And The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction takes the cake.

  24. Pemulis

      King Dork had a pretty bitchin’ cover, too. And The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction takes the cake.

  25. zach

      Yeah, I would put The Work of Art… in a new category for ‘spines’ along with By Its Cover.

      In Scorch Atlas’s defense we actaully ripped the shit out of ’em, if you were brave enough to buy it that way. No Meta.

      Good categories… I could spend all day filling em…

  26. zach

      Yeah, I would put The Work of Art… in a new category for ‘spines’ along with By Its Cover.

      In Scorch Atlas’s defense we actaully ripped the shit out of ’em, if you were brave enough to buy it that way. No Meta.

      Good categories… I could spend all day filling em…

  27. Michael Filippone

      Yes, that book confused me. When I got my copy of A New Map of America, I sincerely thought at first that my book had been through some kind of accident. Other books have had intriguing designs that have made me say ‘that is neat what they did there’, but no other book has ever evoked in me such a definite and practical doubt. I wonder if they got many customer emails for replacements of damaged books.

  28. Michael Filippone

      Yes, that book confused me. When I got my copy of A New Map of America, I sincerely thought at first that my book had been through some kind of accident. Other books have had intriguing designs that have made me say ‘that is neat what they did there’, but no other book has ever evoked in me such a definite and practical doubt. I wonder if they got many customer emails for replacements of damaged books.

  29. zach

      Yeah, I would put The Work of Art… in a new category for ‘spines’ along with By Its Cover.

      In Scorch Atlas’s defense we actaully ripped the shit out of ’em, if you were brave enough to buy it that way. No Meta.

      Good categories… I could spend all day filling em…

  30. Michael Filippone

      Yes, that book confused me. When I got my copy of A New Map of America, I sincerely thought at first that my book had been through some kind of accident. Other books have had intriguing designs that have made me say ‘that is neat what they did there’, but no other book has ever evoked in me such a definite and practical doubt. I wonder if they got many customer emails for replacements of damaged books.

  31. Caleb J Ross
  32. Caleb J Ross
  33. ZZZIPP

      AHHH! ZZZIPP LOVES THE CUPBOARD BUT CAME A BIT LATER AND DID NOT KNOW THAT BOOK WAS LIKE THAT

      AHHHHH!! MAYBE ZZZIPP SHOULD GET IT

  34. ZZZIPP

      AHHH! ZZZIPP LOVES THE CUPBOARD BUT CAME A BIT LATER AND DID NOT KNOW THAT BOOK WAS LIKE THAT

      AHHHHH!! MAYBE ZZZIPP SHOULD GET IT

  35. Self Defense in a No Gun City?

      […] HTMLGIANT / Meta Book Covers […]

  36. sp
  37. sp
  38. Caleb J. Ross
  39. ZZZIPP

      AHHH! ZZZIPP LOVES THE CUPBOARD BUT CAME A BIT LATER AND DID NOT KNOW THAT BOOK WAS LIKE THAT

      AHHHHH!! MAYBE ZZZIPP SHOULD GET IT

  40. sp
  41. Aaliyah – I miss you (cover) | Celeb Twitter Guide

      […] HTMLGIANT / Meta Book Covers […]

  42. Books on Book Covers | The Casual Optimist

      […] some earlier examples from Joe’s post, and this post about ‘meta-covers’ from HTML Giant. Many of the images of the older titles are small (and some are just not very good), but where I […]