Joseph O'Neill's NETHERLAND, which I read last fall, is out in paperback with what some might call the ultimate endorsement: President Obama told the New York Times he's reading it, according to CNN. (Granted, that's 2 layers of hearsay right there.) And it has a lovely new cover -- or is it? The Village Voice Sounds of the City blog notices its eerie similarity to the INFINITE JEST tenth-anniversary edition, the same one pining away on my shelf right now.
I gave a bit of a gasp when I saw this one, which is so much brighter than the Old World hardcover illustration. I feel that I can comfortably make these superficial judgments since I have, in fact, read the book inside. But the similarity is unmistakable (a commenter says they were designed by the same guy), not only to "my" Foster Wallace copy but also previous editions. Allow me to steal some of New New Yorker's thunder and take this cover up through the ages:
The question we really ought to be asking is, why take all the clouds away? Is that a subconscious communication to the reader of, "Don't worry man, it's not really that obscure?" Surely literary snobs would not agree with that, judging by this poster I also found:
1 comment:
I noticed it immediately, too. I love the artwork on my hardcover; I have no idea why they decided to change from a cool and unique cover which is appropriate to the tone of the book to a cover that could just as easily have been slapped onto ten or fifteen other novels published in the past year.
It sort of reminds me of what they did to Then We Came To The End. The hardcover had such a great cover - why fuck with it?
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