The Clothing of Books: An Essay

If the process of writing is a dream, the book cover represents the awakening.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that a cover is a sort of translation, that is, an interpretation of my words in another language -- a visual one. It represents the text, but isn't part of it. It can't be too literal. It has to have its own take on the book. Like a translation, a cover can be faithful to at the book, or it can be misleading. In theory, like a translation, it should be in the service of the book, but this dynamic isn't always the case.

The right cover is like a beautiful coat, elegant and warm, wrapping my words as they travel through the world, on their way to keep an appointment with my readers. Books come to stand for various episodes in our lives, for certain idealisms, follies of belief, moments of love. Along the way they accumulate our marks, our stains, our innocent abuses, they come to wear our experience of them on their covers and bindings like wrinkles on our skin. Like every true love, that of the reader is blind.

Personally, I think it deplorable to place the words and opinions of others on the book jacket. I want the first words read by the reader of my book to be written by me.

And yet I know that expressing oneself necessarily means being different. The writer's voice is a singular one, solitary. Art is nothing other than the freedom to express oneself in any language, in whatever manner, dressed any which way.

As soon as the book puts on a jacket, the book acquires a new personality. It says something even before being read, just as clothes say something about us before we speak.

Books come to stand for various episodes in our lives, for certain idealisms, follies of belief, moments of love. Along the way they accumulate our marks, our stains, our innocent abuses—they come to wear our experience of them on their covers and bindings like wrinkles on our skin.

...American book jackets reflect the spirit of country - little homogeneity, lots of diversity.

Everyone likes to judge a book cover. In the first place, it is easier to evaluate the cover than the content. Besides, it's fun. All one needs to do is look and react.

A cover that one person cherishes is devoid of meaning to another. What does that mean? I fear that, even in a globalized world, it signals an inability to recognize oneself in the other.

We don't live in a world in which a cover can reflect the sense and style of the book. Today more than ever the cover shoulders an additional weight. Its function is more commercial than aesthetic. It succeeds or fails in the market.

I learned the hard way that how we dress, like the language we speak and the food we eat, expresses our identity, our culture, our sense of belonging.