June 6, 2006
best of all possible paperbacks
I really am a bibliophile. I'm also a digiphile--or maybe mediaphile is more accurate. But I've always loved books and always will.
And when I come across a really interesting book, I'm going to report it here. This version of Voltaire's Candide, for instance (Penguin Classics [Deluxe Edition], 2005), which a house-guest left in a guest bedroom.
[click on the image to see the big version]
The first remarkable thing about this book is that it's a deluxe edition of a paperback book. I didn't know that paperback books ever got the deluxe treatment. It looks like there's gold filigree work on the cover (see big image). It's a really beautiful cover.
But much more remarkable than gold filigree is the artwork on the front cover, back cover, and inside flaps, by cartoonist Chris Ware, who's known for his series of comics called the Acme Novelty Library, and a graphic novel, Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. This seems more pared down than his usual style, nothing but circles and lines, stick-and-circle figures that a child might draw with a protractor. Depicted are scenes of cruelty, violence, all the more horrifying in being portrayed with child-like simplicity.
But the book cover is also funny, with a Voltaire-for-the-21st-century sense of wit, capturing Voltaire's mordant, deadpan voice very well. I think this is brilliant, multimedia book art and Chris Ware deserves a bigger credit than the tiny strip on the back flap with his name in a font so tiny I had to get some reading glasses to read it.
The cartoon strip explains the basic plots of the novel, but also tweaks it, makes fun of it using the cartoon book form.
For instance, there's the comic strip that has Leibnitz explaining his philosophy--until it turns into a joke about being plagiarized by Newton.
Under that is another strip about the Lisbon earthquake, which brutally depicts the descent of the city into amoral chaos, with a Voltaire figure getting shot and robbed.
Under that is "DR. PANGLOSS ACTIVITY CORNER," where you can play a game to figure out how "in the best of possible worlds" Dr. Pangloss got venereal disease.
[click on the image to see the big version]
I think this is more than just a quirky book-cover deconstruction of Voltaire. It's very much in Voltaire's skeptical and playful spirit.
Of course the book is more than just the cover. There's a a great novel with a full-blown critical apparatus here, with all the trimmings: scholarly introduction with notes, bibliography, translator's note, note on the text, note on names, two-page map, three appendices, extensive notes on the text itself. Comic book on the cover, but serious scholarly edition on the inside. Works for me.
I really love this book, as a book. So many things to admire and enjoy. And I don't think books like this are going to disappear. If anything, to compete with the digital, books might become even more beautiful, and more engaged with pop culture, than this one.
Posted by jeb at June 6, 2006 6:07 PM | TrackBack