I love looking at foreign covers of books I know. They reimagine what’s inside. Oftentimes, they have little to do with the book at all. A book cover is advertising. There’s always some level of bait-and-switch involved.
Like candy wrappers, you can imagine and hope about what the thing will be like once opened.
I wonder what instructions the editor gives the illustrator. Do they bother reading the thing beforehand? This German edition of Man With the Golden Arm looks like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
The Polish Never Come Morning is a jazzy cartoon while the Spanish Walk on the Wild Side is film noir.
How does a shopper pick what book to buy? If these Spanish and Italian translations were side by side would anyone guess they come from the same source?
Some look like spaghetti westerns while others make me hear bossa nova. Some are hastily chosen paintings with some text slapped over them while others have been created especially for the occasion. Oftentimes the original art isn’t even credited. Book publishing can be as fly-by-night as any other disreputable business. I wonder whether some of these designers got paid for their work?
I haven’t had a book translated yet. I wonder what that would feel like? Whatever language it happens in they probably won’t mess with the covers since I made them too. Or maybe they will. The marketing department will have a meeting and decide they can’t sell the book with the art I made.
Then they can make a movie and have it have nothing to do with the book.
I listen to Hari Kunzru’s Red Pill on the drive to Kansas. It’s about a writer losing his bearings on a fellowship at a vaguely cultish institute in Berlin. Set in the months leading up to the disasterous 2016 election it is full of conspiracy theories and paranoia. Passing giant poorly laid out signs wishing the monster’s return in fields by the highway should be disquieting but now feels disappointingly predictable and expected. On the bottom of one there’s a question: Do You Miss Me Yet?
I’m going to meet people that I only know on the internet. This is a common thing now. You can have regular interactions for years at a time and never be in the same room. This is the primary reason for my trip. Adam and Elizabeth invited me to take part in a zine fest in Lawrence. They’re letting me crash on their couch a couple nights. Beats the hell out of an email or conference call.
I pass both Kansas Citys en route to Tonganoxie. The house is painted cheerful bright colors. A couple donkeys graze in an enclosure along with a few sheep. Chickens wander to and fro around the porch. After Elizabeth lets me in, one of their four cats makes herself comfortable crawling all over me. The talk is easy and I feel instantly at home here. Books, records, art, and curios decorate every surface. A toy horse rears up, guarding the passage between the living room and a little office. I’m guessing this is one of Adam’s writing spots.
He comes in with Jessie a short time later. She’s his ex-wife but that’s old news. They’re all family. He gives me a tour of the grounds and introduces me to Bear, a dog that makes the cat’s welcome seem restrained. Bear makes it his business to monopolize my attention most the time I spend in the house. He guards me as I sleep both nights.
Everybody’s hungry but we’re waiting for Nate to show up. I know him from the internet as well, having designed a book cover for his Colorado-based press. Nate and Adam go back years. I hear about their book and music tours and misadventures in Mexico. Elizabeth and Jessie roll their eyes at a lot of what the guys say but there’s a lived-in ease to their rapport. They give each other a lot of shit but with a lot of love.
After running a last minute errand to the small Catholic college where Elizabeth works, we eat heaping platefuls of vegan bolognese and keep the conversation going. Feels good to be among people as commited to art as me. They’re all younger but none are kids. They’ve all paid plenty to live unconventional lives.
It’s hot as hell outside the next morning as we set up our books and merch at the zine fest. There are tables inside as well but that means wearing a mask all day and being away from my friends, so I opt to sweat it out. I move some books and bookmarks and Nate asks me to design another book cover for a forthcoming story collection, so the day’s worthwhile if exhausting. We’re running on fumes as we pack up but there’s a reading still to do in Kansas City, Kansas, so we pick up a 24-pack of Modelo and head there.
Book readings are always awkward. There’s always a disconnect in that a book is made to be read silently to oneself so when the writer reads aloud from it standing or sitting among listeners he robs them in a way from experiencing the work in its intended context. It will never be a thing I enjoy or excell at but I’ve gotten passably competent at it over the years. I go first and get it over quick. Adam reads longest and engages the audience the most. He makes us turn our chairs and surround him as he sits on the floor, one foot under his butt, almost as if squatting by a campfire. He has everyone close their eyes to remember those we’ve lost these past few years, to reflect on the trying times and difficulty so many have faced and continue to face. It was a lot more meaningful than the typical pro forma ritual to move product.
There’s a fire pit late into the night. Whiskey, beer, and tacos. I hear many stories and tell a few of my own. There’s no way to approximate any of this online.
I drive out before 8am the next morning. I finish Red Pill and queue up another book on tape. I’ve only been gone a day and half but when I see the Chicago skyline early evening it feels like I’ve been gone a month. So glad I spent time with those people in real life.
—Friday night is the opening reception for CITYSCAPE CHICAGO. I have a painting in the show. Stop by. Then Saturday and Sunday I’ll be selling books and crap at Printers Row Lit Fest. Gonna be extra peopled out by the end of the weekend, no doubt.
—Listen to my talk with Sam Wagster, then tune in Wednesday for one with Keefe Jackson. Also, Mallory and I talked Blue Sunshine. It’s a 70s movie that features a creepy politician whose slogan is “Make America Good Again”. But good isn’t good enough for us any more, I guess.
It’s rare these days that someone else makes something to promote my work. A flyer may not seem like much but I was touched when the one above arrived a couple days ago. I’m so used to doing all the dirty work of shilling myself. The guy who put it together also released a tape of me reading. This event is related to that tape.
When my first book came out eleven years ago I was already forty-one. I didn’t have a pipe dream about a literary career like ones you see in movies. By that time I’d already been an unknown painter for twenty years. I knew the score. A pivot to another dying mode of expression was not a fast track to anywhere but I likely expected that first book to open some doors. It did. But not to any room or building I expected.
I’m about to publish my fifthe book in four years. One reason for the hyperactivity is that plague lockdown removed the possibility of interaction with others. I was free to just work. The other reason was a backlog of material going back seven years. In that time I pitched projects to publishers and agents and went part way into several books. They all came to nothing. Then I started making books myself soup to nuts and things clicked into place.
After I wrapped up this new one I daydreamed a short time about getting someone else to put skin in the game. But that didn’t pan out. Now that I really know how the sausage gets made I’m not waiting in line at the butcher’s anymore. Something would have to change drastically for me to do so ever again. All I know is I like making books. I hope to continue to do so.
This weekend I’m meeting people I’ve never met before in a place I’ve never been. They only know me through the books I’ve made. Had I stuck to only painting, this would not be happening. It’s a door publishing opened for me. Maybe my new friends will show me some novel way to keep going.
Kansas is a fictional place to me as I type this. It will be real a couple days from now.
