The Art of the Publisher by Roberto Calasso

Author:Roberto Calasso
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374711832
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

A LETTER TO A STRANGER

The cover flap is a humble and arduous literary form for which there is as yet no theorist or historian. For a publisher, it is often the only opportunity to spell out what spurred him to choose a particular book. For the reader, it is a text to be read with caution, for fear of it being a piece of surreptitious hype. And yet the cover flap is part of the book, of its physiognomy, like the color and picture on the front cover, like the typeface in which it is printed. And a literary civilization can be recognized by the way its books are presented.

The history of the book had traveled a long and tortuous path before the appearance of the cover flap. Its noble forebear is the dedicatory epistle, another literary genre that flourished from the sixteenth century, where the author (or printer) addressed the prince who had given his patronage to the work—a genre no less awkward than the cover flap, since here the purpose was flattery rather than commercial enticement. Despite this, so often and in so many books, the author (or the printer) allowed the truth—and even drops of his poison—to emerge between the lines of the opening dedication. The fact remains, however, that as soon as the book comes into existence, the cover flap seems inevitably to be regarded as a form that kindles mistrust.

In modern times there is no longer a prince to address, but a public. Will this perhaps have a clearer and more recognizable face? Anyone who thinks so is mistaken. For some, it could even be the mistake on which their very profession is founded. But the story of publishing, when looked at closely, is a story of endless surprises, a story where uncertainty reigns. The whim of the prince is replaced by another, more pervasive and no less powerful whim. And the possibilities for misunderstanding are multiplied. Let’s start with the word public: those who talk about a public generally think of a large and amorphous entity. But reading is solitary, like thought—and it presupposes the obscure and lone choice of a single person. The whim implicit in the choice of the patron who offers support to a writer (or printer) is, after all, better founded and therefore less of a whim than that of an unknown reader confronting a work or an author about which he knows nothing.

We watch a reader in a bookshop: he picks up a book, leafs through it—and for a short instant he is entirely cut off from the world. He is listening to someone speaking, whom others cannot hear. He gathers random fragments of phrases. He shuts the book, looks at the cover. Then he often takes a brief glance at the cover flap, hoping for some assistance. At that moment, without realizing it, he is opening an envelope: those few lines, external to the text of the book, are like a letter written to a stranger.

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