The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri

Author:Jhumpa Lahiri
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

5.

Uniformity and Anarchy

In Italy, I have gotten to know another type of book cover: that which belongs to an editorial series. These covers, so different from American designs, have a powerful effect on me. I find their simplicity and seriousness admirable. They seduce me, just as my cousins’ school uniforms did.

The covers that form part of a series are sober, at once generic and immediately recognizable. By now, in an Italian bookshop or at a friend’s house, I recognize straightaway the white books belonging to Struzzi Einaudi, the mellow colors of the Adelphi series, the dark blue of Sellerio.

At the moment I am reading two books, both published by Adelphi: La Pelle (The Skin) by Curzio Malaparte, and L’Inconveniente di essere nati (The Trouble with Being Born) by Emil Cioran. They are two very different writers but, dressed in Adelphi jackets, the two books resemble each other, as if they were members of the same family, of the same bloodline. The books share the same size and, most important, are products of the same aesthetic sensibility. Both covers bear a framed image, then the title of the book and the name of the author. They are printed on fine paper, which is glued to the book only at the back. I like the fact that the rest of the jacket can be removed from the bound pages, like a tent, and that beneath this light sheet of paper there is a firmer undercover in white. Behold, the naked book.

An editorial series is a system for organizing a large number of books. A library arranged this way is visually harmonious. The husband of an Italian friend of mine orders his bookcases by series, in chromatic order. The effect is marvelous. According to his wife, however, aesthetic virtues aside, it’s not a good system. Beautiful to look at, she says, but one can’t find anything.

On my desk in Rome I have a row of books from Adelphi’s Piccola Biblioteca series. In the mess of my work surface they form an elegant, reassuring island. I own seven. Each bears a number on its spine. When I look at them I feel the need to own the whole series, starting with number one, even though there are more than six hundred.

In my bathroom in Brooklyn, meanwhile, I have grouped, in small frames on the wall, a number of postcards that reproduce covers from the early years of the original Penguin paperback series launched by Allen Lane in 1935: Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, Iris Murdoch, R. D. Laing. These distinctive images have by now come to adorn T-shirts and coffee mugs. Their insignia is tantamount to a literary badge of honor. In high school and in college, reading an orange-spined Penguin Classic felt reassuring, virtuous. I assumed they were works of quality, of substance.

The authors published in the series belong to one another, and they all belong to the publishing house. Each book represents the choice, the taste of the editor, but the series confers on the book an identity, a sort of citizenship.

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