Lolita

It was our book club book this month.  Fascinating to read it again so many years after the first time.  Published in 1955.  My copy was from the 2005 cover design.  So glad to have my “older” perspective, but I think one can say that for most any book one rereads..it’s a different book.   And for another fascinating subject (I'll spare you our good discussion)  I read this book about the design of the covers!  The author of “Lolita, the Story of a cover Girl,” John Bertram, is a graphic designer and sent out a proposal to all sort of artists to design a cover for Lolita (Not for publishing)  ..the majority include some sort of seductive woman.  Some never read the book. Or took this book to be about a child, not a seductress.   Nabokov’s own instructions  were for “Pure colors, melting clouds, accurately drawn details, a sunburst above a receding road with the light reflected in furrows and ruts, after rain.  And no girls.”   The first cover actually looked like the extra… the Olympia Press 2 volume edition “published in Paris when anglo saxon publishers proved skittish: An abstract block of mid century Modernist green imprinted with funereal lettering and a thin, hopeful white stripe, locked with a prickly black fence.”  The author of this article had a lush carpet made from volume 2, “ a meeting of the abstract and the plush, one that you can walk or lie on”    (!!!)     I know ….not a subject that interests everyone……I do always wonder how the covers come about.

It was so interesting and surprising to me that so many blippers responded to my new stove blip yesterday that they have one and love it!   Thank you,, glad to hear it!   Now a question:  Do you use some sort of protectors on the stove top so it doesn’t scratch.?    I’m going to attempt dinner on it tonight (with trepidation. )