First impressions in Virginia

First impressions in Virginia

In her novel, Orlando, Virginia Woolf writes, “Vain trifles as they seem, clothes… change our view of the world and the world’s view of us.” Like clothes, the cover of a book creates the first impression of its wearer. Like all appearance it can be deceptive, but it is what catches the eye and invites engagement. The clothing of Books, a deeply personal reflection on the art of designing covers by Jhumpa Lahiri, explores the torment of a writer who felt like an outsider, both in the land of her birth and the country she grew up in, because her clothes made her stand out.

            Lahiri looks at book covers through the lens of an author writing in a language that is not her own. Her characters, like her, are mostly second generation immigrants who have no connection with the place they came from and, yet, cannot be one with the place they call home because their appearance sets them apart. A study of the covers of Lahiri’s books will show that they, too, stick out amid other English and American titles owing to ill-fitting jackets. Several of her covers are teeming with Indian motifs-elephants, exotic flowers, henna-painted hands, the Ganga and so on – no matter how far away her characters and their lives are from the country Little wonder then that Lahiri’s first reaction to cover designs sent to her for approval is always visceral.

            Lahiri laments the loss of authorial control over the cover that writers before her like Virginia Woolf had enjoyed. (Woolf’s sister, Vanessa Bell, designed the covers of her first editions, based on the former’s narration of the plot.)But in defence of the beleaguered publishing industry, hundreds of thousands of books are published each year and few of these are actually bought. The cover of a book, whether or not it meets the expectations of the author, must attract people browsing bookshops into loosening their purse strings if writers are to earn their keep.

            As the daughter of a librarian, Lahiri had first encountered the “naked book”- the staid, uniformly colored hardbound volumes lining library shelves – without an image on the cover intruding on her intimacy with the written word. As an adult reader, Lahiri’s relationship with a book has become mediated. Before making an acquaintance with the text her mind is already filled with reviews, information about the author and such things that now feature on most book covers. Such information has been relegated to the back cover in this book.

            But what about the readers who are not privy to what goes on inside the publishing industry? To Lahiri, they are like tourists with guidebooks, who, owing to the informative covers, begin to orient themselves before journeying to the unknown world of the book. Beyond this cursory image no reader, besides Lahiri herself, features in this discourse. Thinking that a reader cannot be discerning enough to not judge a book by its cover is evidence of her self-absorption. “In the end the author is the book,”claims Lahiri pushing the reader completely out of the literary process. Her disregard for the reader is inversely proportional to her love for anything Italian: if there is a cover she likes, it is of an Italian book; if there is a friend whose husband’s bookcase she talks about, she is an Italian friend.

            Although Lahiri raises some pertinent questions, she stops short of delving into the answers. For instance, she points out the difference between the editorial series published in Europe and in America but does not mention that the vivid colours and illustrations of the latter are needed because they share the same retail space  with magazines.

            The blue cover of this slim volume has the names of the book and the author appearing like the stitched emblem of a school uniform. Lahiri had yearned for a uniform in her quest to belong. Maybe the cover comes close.