Subject
Cover Art on VN Paperbacks (fwd)
Date
Body
From: "Paul L. Maliszewski" <plmalisz@mailbox.syr.edu>
Does anyone know if Nabokov ever commented or wrote about the cover art
that appeared on his books or book design generally? Over the last year
I've been picking up every Nabokov paperback I can find. While most of the
illustrations are uniformly awful and unfortunate, they're also pretty
interesting, like a lot of uniformly awful things.
I have heard somewhere that VN didn't want a girl pictured on the cover of
Lolita. If that's right, what is the original source for this preference?
I haven't been able to find anything in Boyd. And I've also heard second-
or third-hand that VN somewhere mentioned Kafka's insistence that a bug
never be used to illustrate "The Metamorphosis."
Are these stories strictly apocryphal, or did VN have stated opinions
about illustrations on books? I'm looking for any and all comments by VN
on this subject, however brief.
Paul Maliszewski
Does anyone know if Nabokov ever commented or wrote about the cover art
that appeared on his books or book design generally? Over the last year
I've been picking up every Nabokov paperback I can find. While most of the
illustrations are uniformly awful and unfortunate, they're also pretty
interesting, like a lot of uniformly awful things.
I have heard somewhere that VN didn't want a girl pictured on the cover of
Lolita. If that's right, what is the original source for this preference?
I haven't been able to find anything in Boyd. And I've also heard second-
or third-hand that VN somewhere mentioned Kafka's insistence that a bug
never be used to illustrate "The Metamorphosis."
Are these stories strictly apocryphal, or did VN have stated opinions
about illustrations on books? I'm looking for any and all comments by VN
on this subject, however brief.
Paul Maliszewski