I have yet another complaint for which I expect no remedy. In the first place, I don't know quite what it is of which I mean to complain. Put it another way, I don't have the vocabulary to accurately describe the problem, though I may say I am not the only one to complain of it. Customers and booksellers at the bookstore where I work and elsewhere have commented on this, but none of us seems to be able to communicate our dissatisfaction to anyone in a position to do anything much about it.
Sticky covers. There. That's about as close as I've been able to get to a description. The new series, Drop Caps from Penguin Classics of which I so recently wrote is a perfect example. Here are these handsomely designed new editions of classic books -- as well as some I would simply call popular -- published in stoutly bound and brightly colored hardcovers at a reasonable price. Each copy comes without a dust-jacket, but shrink-wrapped from the publisher. ( For any that might not know, shrink-wrap is basically a thin plastic bag in which merchandise, in this case new books, are sealed to keep each copy pristine. The plastic is shrunk by means of applied heat to conform to the shape of the thing inside, thus, shrink-wrap.) Most attractive, these new uncovered books, at least until actually handled, however briefly by human hands. The problem is in the treatment used in covering the cardboard covers, not in the plastic packaging. The surface of these new books is not the more traditional colored or painted cardboard and cloth. Instead, there is this... stuff, and while this... stuff, as I say, looks great, it isn't as smooth as the usual covers; it seems to be just porous enough to register dirt, oil, fingerprints, everything with which the book may happen to come in contact and this almost immediately once the books have been taken out of the shrink-wrap. This same substance, or something like or at least equally disagreeable, is now used regularly on the more traditional dust-jackets that come wrapped around most hardcover books. Whatever this paint or process is, it is new enough that I only noticed it on new books just a few years ago. Since the first one I handled seemed at the time to be an isolated experiment, perhaps by one publisher, it seemed to be just some passing fancy of some designer somewhere. In the past two or three years though, this... stuff, whatever it is has been adopted by more and more publishers in one form or another. I can only guess at the reason why, as no one I know in publishing seems still to have the faintest idea what I'm talking about when I've asked.
My theory is that there must have been someone, probably a designer, who liked the look of this matte finish that still showed color as well or better than the traditional photographic technique (?) used when printing pictorial dust-jackets. Maybe this stuff was less expensive as well. I wouldn't know. It has the feel, and here I do mean the actual feel of an aesthetic choice made in some airy isolation wherein no practical voice was ever raised to point out that books are meant to be read and that to read a book it must be handled, carried about from place to place, most likely, picked up and put down on surfaces of various composition and cleanliness, in other words, used. Books are meant to be used. That seems so obvious a fact as to be embarrassing to mention, until one considers for instance all the impractical, not to say impossible shapes, sizes, prints, fonts and related nonsense into which the merry art school types have been making books ridiculous now and then for years and years. Novelty art books like Madonna's Sex, years back come immediately to mind. Remember that one? It had metal covers on a spiral binding, metal covers that fell off, usually after one look. It was really cool, so long as one never opened it. Or the coffee-table-book memorializing the great electric guitars which was an oversized book shaped like an electric guitar. That one fit on no bookshelf or display table anywhere ever. Didn't last out a Christmas season, as I remember. Skyscraper books shaped like skyscrapers, dye-cuts that invariably had tiny bits that broke on every other copy of the book coming out of the carton, buff paper covers as pure and white as salted slush just from being shipped in a truck from the printers; the list of impractical beauties is long and checkered.
And now, there's this... stuff. It not only doesn't hold up to use, it actually feels kinda creepy just holding it; less plush than tacky, as if the inks had never quite set.
As I said at the beginning of this, I can't pretend to know what I'm talking about here. Don't take my word for this. Unwrap a copy of Ellery Queen's The Greek Coffin Mystery and just run your thumb across the covers. See if it doesn't feel wrong. See if it doesn't leave a smudge, even if your hands are clean as a choirboy's. It's just not nice. Whatever this... stuff is, I say again, it is not pleasant. It was a bad idea. I wish it would stop. Stop. Just quit it, publishers, Penguin Classics, please?
(I don't mean to pile on the good people at Random Penguin and Penguin Classics. Gods bless them and all who sail under their flag. They do good work! But it is worth mentioning that the last time Penguin hired some other very talented new designers to produce that other hardcover series of reissued classics, the ones with nice cloth covers, they managed to fuck that up a little bit too. The designs are lovely, and the books well made. I bought myself a nice hardcover copy of Wilkie Collins' Woman in White from that bunch. Lovely thing it was, with birds all over it. The idea seems to have been to reproduce in an a relatively inexpensive and more modern design, something of the richness of earlier cloth covers that were often elaborately embossed. With these new designs though, the birds were just inked onto the cloth, not impressed in any way and so by the time my lovely new book had taken one or two bus commutes, the birds were already fading no matter how carefully, even lovingly I handled that book. Now maybe, just maybe this effect was somehow anticipated by the designer and this wear was seen as reproducing in quick-time some of the more weathered charms of older books, but that is probably just me bullshitting on behalf of artists I don't know. Honestly, I think nobody could be much bothered to rub two copies together and notice the effect before the damned things shipped out to the warehouse and the retailers. The result again was something that was lovely, until it was used, because, you know... books.)
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