Tome Clothes

I suppose it is best to have an Augustinian stance about book design and say that at any point in the history of tomes there always have been ugly ones and beautiful ones. I would rather not wail about the loss of a "golden age" of publishing, or think we are progressing toward such a "golden age." It is more level-headed to suppose that gold was, is, and will be mixed in with lesser metals. And yet I keep finding the books made in the pre-Photoshop days to be more charming and attractive than most of today's.

I see a good number of books, partly because I work in a magazine's books & arts section, but also because I have a few prodigiously read friends who tell me about scrumptious tomes that I should, as the angel said to Augustine, "take up and read," and which I probably would not have found without their faithful counsel. The books they recommend tend to be the loveliest ones. Today, the latest—The Spanish Journey by Julius Meier-Grafe (1926)—arrived: a British racing green cloth-bound copy with a wee lion roaring on its hind legs on the center of the front cover.

But another book came today, too. And it is, I am afraid to say, a particularly unlovely tome. It parrots the color-block prints of Warhol, but in miniature and with more black that Warhol liked to use. At least this sort of ugliness stems from laziness and is not (I think) the product of careful planning from the folks at Continuum press.

But what is most discomfiting about this book is that its contents are first rate! This is the book! It is a Roger Scruton reader! Scruton's face has been Warholified 16 times and this means that his intellectual gaze is staring me down 16 times! Perhaps this is a joke? Either way, I am simultaneously intimidated by his gaze and appalled by the design. I think it is time to take off the dust jacket and take comfort in the oatmeal-colored boards.

For those yet unfamiliar with Scruton, you might want to consider taking a look at his new book I Drink Therefore I Am and this article, published in last week's Times Literary Supplement. The article is reviewing this book. Here's a teaser:

For Linzey, followers of foxhounds are “animal abusers”, comparable to those who torture cats and dogs for their amusement and who – according to research that he cites without question – are predisposed to become violent criminals when they turn their attention to their fellow humans. I conclude from this that Linzey may be a humane observer of animals, but he is no charitable observer of people. Maybe he cannot bring himself to attend a meet of foxhounds; but he could at least have consulted the literature, from Plato and Xenophon to Turgenev, Sassoon, Masefield and Ortega y Gasset, devoted to the place of hunting in a virtuous life.

Can you tell he enjoys a good hunt?