Lolita: The Story of a Cover Girl: Vladimir Nabokov's Novel in Art and Design by John Bertram

Lolita: The Story of a Cover Girl: Vladimir Nabokov's Novel in Art and Design Reviews

• 
  sav

  Obviously when i figured out i wanted to write my english research paper on the differing of interpretations of lolita, i had to go in search of the main books that helped show these distinct variance of opinions. this book is good for that, it's good to critically see where everything went wrong and where things went right
  
  that being said, obviously i skipped through some stuff that was filler and wasn't imperative for me to read. what this book is great at showing is all the covers and let me tell you, the amount of fucked up lolita covers out there is infinite. i found myself appreciating a small few, ones that were basically very plain and focused on typography, or, i quite enjoy anything with the butterflies even tho vlad buddy well, he didn't. (but that's a different story)
  
  learned a lot, disagreed with a lot, agreed with a lot. yeah.
• 
  Holly Dunn

  Sadly I couldn't fit this into my suitcase. It's an amazing book though, and I plan on finishing the rest of the essays when I next return to New Zealand.
• 
  Mark

  When an acquaintance, whom I wouldn't consider a close friend, asks me about my favorite novels, I never mention Lolita. The reputation of this novel is too fraught with what those who haven't read it might infer about a professed fan of the book. Lolita's notoriety is somewhat unique; unlike the reputation of, say, Henry Miller's
  Tropic of Cancer, D. H. Lawrence's
  Lady Chatterley's Lover, or even Pauline Réage's
  The Story of O, Lolita sparks controversy not just because it has sex in it, but because it describes sex between a grown man and a twelve-year-old girl who consents to this abuse only in the most liberal interpretation of the word. To say I love a book narrated by a pedophile and sexual predator isn't something I'd share with a colleague I barely know who sits in the office down the hall from me at work. And I work for a scholarly-book publisher.
  
  If Lolita weren't so well-known, I believe I'd be much more inclined to mention it, because in that situation someone who hadn't read it would be more likely not to have heard of it, in which case I could craft that person's initial understanding of what the book is about. But even people who haven't read Lolita have usually heard of it, and their conception of the book has usually been dictated by the image of a young Sue Lyon gazing suggestively over a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses with a lollipop entering her mouth. This image, created by MGM's marketing department in support of Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film version of the novel, is extremely provocative and clearly intended to titillate the viewer. The problem is that this image has no bearing on the contents of the book. Never mind that Sue Lyon looks nothing like the Lolita described (albeit vaguely) in Nabokov's prose; Lolita also doesn't wear heart-shaped sunglasses, and never sucks on a lollipop. More importantly, she is not an adolescent seductress, but rather a twelve-year-old girl trapped in an abusive relationship with her brand-new stepfather, who uses his intellect to bully her into their sexual encounters.
  
  This is the crux of the book's "image problem," which Lolita: The Story of a Cover Girl explores: how do you create a cover image for Lolita that adequately conveys the book's subject matter without falling into the pitfall that, frankly, most of the book's many covers have fallen into over the last sixty years (i.e., depicting Lolita as a seductress, or even just as an object of desire, rather than as the victim she actually is)? The book collects several essays (a few written specifically for it, the rest previously published) and the "best" of several Lolita cover designs commissioned by the book's editors (which previously appeared online).
  
  The cover designs are hit and miss. I really like a dozen or so, and appreciate another dozen; the rest are not as inspired as I'd hoped for, considering that they're not hindered, as most actual cover designs are, by a marketing department's requirements for how to most effectively sell a book to its prospective readers. But still, there are quite a few ingenious proposals contained here that are worth pondering.
  
  The essays are, in some ways, more effective. Although they don't all discuss Lolita's "image problem" directly (and there's some repetition among them), they do discuss the disconnect between prose and image, between the marketing of a work of art and the work of art itself. When I bought this book, I hadn't expected to read it from cover to cover, but that's exactly what I did. I enjoyed it quite a bit and, furthermore, it's inspired me to read Lolita again (for what will be my fourth time).
  
  Interestingly enough, the cover on my copy of Lolita, designed by Marc J. Cohen for Vintage in 1989, is not discussed in the book. Probably because it's ugly as hell in the way that so many covers designed in the '80s were. It matches all the other covers Cohen designed for Nabokov's books, which were the standard Vintage editions until they were all (excepting Lolita) redesigned using a shadowbox theme in 2009. Cohen's version of Lolita features a faux-leather background in tan and gray, with Nabokov's name hugging the upper left corner of the cover, the book's title in a handwritten-looking purple font, and a somewhat muddy photo of a girl in a tube top holding a bicycle in front of her. Along the edge of the photo is that ridiculous blurb from Vanity Fair: "The only convincing love story of our century." The cover is decidedly unsexy, but that's pretty much all it gets right. At least I don't have to be too embarrassed when I carry it around with me in public.
• 
  Liz Murray

  An unsettling account of the cultural appropriation of Lolita through art and design. The powerless child is portrayed almost exclusively as a provocateur in heart-shaped sunglasses. The kidnap and horrific abuse of a twelve year old girl is simply ignored in the lollipops, short skirts and knowing smiles of a Lolita who appears again and again on book covers, fashion magazines and perfume ads but not once - not once - in the pages of Nabokov's haunting narrative.
• 
  Nikki

  Ignore the words, ogle the covers.
• 
  Kolleen

  A must have for Lolita/ Nabokov fans.
• 
  mica

  This was a really interesting book, and, for the most part, I thought it was gorgeously designed inside and out. Unfortunately, while reading through, I found that its design (for a book that largely deals with graphic design, specifically book cover design) had some issues that ended up really bugging me by the time I got through to the end. It was mainly to do with placement of the essays (the essay that specifically dealt with the commissioned cover designs was placed too early in the book, and no where near the actual covers) and placement of cover examples, in several places, were no where near where their corresponding essays refer to them, which became a bit of a pain when I had to flip back ten or so pages to specifically look at what the essayist was referring to. The final essay in the book felt like it was an afterthought in the book, since the typography in it felt like it was just dropped in without much consideration.
  
  In terms of content, I really did find this to be an interesting book. Since it's a series of essays by multiple contributors, I did certainly find that some essays were more interesting to me than others, but I was most excited to look through the commissioned covers by modern designers. (I would have loved a bit of a blurb from the designer(s) of each cover that underlined their intent.
  
  All in all, for someone who's not exactly a big fan of Nabokov or Lolita, this was still a worthwhile read from the perspective of a graphic designer, illustrator or artist, let alone someone who is just interested in how book covers affect our perception and reading of the content within.
• 
  Austyn

  This book beautifully explores the relationship between books and their cover art. It handles the complexities of Lolita really well, and gave me a lot to think about. I don't typically enjoy nonfiction books (in this case, collection of essays) as my nighttime reading, but the first half of this book really drew me in. 5 stars for the first half (including the stellar cover art examples) and it almost made me mourn for the parallel universe where I could have been a book cover artist.
  
  Then it went downhill. Unfortunately, because this isn't a book but a collection of essays following similar topics, it gets incredibly repetitive. I read the same lengthy quote about the author's preferred cover at least six times. Some of the covers referenced were also repeated several times.
  
  Some of the chapters were also incredibly unnecessary. Why, when the central thesis seems to be covering (pun) Lolita's covers and the challenges that result, do we care about Russia specifically? Why do I care about Nabokov's other books? I skipped through the former and completely skipped the later.
  
  The book was also unnecessarily wordy. I'm no slouch when it comes to vocabulary, but I'm glad I read this on my kindle, because I had to look up nearly a dozen words.
  
  If someone had been able to synthesize all the information given into one book, I believe it could be shortened and much more enjoyable for the reader. I'd also be very interested in a kind of coffee table book of the covers created for this book along with complete explanations of the choices made by the artists.
• 
  Jaymee

  This was such a fascinating read -- about the art and politics of cover designs, using Nabokov's "Lolita" as an example, and the perfect one at that. It was interesting to read that he specifically asked publishers not to put girls on the cover, and yet the image of a young Lolita-esque girl proliferated throughout popular culture (stemming from fashion, as one essayist argued). The book is composed of several essays, each exploring themes on cover art, from fashion to Russian styles; film versions and the images there to how Nabokov attempted to regulate his books' cover designs. It is graciously filled with many cover designs not only of Lolita, but his other novels as well, and with careful analysis of these. All in all a wonderful exploration of the literary world, the way we "understand" texts, and the way we visualize them. And not to mention how we judge books by their covers, whether we like it or not! (Surely I'm not the only one here who has several editions of their favorite books, with different covers. The covers themselves are worth collecting.)
• 
  Maksim Kirillov

  Сердце книги - это, конечно, подборка обложек. В довесок пятнадцать или около того статей развлекут парой своих примеров, но суть их, как и цитаты, всегда об одном и около одного и того же: пространное размышление о создании обложек (воспринимает ли их кто-то дольше первого впечатления - прим. мое), что об этом думает автор статьи (в данном случае "автор" лишь меняет имя и фамилию, но не мнение); возможно, короткий скок-поскок по сюжету или фабуле; обязательно - глубина понимания произведения, до которой, кажется, могут спустится только дизайнеры обложки; опять же цитаты - одни и те же, по одним и тем же поводам, с одними и теми же попытками к оригинальности.
  Просмотреть обложки, перелистнуть пару статей и этого будет достаточно с данной книги.
• 
  Irina

  An interesting collection of essays, most interesting, some a bit boring and repetitive. One, however, still makes me angry. Why? Because it was basically a list of words taken out from Lolita as well as from the script for Kubrick’s film adaptation. They were listed across a number of pages without any sort of deeper explanation, as if their simple existence would somehow prove the thesis (whatever that was— the annoyance drove it out of my head).
• 
  mimo

  A well-rounded collection of essays, and certainly eye-opening in the contexts it provides. I found the preface by Mary Gaitskill and Duncan White's chapter particularly enjoyable, as well as the gallery of 80 new cover designs naturally.
• 
  Anna

  Read this for an essay I wrote on Lolita and the iconography and 21st century internet culture. This books was a tremendous help with loads of great essays but most of all it's just fucking gorgeous. Really really nice art book.
• 
  Sarah

  This is a hyper-specific dive into the history and development of the many different book covers of Lolita, one of the most infamous novels of the 20th century. It features images of the different covers that the book has been printed in, and a variety of essays offering opinions about those covers and what they mean in the context of the book's subject material.
  
  I thought this was interesting as a reflection of art and culture, but it was extremely long. After a while, it almost felt repetitious. The chapters are written by different authors, and I think they end up traversing a lot of the same ground. While the conclusions are different, albeit some minutely so, I think it ended up adding unnecessary bulk to the book.
  
  That said, I think it raises questions most of us never think about. I read it shortly after finishing Lolita, so I think I enjoyed it more because of that.
• 
  zoë

  Fascinating subject; lost interest towards the last few essays due to a lot of the writers sentiments melting together and having the same opinions and talking points
• 
  a

  i learned a lot about book cover design that i didnt know before, and it was a lot more interesting than i thought it would
• 
  Tia

  Who was Dolores Haze?
  
  There seems to be as many conflicting opinions about this as there are on Jesus. I mean, I read the Bible and clearly see it saying Jesus had brown skin and hair like wool, and he believed in tolerance and helping the poor. But his "good book" is used to preach hate, and he's depicted as a white guy with shiny blonde hair. If the apocalypse comes, a lot of his followers will mistakenly call him a terrorist and try to kick him out of America.
  
  I read Lolita a few months ago, and it has quickly become my obsession, not because I loved it—it's a 3 star book for me. But I've NEVER finished reading something only to be so confused with other people's interpretations of it. It's changed my world view quite a bit, you know, it's like if you read Charlotte's Web and most people tell you it promoted pork consumption. You'd be confused, yeah?
  
  For that reason, I'm now working on a book of my own, an illustrated literary analysis of Lolita. I'm a writer and artist who works in watercolor, colored pencil and graphite, and Nabokov writes more visually than any other writer I can think of. He was understandably frustrated by most of these book covers. He didn't even want a girl on the cover. And there has never been an accurate representation of Lo in the films, because it would be too disturbing if there were.
  
  What do we know about her? She was very tiny at 12 years old. She was 4'9" and 75 lbs, something Nabokov got from a chart on children that was the average size for a girl of 10. He really wanted the reader to know this was a child, not someone sexually matured. Oddly enough, I was that same height and weight at 12, and I was one of the tiniest girls in my class. A late bloomer.
  
  Lo has "breast-buds" rather than breasts. That's when you're still completely flat chested, not even an AA cup yet, but you're getting puffy. She is very slender, with boyish legs, a narrow behind. She is a tomboy who is described as wearing things like jeans and flannel shirts. She doesn't wash her hair often, or care about hygiene and appearance. Her face is described as plain, with a freckled snub nose. She's got bobbed curls that are brunette, like Lita Grey, Charlie Chaplin's child bride. She's an ordinary girl.
  
  She acts her age, and has very age appropriate interests. Her mother reveals that she had no interest in boys at her old school, and she'd get frustrated when they flirted with her or touched her. If you really read the book, it's clear that the entire camp incident never happened.
  
  Even at age 14, when Humbert describes her as an "aging mistress" losing her beauty because she's becoming so womanly, she is 5 feet tall and 90 lbs. That's similar to the size I was at her age, and I used to be so embarrassed in the locker room because I wasn't "developed" looking.
  
  So how did we get here? With these crazy book covers, some of them of ADULT women? Or movie-tie in covers with Sue Lyon or Dominique Swain, both actresses who were 15 when they played her character? I think it's because the true nature of the book makes people uncomfortable. They'd rather imagine her as Britney Spears circa "...Baby One More Time." Which completely diminishes the story and the entire point Nabokov was making when he wrote it. I would be pissed if I were the author, and for a while he was. Finally, he just gave up.
  
  
  This book was very cool, aside from the prologue from Mary Gaitskill talking about tortured Humbert and the nature of love. She's so extra.
  
  There was one chapter in particular that was all about Nabokov's thoughts on images. He says:
  
  "Yes, I write in three languages, but I think in images."
  
  "I never start from an idea, but always from an image... I then endeavor to reproduce exactly all that I saw in a flash... It is a long and difficult work."
  
  "I'm a slave to image."
  
  He had definite ideas about what he wanted on the cover of his book. He wrote a detailed request to his publisher. When he couldn't find an artist through them, he went looking for one. He insisted that it were better to have a plain cover with typography and no images than an inaccurate one. He could tell that most artists who illustrated a cover for Lolita hadn't ever read it, or even been given an adequate blurb about it.
  
  To my knowledge, no one has ever attempted in all these years to create the cover Nabokov originally asked for.
  
  This book was filled with the covers that have adorned the book throughout 60 years and across countries, as well as many that people created for the "project" that was this book. It was very interesting to see. I enjoyed most of the accompanying text as well.
• 
  Moved to Library Thing adaorhell

  Very interesting! As someone who will pay extra for a cover that isn't garbage, and Nabokov's notorious distaste for the trashy harlot covers that ended up splashed all over his book, it was refreshing to read the history and page through alternative designs which honestly, seems like one of the hardest books to design for. Can you imagine? What a job. But it's for design people or Nabokovists.
• 
  Brent Legault

  Amazing illustrations but the essays are hit and miss. Plus, they are full of repetitions because they were collected, I presume, rather than written with this publication in mind. And so, we get the same biographical and plot summaries over and over again.
• 
  Fraser Kinnear

  A pretty hit-or-miss collection of essays. I enjoyed the few that were purely about book cover design. In particular, the essay discussing paratext (the blurbs on book covers) was fascinating.
• 
  Jennifer

  Essays can get a tad repetitive, but nice to see the different book covers from different designers and countries.
• 
  Harry

  I read this book because of my research. Growing up, I never read Lolita, maybe because of the controversial context of the novel. Maybe someday I might read the novel.