YourEnglishClassDotCom

Covering Stieg Larsson

Early design with original title

According to a Wall Street Journal report, the bright yellow cover of Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” has quickly achieved the status of one of the “iconic” book covers in contemporary publishing in the U.S. But like the thriller, its path has been full of twists and dead ends.

Sonny Mehta, who as chairman and editor-in-chief of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group bought the rights to the novel in 2007 didn’t like the cover designs on the European and Asian editions—with their pictures of sexy women with dragon-shaped tattoos. He found them distasteful and described them as “somewhat redundant” and “cheesy.”

This is where Peter Mendelsund comes in. Mr. Mendelsund is a senior book designer at Knopf. For Larsson’s book, he prepared nearly 50 different designs, all of which were subjected to intense scrutiny. About Mendelsund, Lauren Fador writes in the Jouranl:

Mr. Mendelsund, age 42, graduated from Columbia University in 1990 with a degree in philosophy and worked as a professional musician for more than a decade before embarking on a design career. With no formal graphic design experience, he began drafting CD album covers for an indie label. Less than six months later, a family friend introduced him to Chip Kidd, Knopf’s associate art director. Mr. Mendelsund showed Mr. Kidd his portfolio; he had a full-time job at Vintage Books, a Random House label, within the week. Eight months later he was at Knopf, his home for the last eight years.

The chosen cover

Starting with the book’s early working title, “The Man Who Hated Women,” which was closer to the original Swedish, Mendelsund eventually came up with the cover that today graces bookstores everywhere.

Knopf chairman Mehta’s idea was to design a jacket that would help Knopf avoid what happend in the American market to the books of Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell, whose U.S. presentation and book sales were disappointing. Mehta did not want Mr. Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy to face a similar fate in the U.S. ((Since its release, “Dragon Tattoo” has sold 3.8 million copies in the U.S. to date.)

Mehta gave the final approval to Mendelsund’s distinctive design mostly because “he didn’t want the books to be pigeonholed: ‘I was extremely worried that they would be dismissed as crime novels, Scandinavian crime novels, in translation.’”

Mehta is convinced the final jacket design has proven to be one of the keys to the success of the book. However, as the Journal points out:

Not everyone loved the jacket. Mr. Mehta said there was “some pushback” from retailers, as well as members of the publishing house’s sales team, who were looking for a more conventional depiction in lines with other thrillers—something darker, bloodier, “more Scandinavian.”

Yet Mr. Mehta stood by Mr. Mendelsund’s distinctive design. Mr. Mehta said he didn’t want the books to be pigeonholed: “I was extremely worried that they would be dismissed as crime novels, Scandinavian crime novels, in translation.”

Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott, portrait by George Healy; in the Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association collection, Concord, Massachusetts.

Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel [[Little Women]], set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in [[Concord, Massachusetts]], and published in 1868. This novel is loosely based on her childhood experiences with her three sisters.

Alcott’s early education included lessons from the naturalist [[Henry David Thoreau]]. She received the majority of her schooling from her father. She received some instruction also from writers and educators such as [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]], and [[Margaret Fuller]], who were all family friends.

Poverty made it necessary for Alcott to go to work at an early age as an occasional teacher, seamstress, governess, domestic helper, and writer. Her first book was Flower Fables (1849), a selection of tales originally written for Ellen Emerson, daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1860, Alcott began writing for the [[Atlantic Monthly]]. When the [[American Civil War]] broke out, she served as a nurse in the Union Hospital at Georgetown, D.C., for six weeks in 1862-1863. Her letters home – revised and published in the Commonwealth and collected as [[Hospital Sketches]] (1863, republished with additions in 1869) – garnered her first critical recognition for her observations and humor.

Alcott’s literary success arrived with the publication by the Roberts Brothers of the first part of Little Women: or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, (1868) a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood with her sisters in Concord, Massachusetts. Part two, or Part Second, also known as Good Wives, (1869) followed the March sisters into adulthood and their respective marriages. Little Men (1871) detailed Jo’s life at the Plumfield School that she founded with her husband Professor Bhaer at the conclusion of Part Two of Little Women. [[Jo's Boys]] (1886) completed the “March Family Saga.”

 Sourced from Wikipedia

• Pegasos – Biography of Louisa May Alcott
• American Studies at the University of Virginia – Biography of Louisa May Alcott
  Domestic Goddesses
• The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library – “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott
• Little Men by Louisa May Alcott
• A Celebration of Women Writers – “An Old-Fashioned Girl” by Louisa M. Alcott
• Orchard House – Home of the Alcotts
• Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott

The Woman Behind “Little Women”

Sourced from PBS

Jack Kerouac – Sites of Interest

Jack Kerouac

Alongside [[William S. Burroughs]] and [[Allen Ginsberg]], [[Jack Kerouac]] was a pioneer of the [[Beat Generation]]. His admirers were legion and regarded him as a major literary innovator, an opinion that unfortunately never gained wide currency among the literati.

“The only people for me are the mad ones,” he wrote in [[On the Road]], “the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time.” As legend has it Kerouac wrote the novel in only three weeks, typing the manuscript spontaneously on a large roll of [[teletype]] paper — a method of composition that [[Truman Capote]] disparaged as typing, not writing.

On the Road

Penny Vlagopoulos (Introduction). Penguin Classics 2008, Paperback, 416 pages, $9.24

His continuing popularity today, I think, has much to do with his topics of jazz, drugs, promiscuity, poverty, [[Buddhism]], and travel.

Encyclopædia Britannica article about Jack Kerouac
“American novelist, poet, and leader of the Beat movement whose most famous book, On the Road (1957), had broad cultural influence before it was recognized for its literary merits. On the Road captured the spirit of its time as no other work of the 20th century had since F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925).”

Jack Kerouac News at The New York Times
News articles, book excerpts, audio, and multimedia

The battle for Jack Kerouac’s estate
The daughter who Kerouac disowned and an apparently forged will

On the Road Again
Slate Magazine’s take on the man behind the mythology of On the Road

Jack Kerouac Alley
Great links and information about all the writers and poets who contributed to the Beat Generation

Dharma Beat
Kerouac links and articles

F. Scott Fitzgerald Resources

Great Gatsby Word Cloud from Chapter Five

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the “Lost Generation” of the 1920s. He finished four novels, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night and his most famous, the celebrated classic, The Great Gatsby. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age.

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald. Scribner 1999, Paperback, 180 pages, $7.44

The Great Gatsby
Full Text of the novel from an Australian site. The Great Gatsby is still under copyright protection in the U.S.

The Big Read: The Great Gatsby
Prepared as part of the NEA Big Read, this site has historical background, an author biography, plus related works, discussion questions, various resources, and a great teacher’s guide.

The Great Gatsby Setting Map
Students design a map of the setting. This site includes a checklist for assessment. (I have my kids do this after reading Chapter Three.)

The Great Gatsby Treasure Hunt
An exploration of a dozen aspects of the Roaring Twenties.

The Great Gatsby Wordles
Tag clouds for each chapter of the novel. No content here, just fun to look at and create your own.

An Index to The Great Gatsby
A very thorough index of the novel.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Links to texts of most novels and stories that are in the public domain. Download or read them online.

Project Gutenberg links to The Beautiful and Damned, Flappers and Philosophers, Tales of the Jazz Age, and This Side of Paradise.

“Winter Dreams”
This story is a precursor to The Great Gatsby. Text and questions for analysis.

Alan Sillitoe, angry young writer, has died at 82

Alan Sillitoe defined the new, anti-authority working class in such works as The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.

Photograph: Nigel R. Barklie, from guardian.co.uk

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (Vintage International)

Alan Sillitoe. Vintage 2010, Paperback, 192 pages, $7.96

The son of a tannery worker, Sillitoe worked in factories from the age of 14. In 1946 he joined the air force and for two years served as a radio operator in Malaya. After his return to England, X-rays revealed that he had contracted tuberculosis, and he spent several months in a hospital. Between 1952 and 1958 he lived in France and Spain. In Majorca he met the poet Robert Graves, who suggested that he write about Nottingham, and Sillitoe began work on his first published novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958; filmed 1960). It was an immediate success, telling the story of a rude and amoral young labourer for whom drink and sex on Saturday night provide the only relief from the oppression of the working life.

[[Alan Sillitoe]], who died yesterday at the age of 82, was part of a generation of working-class writers known as the [[Angry Young Men]]. The key point about Sillitoe and his generation was that they were vehemently anti-authority. They comprised the likes of [[Kingsley Amis]], [[John Osborne]], [[Jimmy Porter]], and [[John Braine]] (I still own a 1970s paperback of his Writing a Novel). None of these 1950s heroes could be defined as socialists. They were, if anything, truculent individualists whose creed was, in the mouth of Sillitoe’s Arthur Seaton in [[Saturday Night and Sunday Morning]], “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

This was what made Sillitoe and his generation significant: they rubbed a finger in the face of authority, an attitude Sillitoe pursued most famously in his short stories, such as his masterpiece, [[The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner]] (1959), in which the hero calculatedly refuses to complete a race as an act of defiance.

John Gardner – Sunlight Man

Here’s a two minute sample of footage and interviews from Camp Gardner Films’ SUNLIGHT MAN, a feature documentary on one of my favorite writers ever, John Gardner, author of Grendel, The Sunlight Dialogues, Nickel Mountain and other works.

“Inherent Vice” Trailer Narrated by Pynchon

Is it possible that Thomas Pynchon has finally come out of seclusion? Penguin has just released this video trailer for Inherent Vice, Pynchon’s latest novel, and there is much speculation about the voice of the narrator. Could it be Pynchon who provided the voiceover? Penguin isn’t saying. Pynchon did poke fun at himself with a cameo in The Simpsons, and the two voices do sound similar to me. Watch The Simpsons video clip and decide for yourself.

Jack Kerouac’s Will is a Fake

Jack Kerouac with his third wife, Stella Sampas

A Florida judge has ruled that Jack Kerouac’s 1973 will is a forgery. Kerouac’s estate — which includes unpublished manuscripts, journals, and thousands of letters — is estimated to be worth $20 million.

Kerouac, who died in 1969, left everything to his mother, who died in 1973 and left everything to Kerouac’s third wife, Stella Sampas. At least those involved thought so. According to an Associated Press wire story, Kerouac’s daughter, Jan, challenged the will in 1994, after seeing a copy and deciding the signature was fake. She died two years later, but Paul Blake Jr., the writer’s nephew, continued the litigation.” Kerouac died from alcoholism at age 47, but shortly before his death he wrote a letter to his young nephew, expressing his wishes to leave his estate to his mother — “and not to leave a dingblasted thing to my wife’s one hundred Greek relatives.” And now a judge has agreed.

According to the AP report:

The ruling is sure to please some Kerouac devotees who have objected to the handling of the writer’s estate, including the sale of his raincoat to actor Johnny Depp for $50,000 and the original manuscript scroll of Kerouac’s 1957 classic On the Road, which was sold to the owner of the Indianapolis Colts for $2.43 million.

Meanwhile, the ruling might possibly turn Blake’s life around. Blake, who has lived a life of poverty and occasional homelessness, currently lives in a mobile home with no toilet in Arizona.

“Checkout” Girl Bags a Bestseller

Sam first began writing about her experiences in a blog, Cassiere No Futur.

On the Web: ‘Checkout’ Girl Cashes In With Best-Selling Memoir

Anna Sam, a cashier in France, has become a literary sensation and in the process has parlayed her experiences in the supermarket into a humorous memoir, whose English title is Checkout: A Life on the Tills.

Sam first began writing about her experiences in a blog, Cassiere No Futur, where she provided a daily account of the goings-on in the world of a cashier. The blog took off and soon attracted a large readership, followed by substantial media attention. Not long after, publishing houses were offering her book contracts.

The most salient fact about her blogging experience, from my point of view as a teacher, is not that she landed a book contract, but that she found her work ungratifying until she began to write about it. Her blogging in a sense revealed her world to herself as well as to her readers and thus validates what I’ve read in countless books on writing: You never really know anything until you write about it.

The store is packed, shoppers rush to and fro — their grocery carts squeak and rattle. A voice over the intercom barks out the latest sales promotions over a backdrop of jangling Muzak. The general brouhaha intensifies. The store is approaching its maximum sound threshold. The squalling of a brat tips it over the edge, opening the passageway to this other dimension.

Listen to some French “Checkout” Girl music.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Dashiell Hammett

Mystery writer Dashiell Hammett was born on this day in 1894. The three film adaptations of his most famous story, The Maltese Falcon, became staples of the film noir genre. His romantic relationship with Lillian Hellman, a well-known playwright, inspired The Thin Man, a story featuring heroine Nora Charles. The film adaptation of this novel was so successful that it spawned multiple sequels. Hammett was the founding father of the “hard-boiled” mystery, a subgenre characterized by its gritty characters and depictions of events.