Designer: David Pearson, for Picador UK. Buy here.I'm not Cormac McCarthy's biggest fan, to be diplomatic about it. I find him at once terse and overwritten, pretentious and abrupt. I just want him to decide once and for all if his characters are supposed to be plain-speaking cowboys or walking, talking Rogets.
I do love this new cover for Blood Meridian though. It looks just enough like wanted posters from the Old West to recall the time period, but the fill on the font looks like burned-out film stock, so we already know we're in for a more modern and unpleasant take on the Western than a nostalgic trip out West.
It's part of a series of re-designs of McCarthy's entire work by David Pearson, which I first saw on the delightful Caustic Cover Critic. You can see the rest there. I don't think they all work. For example, as the CC pointed out, The Road looks a lot like Pearson's Kierkegaard cover - to my mind, too much. But I love this. Maybe it's time to give McCarthy another shot.
On a related note: check out my pal Max's thoughts on the book to film adaptation of The Road.
1 comment:
First off, I love that cover for Blood Meridian. It reminds me of an old west poster, as you say, but also a little bit of a grindhouse film poster. I think the latter might have been styled after the former, but in any case it does seem like the violence and insanity of the text is being used as a selling point. It kind of works for Blood Meridian, though I gotta say I really don't like it for The Road. I wonder what/if they did it for All The Pretty Horses...
Secondly, thanks for the awesome shout out! Definitely caught me by surprise at the end of the discussion of McCarthy book covers.
Thirdly, I really like this idea of discussing the aesthetic appeal of book covers, I may co-opt it, just sayin'
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