The Picador Book Room

It’s time for the Picador crew’s Friday Reads,

James is digging back in to Dylan Jones’s The Biographical Dictionary of Popular Music now that finished copies have arrived.

Reading some entries I didn’t get to the first time around. A new highlight, his entry on MEATLOAF: “There are so many Meatloaf records that do the job they were employed to do (defining every minute of the arc of a paaarty), yet few of them rival Bat Out Of Hell, an album that demands to be listened to in a speeding car, driven by your designated driver, in the early hours of the morning, on the way home from a country ball, as you lie slumped in the back seat, your tuxedo covered in cold sweat, cheap red wine, and the lipstick of someone else’s woman.”

Daniel is reading Roberto Bolaño’s The Ruin of Amalfitano, Ben Lerner’s piece on the demise high school debate from the latest issue of Harper’s and finishing up The Unquiet Grave.

Darin is reading The Heart Broke In by James Meek from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 

Wonderful and totally engaging.  A moving, sometimes funny family saga, but epic in scope and deeply profound in the questions it poses about how we find meaning in our lives.

I’m also reading Field of Blood by Denise Mina,a crime story set in early 80s Scotland. Excellent characterization, an original protagonist, grizzly crime, and a dark sensibility.  I’m sold and will be reading more from Mina.

After last night’s book launch for Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, a panel discussion that included author Donald Antrim, contributor David Means, and Paris Review editor Lorin Stein, Gabrielle is fast-tracking Antrim’s novel The Hundred Brothers to the top of her reading list and taking it home tonight.

It was a tough call between (finally) reading Antrim (possibly the last of the Picadorians to do so) and checking out Jonathan Franzen’s latest essay collection, Farther Away, which we’ll be publishing next year in paperback. There was a great write-up of the book on The Smart Set and once again, decisions, decisions.

Still working through her stack of FSG Paperback Originals, Alaina has gotten around to John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead, a collection of essays that was published last year.

I’m trying to expand my literary horizons by reading things I typically wouldn’t — in this case, a collection of essays. Pulphead is a fantastic introduction to what a collection of this kind can do. Even though I’m only a few essays in, I feel confident saying that this particular literary exploration has gone very, very well.

This special bonus installment in our ongoing series highlighting Bill Loehfelm’s The Devil She Knows is a fascinating look into the process of a book’s jacket design. Thanks to the wonderful art team at Picador for allowing us a peek inside the machine. (Ed. note)

I hired designer Keith Hayes to create our cover. Keith is the designer behind the jackets of Benjamin Black’s A Death in Summer and Alan Glynn’s Winterland and Bloodland. These are his words:

When Henry and I spoke about this project we agreed that Staten Island should be a focus of the cover. There is mystery that surrounds the place where I grew up, perfect ambiance for the crime genre. Henry told me that the author was also from the Island, which added a bit of extra pressure. That didn’t bother me much though because I know the place inside and out so well. Yet, to my dismay, after finishing the novel the perfect image escaped me. It needed to look like commercial fiction. It needed to say both Staten Island and crime, but not in a clichéd way. Everyone knows the Staten Island Ferry and the Verrazano Bridge, but how else can I make Staten Island fairly immediate on the cover?

As the author points out, the Island is filled with beautiful homes and well-manicured lawns. I was searching for a way to say organized crime and corruption. Visually the Island doesn’t offer any of these secrets. I thought of going in a more graphic approach. I made some stencils from a map of the Island and used spray paint to fill in the shapes. After placing them in some layouts I knew I needed another layer. I decided to focus on the heroine of the story. Obscuring her face with the spray painted outline of the island added the menace and grit that I was looking for.

Then in an effort to make the cover look more commercial, we looked to George Pelecanos’ paperback covers for inspiration—coincidentally a series I also happen to design. I felt what appealed to us about the series was its use of photography to create a unique atmosphere.

Since I couldn’t find any acceptable night photography of Staten Island I decided to shoot the photograph myself. There wasn’t much time to wander the Island looking for the perfect scene, so I set out with my camera and went to specific areas mentioned in the story. One of those places is the out-of-operation Atlantic Avenue station on the Staten Island Rapid Transit system. I had to jump a fence to gain access to a bridge that runs over the tracks and connects the north and south bound platforms—a great location for a shot. Trains bypass the station once every hour, so there were long periods of standing around in dark silence, and every so often something that I perceived to be large moved through some brush under the platform. All of this and I had to worry about being arrested for trespassing. I really hoped this shot was going to work, but it was exciting to go the extra mile for the cover anyway.

In the end we decided to focus on the villain of the story. With no time to shoot anything new, I used an existing photograph and cropped in very close to make the character as menacing as possible. And that’s when we knew we had our jacket.