greater than equal to
In addition to mentioning our competition, the blog Greater Than Equal To came up with a series of compelling links relating to Lolita covers. Check it out below to see a clip of Nabokov himself commenting on several of them, as well as a link to an interview with Vintage Books art director and cover designer John Gall in which he discusses his clever and controversial Lolita cover that never made it into print, at least not with its controversy intact.
“After retrenching I came up with one of my favorite covers of all time. A very simple variation on a standard Lolita theme yet with a very subversive twist. I was surprised how well it went over, but after a day or so everyone started to get a little queasy looking at it (myself included). So the twist was taken out and we have what the New York Post said was the “raciest cover yet” for Lolita. If they only knew.”
http://greaterthanorequalto.net/blog/2009/08/lolita-covers/
September 28th, 2009 at 4.18 pm
Hi I came across your blog through a friend telling me about the Lolita book cover contest.
question –
what is the cover talked about in the 2nd paragraph?
“After retrenching I came up with one of my favorite covers of all time. A very simple variation on a standard Lolita theme yet with a very subversive twist. I was surprised how well it went over, but after a day or so everyone started to get a little queasy looking at it (myself included). So the twist was taken out and we have what the New York Post said was the “raciest cover yet” for Lolita. If they only knew.”
The cover with the sideways lips? I don’t see what’s so subversive/racy about it.
September 29th, 2009 at 8.57 am
Simply by rotating the image of the girl’s lips they instead suggest her labia.
September 30th, 2009 at 4.25 pm
I was thinking that maybe that was the reason, although it’s *such* a subtle suggestion. I think the ‘raciness’ is in the wordplay and not so much visually because to me it just looks like a very perfect looking pair of lips flipped sideways.
I also noticed that when you scroll down the page slowly, at first it looks like it might be a photo of a butt. Haha I hope you know what I mean.