Yeah, I know… there’s probably no direct connection between Ted CoConis’s stunning illustration for the cover of Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada and H. Rogers’ more workmanlike effort for Ernest Tidyman’s Shaft among the Jews — some design ideas are just “in the air” at certain points in history — but it is amusing to me that the cover of Nabokov’s daring and erudite literary novel, a novel which a reviewer for the New York Times described as “a love story, an erotic masterpiece, a philosophical investigation into the nature of time,” is several orders of magnitude sexier than the cover of a pulp fiction featuring “the black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks.” Thus, this post:
[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]
Ted CoConis has a JPEG of his Ada cover illustration, sans text, on display on his website. Look there!
BONUS SCAN:
The photographic cover of the movie tie-in edition of Shaft is evocative, I guess. And since I own it, I might as well scan and post it, right?
