Look Here: Two Pynchon novels with cover art by Mark Penberthy
Tag: Thomas Pynchon
Look Here: Pynchon’s V. with cover art by the great unknown
A couple of weeks of silence, and now here I am, back in the control room of RCN’s online headquarters, poised to post a gallery of one paperback cover, scanned by me mere minutes ago from my personal copy of Thomas Pynchon’s V. Earlier today, I searched high and low online for information about the Bantam Modern Classic edition V. in an attempt to determine if anyone out there knows who produced the uncredited, unsigned cover art, with no luck, none, nothing, zilch, but whatever… I’m going to post it anyway… and then perhaps I’ll offer a copy of the scan to ThomasPynchon.com, where the Bantam Modern Classic edition of the book is NOT currently listed:
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If anyone out there knows for sure who the artist is here — by itself, the generic 60s illustration style points in any number of directions! — please feel free to post the information in the comments below.
P.S. The hot spot to the left of the figure is not glare from the glossy cover stock; rather, it’s a feature of the illustration.
Connections: Deskey, Getter, Ellis, McCarthy
Donald Deskey designed the original Tide bullseye logo. Marc Getter designed the cover of the first American edition of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, published in 1973. Dean Ellis illustrated the cover of the first edition of Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren, published in 1975. Paul McCarthy designed the case for his 2010 exhibition catalogue, Low Life Slow Life, to look like a Tide box, circa 1973.
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Fun Fact: Delany wrote his first pornographic novel, The Tides of Lust, in the time and space between his SF novels Nova (1968) and Dhalgren (1975). Now that is a book that some publisher or other ought to offer in a Tide-box slipcased edition.
Connections: Bosch, Magritte, Holmes
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BONUS IMAGES:
Here are three more variations on the same theme; the sequence concludes with an example of completely unnecessary “black bar” censorship from Spain (I think):
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Artist/illustrator/design-firm credits are in the file names.
Connections: James Bama and Dean Ellis
The V. cover (1964) is by Bama; the Eleventh Commandment (1970) is by Ellis. Both are attractive and effective variations on a “surrealist” theme, and both were scanned earlier this morning by me from my personal library of folded, spindled, and mutilated paperback fiction.
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Ragged Claws Network 