Graphic designer Peter Mendelsund’s revelatory new series on books and covers (note the separated nouns) begins with the many things that LOLITA is and isn’t, spurred by this pithy, pitch-perfect cover:
Is it the crude handwriting that makes it so effective? Doesn’t the entire composition, in its offhandedness, carry the faintest suggestion of the childish about it? It is neither lusting nor leering, nor overly proud of its own wit.
It seems to eschew the urbane gaze of Nabokov’s old-world narrator in favor of a naive and guileless one. The painted lips hint at an underdeveloped and mythologized understanding of romance; it is the cover, I could imagine, that a young Dolores Haze might have drawn.
[...] Peter Mendelsund’s excellent series on books and book covers is up. Make sure you check out part I if you haven’t already. The loathéd, yet somehow obligatory, Lolita lollypop. I hereby [...]