The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri

This is the last of five "Vintage Shorts" that Tzer Island received for review. Other essays in the series were reviewed this week (on Tuesday) and last week (on Tuesday) and two weeks ago (on Tuesday and Thursday).

Published by Vintage on November 15, 2016

Jhumpa Lahiri begins this essay (originally delivered as a lecture) by describing school uniforms as providing students with both an identity and anonymity. She envied her uniformed cousins in Calcutta because, as an Indian student in America, she did not share a group identity and could not blend in with her surroundings. Asserting individuality with clothing was a vexing problem. Clothing therefore carries a special meaning for her, even into adulthood, and it is the clothing of her books, more commonly known as dust jackets or paperback covers, that is the subject of her essay.

“If the process of writing is a dream, the book cover represents the awakening.” The jacket is a marketing tool. Lahiri frets that the jacket reflects how its designers see the book (which is rarely the way Lahiri sees it), although I suspect the reality is that most art departments don’t read the book before designing the jacket. Lahiri has a particularly visceral reaction to jackets and covers, because just as “the right cover is like a beautiful coat, elegant and warm, wrapping my words as they travel through the world,” the wrong one is “cumbersome, suffocating.” Given that she was born in America and lives in Italy, Lahiri particularly disfavors stereotyped covers that depict elephants and scenes from India. That’s understandable.

The most interesting aspect of the essay is the observation that covers may create false expectations (particularly if a gullible reader believes the blurbs). A naked book conveys no expectations at all and may therefore allow the reader to approach the content with a more open mind. Lahiri hates blurbs for the simple reason that she wants readers to read her own words, not the words of a blurb writer or an editor who wrote the synopsis on the inside flaps of the dust jacket. I can’t blame her for that, particularly when the synopsis and blurbs are so often disconnected from the content of the book.

The Clothing of Books is a well-written essay but not a particularly enlightening one. It’s fairly well known that authors usually have little control over covers and dust jackets and often dislike the choices made by their publishers. Lahiri recognizes that the purpose of a cover is to sell books, not to please the author (although a cover that successfully sells books should please the author for reasons that are financial, if not aesthetic). Still, the essay seems a bit too self-absorbed and self-satisfied as Lahiri laments the inability of book covers to reflect what is truly special about her words.

I am, however, taken with Lahiri’s observation that European publishing houses are more likely to use similar covers on books by different authors, giving those books a sense of being part of the same family, while American book covers (unless reprinting a series of classics) reflect the diversity and individuality that characterize the country (school uniforms not being favored by American students).

Devoted readers will read pretty much anything that is related to the process of writing, however tangentially. To those readers (and I count myself among them), I give this essay a guarded recommendation.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS