Mayersohn's former career as an Internet pioneer is somewhat ironic, considering that the advent of online retailing - such asI've always imagined that smaller bookstores would go all-used, leaving the new books to Amazon, and freeing up shelf-space for the books of Kindlers and the like. It seems to me that used books is really where bricks and mortar matter.Amazon.com - has contributed to the downfall of the independent bookstore.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Harvard Book Store bought by techie
The Boston Globe reports (or, reported, I'm late on this) that the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge has changed hands, and is now owned by Jeff Mayersohn, who previously worked in tech. The Harvard Book Store, which isn't officially affiliated with the College across the street, is a really nice store. I must admit, however, that I go directly to the basement of the store, where all of the used books are kept. It isn't huge, but they tend to have a few books worth checking out. Generally, there is a handful of Loebs and Oxford Classical Texts which are satisfyingly marked down. That is also where I got my rather silly-looking Duckworth edition of Marinone's All the Greek Verbs and a cheap copy of H.G. Wells' Island of Dr. Moreau. The Globe says:
Friday, January 30, 2009
The Divine Comedy: Bollingen Series
For The Divine Comedy, both John and I read the Bollingen Series Edition, published by Princeton University, from the gates of hell to the divine light of heaven. The Comedy stands out among program books in terms of variety. There are probably six or seven accepted translations, nearly all of them published with a facing-page Italian to go with the English translation. This prose translation is done by Charles S. Singleton, a famous Dante scholar. His translation is described, weirdly, on the back cover of Inferno as being "much the most satisfactory one I know." I had already bought the book when I noticed this ringing endorsement, leaving me mostly baffled with my choice.
What originally drew me to the book was the professional cover design, and the fact that Singleton's extensive commentary was sequestered in a separate volume, leaving me with a text unencumbered by the bulk that such a thorough commentary would bring (I ended up checking out the commentaries from the school library). This commentary, however, would probably be the main reason to invest in the Bollingen series. For my purposes, it was too much - I did not have the time to read 600+ pages of commentary for each book. But for anyone doing a close study, this edition seems the way to go. My comment that the book appears "scholarly" is more than just an artifice. At one point, the texts and commentaries were available together, but these editions are now out of print.
That said, there was some sloppy cover design that kept me from being confident that I had selected the right book. The three books all share the same conceptual design of a gray field with white serif text and white border. The books are differentiated primarily by the color of the bar (which extends, broken by the white border, to the spine and back cover). As Roger's post indicated, differentiating the books through color seems a precarious undertaking, although I think both Inferno and Paradiso were colored in a way that conveyed the mood of the book I was reading - the guiding principle of all good cover art. For Purgatorio, I wasn't so certain, but I don't know what color I would suggest in the place of the purple they chose.
The major issue in the cover design, though, does not fully reveal itself until you place these books on a bookshelf (or lay them out side by side, as pictured above). The two glaring issues are clear:
1) The tone of gray darkens as you move through the books.
2) The colored bars are not evenly aligned.
Both of these mistakes are inexplicable. I could possibly understand the uneven alignment of the bars if they ascended from Inferno to Paradiso, in some way symbolizing the ascent Dante himself makes. But they don't. Purgatorio stands conspicuously above the rest. The darkening gray makes even less sense. These are unfortunate consistencies in what I think is, conceptually, an excellent cover design. I'm not familiar with any other books in the Bollingen Series, but I think Princeton, like all publishers with such high academic standing, puts out good-looking academic works. It's an unfortunate blight.
The font that appears on the front is the same one for the text throughout, and I had some trouble with it. It's a little flat, and the thickness makes reading difficult on the eyes. Also, there were parts of the text with faded printings - another sign of sloppiness in the overall publication. I did think the text was well arranged, giving copious note-taking space, and the English followed the Italian so closely that cross-referencing across the page was a breeze.
The decision I made is not one I regret, as the other editions all had equal faults. It's just disappointing that some better design oversight might have made this an edition to savor.
Oxford's Divine Comedy
I stuck out from my compatriots and bought the Sinclair translation of Dante Alighieri published by Oxford University Press. The three softcover volumes feature facing pages of the original Italian text and Sinclair's prose translation, with endnotes and a critical essay at the end of each canto (or chapter for the uninitiated). I found the editions to be of solid construction, and very compact for their size (about 450 pages each). The pages were totally a bit thicker that Bible leaf, but were still totally opaque and very smooth, making it pleasing to the touch and no problem for taking notes. The fonts were pleasing in general. The covers were thick laminated paper and allowed the book to lie flat easily and easy to flex for note taking.
While structurally sound, the outer cover designs left a bit to be desired. The front covers all featured Dore illustrations from each of the respective levels, which contrasted sharply with the rather gaudy colors of the binding. The Inferno turned out traffic cone orange, Purgatorio was a brownish yellow, and Paradiso can best be described as plum. OUP's decision to use primarily white text on a black and white image was also not the wisest choice.
In general, I enjoyed both translation and presentation, but be careful to make sure the spines line up, my Paradiso volume is jus a bit offset, which ruins some of the shelf appeal.
Doré's illustrations for the Divine Comedy
Above is Gustave Doré's representation of one of the giants in hell, placing Dante and his guide Virgil on to the ground. Doré's drawings end up on a lot of the covers for the Divine Comedy, since, I presume, they are in the public domain, and completely wonderful. Dover publishes all of the illustrations for the Divine Comedy, in one 9 x 12 inch volume. Below Doré etches the Hypocrites.
Dover, as it usually is, is simple about the book. They put on of the illustrations on the cover (pictured below) with simple text. There are 136 plates, picturing Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso and Dante himself. Illustrations are both horizontal and vertical on the page. Below each one is a title, reference to the passage in the Comedy, and a quotation of a few lines from the Longfellow translation. The book lies flat comfortably and the printing is sharp.
Inferno, when read poorly, seems like an endless list of people who have done things wrong. Because of this, a visual attachment is immensely helpful, and Doré provides a really fantastic set of them. There are 75 drawings for the Inferno, the next 43 are for Purgatorio, and there are only 18 for Paradiso. This is, of course, beacuse the text moves from people endlessly tortured—one Ugolino must gnaw on the face of his enemy for eternity—to ever-increasing quantities of light, which make for less-excited drawings no doubt.Arbor ad Folia
Welcome to Arbor ad Folia, a review of book design from the perspective of the reader. We plan to look into how a book's physical form affects the reader's experience. People will tell you: Don't judge a book by its cover. We'd like to tell you: You haven't the option.
So, welcome to Arbor ad Folia.
So, welcome to Arbor ad Folia.
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