Ink - Flash Fiction

Ink had become a rare commodity. As precious in value as pearls. With e-readers, the market wouldn't sustain for continued ink manufacture, while trees were being preserved through the lack of demand for paper. As alternatives, squid and octopi proved a short-term fill-in, but we'd hunted and fished them to extinction, just as we had with oysters.

E-reader titles were produced by computer programmes, Linguistic algorithms and rapid speed digital analysis of word and plot patterns in best sellers churned out the next big thing. Human authors were nearing the endangered status of the humble biro pen. Yet they still resisted, still sought to publish their writing wares. Samizdat made a comeback, mainly written in charcoal from barbecue briquettes. which made its publication rather seasonal in the Northern Hemisphere. If you were caught asking for barbecue stuff in winter, you could be arrested. Some authors shortcut the whole process and composed in their own blood and other bodily fluids, despite the disreputable echoes with certain performance art of the previous century. They wrote on toilet paper which tore easily beneath even their blunted nibs.

In time even toilet paper disappeared from circulation. Authors took to writing on stones and pebbles. returning to the prehistoric dawn of art. They took to the forests where they could forge their own supply of charcoal by burning wood. They decided to further reach back and commune with their ancient brethren, and took to caves. They cast stencils of the alphabet and then holding them against the rock to spell the words they were compounding, they chewed charcoal and breathed its fine powder over the stencil to form the text. Their very breath giving life to and preserving their art. Their expression. Samizdat was eclipsed for artefact and unlike the memory capacity of e-readers which demanded periodic purges, these books remained permanently in print.

Book Covers

This wasn't the post I intended to write.

Originally I wanted to post my top 10 album covers and extol the art. But I couldn't come up with 10. I stopped buying LPs what ten, twelve years ago? CD covers being much smaller didn't quite cut it and now downloads don't even require covers if you don't opt for the thumbnail.

I'm just in the process of commissioning two different book covers and some modern-day majuscule calligraphy. The majuscules won't be able to be replicated online in any useful way, so that's destined for a print only project. The other two are book covers for kindle books I aim to have out soon.

But do I need covers for kindle editions, other than a thumbnail for online browsing? When you download, you get a poorly contrasted black and white washed out version of your original coloured design, which does no favours to any conception you might have had. There is of course no need for spine or back cover artwork either. Of course one could go to other e-service providers and maybe retain the integrity of the cover design. But what would be the point?

In the same way, perhaps more so, that I couldn't come up with 10 album covers, classical book covers also turn out to be less than precious. Kafka, Burroughs, Camus, anyone you care to mention are forever being reissued in new editions with different covers each time. My Penguin Classic Camus, all have covers bearing artwork not commissioned for the book, paintings by Magritte, Picasso and Masson merely offering some tangential relationship to the title. All my Salinger paperbacks were in an edition from 30 years ago, where the covers were just plain silver-grey, unadorned by anything but title and author name. My "Catcher In The Rye" recently fell apart from old age, so I replaced it and the cover is now some red and white combo, with a black strip for the calligraphy. It really doesn't matter a jot.

Book covers may once have mattered when browsing in a bookshop, but now? Kindle certainly places no value on them. And yet I would be loath to stop working with book designers and graphic artists and give them my commissions, because to me the cover is part of the book qua artefact. I love what the designers bring to the table. Exactly what is being eroded by the trend towards e-versions. Maybe one day my modern-day majuscules can be read on an e-reader. But until then, I will continue to strive to place part of the book's conception and creativity upon its cover(s).

Just for the record, here is my facvourite album cover of all time. But it would have made for a dull article as a chart of one.



The Cure - "Three Imaginary Boys"