by mybookcover
(Faber & Faber, 2011) I tried to imagine a cover for Love Goes To Buildings On Fire as I was writing it, but it was tough to fix on a single image that would represent the full scope of the thing, and I hated the idea of a photo collage. The best I came up with was a photo by Martha Cooper—who shot for the New York Post beginning in the late ’70s—of a kid playing trumpet alongside some ruined […]
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by mybookcover
(Scribner, 2010) Though mostly I try to work, play with my kids, walk outdoors, read Sebald and Anne Carson and Gogol, and generally not muddle up my life by worrying about the ways literature and capitalism intersect, there remains one thing I try not to delude myself about. A book’s jacket matters. How a book is dressed—how it’s wrapped, how it’s bound, how it’s covered and colored and presented—this can make the difference between finding the right reader or missing […]
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by mybookcover
(Broadway, 2010) My editor, Philip Patrick, asked me for some photos of my mom and I. I gave him three or four but knew he’d pick the Polaroid of us at the beach in Fort Lauderdale. It’s so perfectly representative of the book: us alone together, just as we were for much of her time in the hospital and at the very moment of her death; me looking off into the distance, having no idea of what was in store; of […]
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