What Lou Reed and Agatha Christie have in common is the American-born, but British-raised illustrator Tom Adams. When Reed was searching for an artist to design his self-titled album for the UK market in 1972, he chose Adams. Ironically, although the artist was known in Britain for creating rock concert posters and album covers, Reed selected him based on his book cover design work. Along most of John Fowles’ novels, Adams also did the cover art for a poplar series of reissued Christie mysteries. The paperback covers were created for Collins UK and Simon & Schuster in the USA. Two monographs have been published on his work: Tom Adams’ Agatha Christie Cover Story (published as Agatha Christie: The Art of Her Crimes in the United States), Paper Tiger, 1981 and Tom Adams Uncovered, HarperCollins, 2015.
According to Wikipedia:
Adams’s book cover artwork, while usually instantly recognizable, runs to quite distinct modes. Some covers are still-life tableaux; some are depictions of a scene in the novel; some are surrealist collations of items and images. Organizing the vast majority of them, however, is Adams’s unique exploration of a form that was vital for much of twentieth-century art: the collage.
Adams’s unique take on this was to bring the collage back into the realm of the painterly. Seen in this light, even Adams’s covers that seem like still lifes are, in actuality, juxtapositions of elements and objects that normally are not in such proximity. It is this uncanny proximity—despite (or, rather, precisely because of) the near photo-realistic accuracy—that creates the unsettling effect.
This element also goes to explain one of the most distinctive features of Adams’s art: the combination of a sought-after realistic accuracy with an unsettling, surrealist, if not alienating, effect. As Janet Morgan, Agatha Christie’s first biographer, put it, Adams’s drawings are “alarmingly realistic.”
Gold Beach Books is the second largest bookstore in Oregon and like most folks in the bookselling biz these days they have been closed due to the pandemic. But the four sisters who own the store came up with a clever and altruistic project to address the plague.
Not long after they were forced to shutter Gold Beach Books the family launched their Great American Book Giveaway. The project began as a simple, generous plan to offer readers a free book in the genre of their choice with free shipping thrown in as well. At first, they received 10 or 15 requests a day, a few hundred in total during the first two weeks of the giveaway. But once they started attracting social media coverage thousands of book requests flooded in. Eventually, they were forced to end the giveaway due to the enormous cost.
Over the course of the giveaway, Gold Beach Books mailed an undisclosed number of books (they acknowledge that it was in the low thousands) to ever U.S. state. Happily, in return they have received hundreds of thank you messages and unsolicited donations from book recipients.As a result of the book giveaway, the bookstore received a small spike in online sales. But that wasn’t the point behind the project.
So, if you would like to support an indie bookstore during the pandemic Gold Beach Books is an excellent choice. Check out their website for information on the massive stock of secondhand, rare, collectible and new books.
Clarice Lispector
Franz Kafka
From the Bodleian Library souvenir shop…
During the past week, I stumbled on three different references to H. G. Wells’ iconic science fiction novel The War of the Worlds, including a new French-British television series (which was mediocre at best). The early sci-fi classic was originally published in 1897 with illustrations by the British artist Warwick Goble. These were murky, black-and-white depictions of Wells’ story of a Martian invasion of Earth.
Bookstock 2020, is an online books and music festival spearheaded by Eddy Nix, musician and owner of Driftless Books and Music in Viroqua, Wis.. The special event will run this weekend, May 15-17, with the goal of celebrating musicians and independent bookstores while raising money for both.
Indie booksellers, authors and musicians are all invited to participate. Musicians can record individual songs or entire sets, while authors and booksellers can record messages about their own or their favorite bookstores. Messages by and about specific bookstores will be played between sets during the festival, and participating indies are encouraged to try to team up with local musicians. Donations will go directly to participating bookstores and musicians. For more information and to participate as a bookstore, musician, author, or artist click here.
Like many folks self-isolating these days, I have been spending way too much time on virtual video tours. I have taken train rides through the Swiss Alps, long car journeys around New Zealand, hikes in Icelands, and much more. Some of the most fascinating digital visits have been around museums that are shuttered due to the pandemic. here in Philadelphia, the Mütter Museum is temporarily closed but has found a new way to introduce visitors its macabre collection of medical oddities and relics.
For the first time, the museum is offering a virtual tour. It’s lead by curator Anna Dhody and shows some of the Mütter’s most interesting items, including the wall of human skulls, The Soap Lady, Einstein’s actual brain, the world’s largest human colon on display and the body cast of famous conjoined twins Chang and Eng.
Don’t be squeamish, take the fascinating 25-minute tour:
Recently a new multi-artist street art project called Fill the Walls with Hope has popped-up on walls and boarded up windows across Philadelphia. Organized by Mark Strandquist and created with submissions from local Philadelphia and national artists, the project incorporates a series of inspirational collaged artworks wheatpasted together. The individual artworks feature messages related to the pandemic crisis. The messages are a hodgepodge of public health information, like reminding people to remain 6 feet apart with a diagram of what that looks like, professions of gratitude for essential workers, and progressive political ideas about healthcare, housing, racism, and human rights.
Fill the Walls with Hope is supported by both community arts grants in Philadelphia and a crowd funding page. Money raised pays for printing costs and also helps to provide income to struggling artists. The project began with open artist submissions and the artists paying for printing out of their own pockets. Check out the GoFundMe page.
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