#theRembrandtofPulp
Artist: James Avati, 1953
Paula Rabinowitz, ‘American pulp : how paperbacks brought
modernism to Main Street’, 2014:
"....Only months before, Victor Weybright, publisher of the NAL,
had been contacted by J. D. Salinger, who requested that the paperback cover of
The Catcher in the Rye not be flamboyant. He did not want Holden’s face to
appear, as he was meant to be a stand-in; rather, he saw the park bench and the
carousel as significant settings. This scene was deemed “a charming one” by
cover illustrator James Avati in a memo to Weybright responding to Salinger’s
idea. In recounting this to Salinger, Weybright explained that it “would look
like a cross between the New Yorker covers and a juvenile book rather than like
a substantial modern novel.” Avati’s memo praised the subtlety of Salinger’s
vision for a cover that hides Holden’s face because he is not physically
described in the novel, but explained that Salinger’s concept “appeals strongly
to those of us who have read the story … Perhaps it might sell.” However, Avati
explicated what a paperback cover is supposed to do—sell books—and described
his idea: “Let us show him [Holden] coming down Broadway or Forty-Second Street
expressing his pained reaction to people who LIKE movies, etc. He is very much
a definable personality, a foil to the crowd. And the crowd in its varied
normality and the theatre background, exciting, suggestive, provide lures which
will attract a very broad audience of readers.” This notorious cover ultimately
led Salinger to insist on his own design, plain geometric shapes, for the cover
of Nine Stories and the uniform color field of his future books. James Avati
knew what his job was: to attract “a very broad audience of readers” and “lure”
them to buy books...."
Artist: James Avati, 1953
