As an English student, I am going to spend the next eight weeks writing about books. I will be picking texts apart, searching for subtext, structures and sounds. But I would never force anyone other than my supervisor to read any of that. Here, I am going to spend the next eight weeks writing about books, although I am going to (mostly) ignore words. Instead, I am going to explore the beauty of books, featuring my favourite examples. The word ‘beauty’ normally refers to the make-up section, dismissed by anyone not interested in cosmetics as superficial, frivolous, or worse, dangerous, perpetuating unattainable ideals. Maybe talking about beauty is a bit frivolous, but it’s definitely fun. Welcome to Gilt.
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Books are not often thought of as a very visual medium. They are made up of words, which do not show us anything, but give us the space to imagine. Roald Dahl reckons that this is why reading is so very important, because unlike the moving images of television, words force us to exercise our imaginations. Or, in the more lyrical words of Willy Wonka’s Oompa-Loompas, the problem with television is that:
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK — HE ONLY SEES!
I am inclined to agree with most things the Oompa-Loompas say; however, these words in particular have always stuck with me. How many times have you heard people moan when the latest film version of a childhood favourite comes out: ‘he’s not meant to look like that!’, or ‘her hair’s the wrong colour!’ or ‘Hermione’s too hot!’? Personally, there are no book covers I hate more than the re-released classics with a celebrity’s face from a new adaptation plastered across the front.
Leonardo, I know you’re hot, but Romeo would have never aged as badly as you have
I want room to colour in my favorite characters’ eyes and hair, shade in the contours of their nose and cheeks, flesh out their bodies and dress them in the wardrobe of my imagination.
Someone at Vintage clearly agrees with me, as they demonstrated when they published 21 coloured-in versions of their books to celebrate their 21st birthday. Every book is completely sprayed in one vivid shade, from the front to the back to the spine to the edges of every single page, creating a block of colour. On a purely aesthetic level, the rainbow of colours the books create is simply stunning.
Some of the colour choices are obvious: a citrusy orange for Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, a deep dark purple for Midnight’s Children, black for The Woman in Black. But my favourites are the ones that relate their colour to the world of the book. The sickly green of Money, for example, invokes an environment of nausea-inducing envy and greed. And in direct visual contrast, the pretty pink of The Time Traveler’s Wife suggests to me a rose-tinted universe, filled with love and emotion.
Vintage aren’t the first people to have come up with the idea of colouring in a book, though. English writer Scarlett Thomas’s books often feature spray-painted edges, a cool touch that draws your eyes to them in a crowded bookshop and if nothing else is a clever marketing tool. But my favourite, and the first of Thomas’s books to employ this design, is The End of Mr. Y, designed by gray318.
In the book (this time I mean the story, not the physical object), the main character’s eyes are also drawn to a book in a crowded bookshop, and it is also called The End of Mr. Y. The main character is shocked to discover this purportedly cursed object, the ‘last and most mysterious work’ of an obscure novelist she is studying. The black-edged design of the real, physical book recalls the experience of stepping into the unknown of darkness, perfectly apposite for the mysterious tone of a story about a book that curses whoever reads it.
Holding a coloured-in book feels like being handed a sealed box – a very beautiful box – filled with the promise of a mood, an outline of an idea, compelling you to enter its world (as long as you don’t scuff the edges or bend the spine: that would ruin the beauty).
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