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Judging books by their covers,
Hey Nostradamus! Also discussed: Generation X: All Families Are Psychotic Everything is Illuminated Back in 1992, with the publication of his first novel, Douglas Coupland unleashed two evils upon the world. The first was the appellation “Generation X,” the title of that novel and the subsequent shorthand reference to anyone born between (roughly speaking) the early 1960s and the mid 1970s. Coupland wasn’t the first to come up with it, but the popularity of his novel led straight to a tidal wave of business types who sought to capitalize on the phenomenon: title-of-novel to all-encompassing-marketing-term in one fell swoop.
The second was the way the book was published: a slim, squarish paperback released with a variety of covers that were identical but for the colors, which were various selections from the DayGlo® palette. The palette itself was a reference to one of Coupland’s definitions in the book’s glossary, but the multiple covers constituted a separate phenomenon. Maybe they were a commentary on empty consumerism, pointing to the ridiculousness of when collectors simply must have every distinct version of a particular thing, like when my friend Ivan blew his money on five copies of a New Order 7" single back in the late 1980s, only because the sleeves were different colors. Or maybe they were an opportunity to force us lazy Gen-Xers into having to — perish the thought — make a decision: Which color cover would we buy? The choices were endful! Who knows why? The result was that there were all these otherwise identical books slathered with all manner of fluorescence. And since there were so many to choose from, booksellers had to display them all. The humanity!
Worst of all, of course, the evil persisted in the book world, popping up again on (of all places) another Coupland cover, All Families Are Psychotic. This occurred, perhaps not coincidentally, as Coupland was apparently handed the reins to art-direct his own covers. (I would actually really like to know how that happened.) I can only guess that book sales had flagged, and Coupland wanted to remind the world that he was the guy who had all those garish books back when people were so excited about Generation X.
In the meantime, however, the evil spread. Recently we had multiple paperback versions of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, though those colors were more reserved. Just this past spring, though, DayGlo® covers returned as Perennial Press released multiple paperback editions of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, turning one of the most compelling covers from last year into several of the most regrettable of this year. (Is it a coincidence that Smith and Foer are both members of Generation X?) To his credit, Coupland obviously feels bad about the phenomenon, if a tad belatedly: Not only is the cover of his new Hey Nostradamus! completely devoid of color, it takes the already bland Helvetica from All Families Are Psychotic and reduces it to an almost anti-design setting, as if it’s the placeholder typography while they’re waiting for the designer to finish the real thing. The ultimate proof is the central image, which is clearly a symbol of Coupland himself paying penance for his sins. Judgment: I forgive him. I can’t help it — I guess I’m one of those soft-hearted Gen-Xers after all.
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