Richard Bravery on Book Cover Design

Bravery speaks to It's Nice That about Penguin's new illustrated covers

Cleon Peterson: Philip K. Dick, The Man In The High Castle

Georgia Hill: Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

Kristian Hammerstad: Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

Luke Pearson: Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

Parra: Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

From James Cartwright (It's Nice That):

The other week the good folks over at Penguin sent us a mammoth haul of brand new paperbacks covered in some of the best illustration we’ve seen on literary works for some time. The breadth of commissioning and the use of young and established talent was such that our interest was immediately piqued. So rather than just stacking them all up on our desks to show off what enquiring cultural minds we have, we got in touch with the art director responsible for them all to find out a little bit about his process and the talents he works with. Everyone, meet Richard Bravery, Richard, meet everyone…

Tell us who you are and what you do?

My name is Richard and I design book covers. Or a slightly longer explanation would be; I’m a cover designer for the publisher Penguin Books, where I work with artists, designers, editors and authors to produce books – which hopefully someone, somewhere will pickup and read.

How long have you been working for Penguin?

About six years. It’s a challenging place to work; they set the bar high and you are always aware of the history of Penguin and the designers who have gone before you. The reward is working for a company that is constantly evolving and encouraging you to do the same.

What was your background before then?

I studied illustration at Art School but quickly realised that I was surrounded by people far more talented than I was. After that I took something of a tangent into carpentry for a few years, before finally moving into publishing by way of a masters in design. I have always loved books and knew I wanted to be involved in the industry somehow. It just took me a while to realise where I fitted in.

You’ve recently commissioned a lot of illustration on new Penguin covers at a time when it seems not to be in fashion, why is that?

I suppose, rightly or wrongly, I’ve never really paid much attention to trends in the market. If after reading a book, illustration seems like the best solution then it’s just a natural progression.

Tell us about some of the illustrators you’ve been working with and how you came across them?

I’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with some hugely talented people over the years, and most recently I’ve been working with Stanley Donwood, Cleon Peterson, Pete Fowler, Luke Pearson and Cat Johnston. Stanley I knew best because of Radiohead, but I was surprised just how broad and deep his body of work is. [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• William S. Burroughs: 2010 Reissues
• Christopher King on Book Cover Design
• Penguin Classics: Joseph Conrad
• Bloomsbury Revelations: Reissue Series
• Picador 40th Anniversary Series

Gary Indiana on David Cronenberg's Videodrome

Videodrome: The Slithery Sense of Unreality

Gary Indiana writes on David Cronenberg's Videodrome for the Criterion website: 'Videodrome, prophetically for 1983 (and looking increasingly less like fiction), shows us a world of technological hyperdevelopment in which people merge with their electronic media. Like an autoimmune catastrophe, the boundary between our bodies and what’s outside them becomes indistinguishable. Like the unwary users of the hallucinogen Chew-Z, who can never come down from their trip, in Philip K. Dick’s psychedelic-era novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, anyone exposed to the Videodrome signal gets sucked into a never-ending hallucination controlled by someone else’s will. Whoever it goes into goes into it: it can bend the subject’s perceptions so drastically that the body itself alters form; its flesh melts into globs, sprouts machine parts, splits apart for use as a storage area. You can even patch a video into the person’s brain by inserting a cassette in his stomach. He can be programmed to kill, and he does.' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• David Cronenberg on J. G. Ballard
• David Cronenberg Interview: Violence Gadaffi and A Dangerous Method
• David Cronenberg on A Dangerous Method
• Cronenberg: 'Imagination is dangerous'

Disjecta: This week's links

Your guide to this week's best cultural links

Samuel Beckett is now on Twitter: Follow him @samuelbbeckett

Literature:

Samuel Beckett on Twitter: Poet, playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett now has a presence on Twitter. Follow him for daily quotes, news, events and links to online content. Enjoy!
Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Beckett Documentary: A very rare treasure, well worth your time
Samuel Beckett: Debts and Legacies 2011
Samuel Beckett: Ends and Odds
Samuel Beckett and Silence
Samuel Beckett: One of Beckett's favourite chess books, Irvine Chernev's The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played
Samuel Beckett: Portugese productions by Teatro Plástico
Samuel Beckett: Audio recording of David Warrilow performing A Piece of Monologue
Samuel Beckett: Madeleine Renard as Winnie in Samuel Beckett's Oh Les Beaux Jours (Happy Days)
Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot: The Video Game
Samuel Beckett on James Joyce
James Joyce on Hamlet
James Joyce: Fourth Annual James Joyce Research Colloquium, 14-16 April 2011
Barry Miles' top ten counterculture books
Judith Butler on Franz Kafka
George Orwell: The Guardian reviews A Life in Letters
Joyce Carol Oates: Los Angeles Times reviews Oates' recent memoir, A Widow's Story
Joyce Carol Oates: Elle interviews the American author about her new memoir, A Widow's Story
Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates receive National Humanities Awards
Philip Roth on Fact and Fiction
Philip Roth on God and Religion: 'I don't have a religious bone in my body'
Margaret Atwood: Atwood profiled as part of The Guardian's Top 100 Women series
J. M. Coetzee: Stephen Abell on Coetzee, suffering and the novel
Don DeLillo: American novelist reads from Mao II at a 2011 PEN event
The Great Gatsby as video game
Our favourite writers as Legos
Dante Alighieri's Death Mask

Philosophy & Critical Theory:

Assuming Gender: Second issue of the online academic journal is now free to download
Roland Barthes on the Labyrinth Metaphor
Jacques Lacan: Unpublished seminars
Why should we care about Immanuel Kant?
Lisa Appignanesi on the language of love
Gilles Deleuze University Lectures 1979-1987
Jacques Derrida: Television interview in which Derrida reflects on 'what comes before the question'
Judith Butler: Critical theorist profiled as part of The Guardian's Top 100 Women
Friedrich Nietzsche: Was Nietzsche the first psychologist?
Verso Book of Dissent: Competition

Theatre

Samuel Beckett: Conor Lovett to perform First Love and The End at the Samuel beckett: Out of the Archive festival
William Shakespeare: Helen Mirren: 'I want to play Hamlet!'
William Shakespeare: Was Hamlet a melancholy Dane? That is the question

Film:

J. G. Ballard: Christian Bale (Empire of the Sun) to reunite with Brad Anderson (The Machinist) on adaptation of Ballard's Concrete Island
Michel Gondry adapting Philip K. Dick's Ubik
Allen Ginsberg: Peter Bradshaw reviews Howl, a new biopic of the American Beat poet

Thank you to all link contributions, which can be found on the A Piece of Monologue Twitter page.

Disjecta: This week's links

Your guide to this week's best cultural links

Joy Division, 'She's Lost Control'/'Atmosphere' single. Art direction: Peter Saville.

Literature:

100 Notable Books of 2010: An annual round-up from the New York Times

Margaret Atwood: 'Human creativity is not confined to just a few areas of life. The techno-scientific world has some of the most creative people you'll ever meet.'
Robert McCrum interviews Atwood in The Observer

Irish Company: James Joyce and Samuel Beckett: Friedhelm Rathjen embarks on a cycling tour of Ireland in search of his literary heroes

James Joyce's burnt kidney breakfast: A selection of quotations from Ulysses, compiled by Biblioklept.

William S. Burroughs: Dangerous Minds compiles a number of biographical sources on Burroughs' collaboration with Nirvana frontman, Kurt Cobain

Saul Bellow: 'Of course, readers of Bellow will plunge into these letters eager to trace the making of a writer, and in this they will not be disappointed.' John Banville reviews Saul Bellow's Letters in The Observer

Philip K. Dick: A map of Philip K. Dick's Hugo Award-winning The Man in the High Castle

Norman Mailer: The New York Times profiles Norris Church Mailer, 'artist and ally' of the American novelist, who passed away recently

Paul Celan: Ian Pindar celebrates the German poet on what would have been his 90th birthday

Patti Smith: Musician reflects on winning National Book Award for Just Kids, a non-fiction work based on her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe

Tom Waits: The Guardian reports that the American musician is planning to publish a collection of his poetry. Hard Ground will be published by University of Texas Press in March 2011.

Philosophy & Critical Theory:

Assuming Gender: This year's annual lecture is by Professor Mandy Merck, entitled 'The Question of Caster Semenya: Gender and the Level Playing Field'. 01 December from 4.30 at Cardiff University. Free to attend.

Noam Chomsky: Chomsky is due to speak at Cardiff University on 11 March 2011. More details to be confirmed.

Theatre:

Samuel Beckett: The Guardian reviews Michael Lawrence's production, Krapp, 39, inspired by Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape

Franz Kafka: Two British comedians, Tom Basden and Tim Key, star in Joseph K., a darkly comic adaptation of Kafka's The Trial

Music

David Bowie: BBC's 1975 Omnibus documentary, Cracked Actor, available online

Joy Division: Peter Saville and Studio Parris Wakefield's beautiful design work for the Joy Division back catalogue

Thank you to all link contributions, which can be found on the A Piece of Monologue Twitter page.

Disjecta: This week's links

Your guide to this week's best cultural links

T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land and other poems

Literature:

Mario Vargas Llosa: Winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature (New York Times)
Mario Vargas Llosa: BBC reports on Llosa's Nobel Prize award
Mario Vargas Llosa: Three Character Sketches, published in Granta
Franz Kafka: The New York Times unravels the legal history of the Kafka estate
Allen Ginsberg: Television interview with the American Beat poet
Philip Roth: Excerpt from Philip Roth's new novel, Nemesis
Philip Roth on the decline of the novel
Philip Roth's Literary Javelin
Philip Roth: J. M. Coetzee on Philip Roth's Nemesis
Gabriel Josipovici: Nicholas Lezard reviews Only Joking
Paul Auster: Graphic novel adaptation of Auster's City of Glass published on Playstation
J. M. Coetzee and Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Patrick McGrath on Coetzee's novel, The Master of Petersburg
Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A. S. Byatt on David McDuff's translation of The Idiot
On book guilt
T. S. Eliot reads The Waste Land
William S. Burroughs: Interview with The Paris Review, 1965

Film & Television:

Philip K. Dick: Blade Runner director Ridley Scott to oversee four-part adaptation of Dick's The Man in the High Castle
John Berger: Landmark television documentary, Ways of Seeing, now available to watch online

Theatre:

William Shakespeare: Academic Conference, Shakespeare: Sources and Adaptation, University of Cambridge, September 2011

Music:

Barack Obama on Bob Dylan

Thank you to all link contributors, who can be found on the A Piece of Monologue Twitter page.

Disjecta: This week's links

This week, Margaret Atwood boycotts the boycott, Mrs Dalloway celebrates her 85th birthday and Woody Allen reflects on ageing and death. A free academic has also been launched online, exploring Samuel Beckett's work in English and French. Alain de Botton has commissioned a series of modernist buildings to be used as British holiday homes. And graphic designer Roi Driscoll has contributed a desktop wallpaper to One Down, One Up, inspired by Miles Davis and Haruki Murakami. Enjoy!

Literature:

Margaret Atwood: Boycotter of Boycotts
Samuel Beckett: A new online and bilingual academic journal, Limit(e) Beckett
Samuel Beckett: What do Nick Clegg and Beckett have in common?
Samuel Beckett: Review of Conversations between Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde
Philip K. Dick: Film trailer for The Adjustment Bureau, based on a Dick short story
Don DeLillo: News on another film adaptation, this time David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis
Anthony Burgess: Celebrating the anniversary of A Clockwork Orange's publication
Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway celebrates 85th anniversary
James Joyce: Copy of Finnegans Wake goes on auction
Happy 50th Anniversary, Ambit Magazine
Wiki-Books: Creating customized books from Wikipedia
Is poetry still relevant?: From an anxiety of influence to an anxiety of relevance
Waterstones Bookstore Rebrand

Philosophy & Critical Theory:

Jacques Lacan: Video lectures and discussion from Lacan.com
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne: A Philosopher of Life, Part 1
Cyborg Theory, Cyborg Practice

Theatre:

Samuel Beckett: Sir Ian McKellen mistaken for homeless man outside Godot

Film:

Woody Allen: Allen cheerfully reflects on the trauma of ageing and death
David Lynch: New commercial for Dior's Lady Blue Shanghai, starring Marion Cotillard

Music:

Jazz: The Dave Brubeck Quartet performs 'Take Five' in London, 1964
Jazz: Roi Driscoll's exclusive desktop wallpaper, designed for One Down, One Up
Joy Division: Peter Saville's design for Unknown Pleasures as audio visualizer

Art:

Architecture: Alain de Botton commissions modernist holiday homes
Avigdor Arikha: The Guardian profiles artist and friend of Samuel Beckett
J. G. Ballard: Simon O'Carrigan's digital montage, The Drowned World
Dear Diary Exhibition

Thank you to all link contributors, who can be found on the
A Piece of Monologue Twitter page.

Disjecta: This week's links

Jenny Trigg directs an adaptation of Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable

This week we have a number of exciting Beckett-related news items for fans of literature, theatre, photography and film. A letter reveals Philip K. Dick's personal response to seeing Blade Runner realized on-screen. The Brick City Bike Collective traces a path to Philip Roth's childhood home. And Martin Scorsese directs a tribute to one of his directing heroes, the master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock.

Literature:

Don DeLillo: On White Noise and Point Omega
Don DeLillo: Jewish Journal reviews Point Omega
Samuel Beckett: Beckett and contemporary atheism
Samuel Beckett: An extract from The Unnamable
Philip K. Dick: A response to seeing Blade Runner realized on-screen
Thomas Bernhard: On uncanny primates
Thomas Bernhard: Correspondence with publisher released
William Shakespeare: New Cardiff Shakespeare website launched
William Shakespeare: The Guardian asks 'Who really wrote Shakespeare'?
Philip Roth: Brick City Bike Collective visits Roth's childhood home
William Faulkner: On writers and their work
Keith Ridgway: John Self on Ridgway's Horses
Haruki Murakami: Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood to score Norwegian Wood adaptation
52 Poems: Faber & Faber's poem of the week

Philosophy & Critical Theory:

Jean Baudrillard: The Violence of the Image (2004)
Samuel Beckett: A Lacanian reading of the Three Novels, 'Undermining the Symbolic'

Film:

Samuel Beckett: Jenny Trigg's adaptation of The Unnamable, reminiscent of early David Lynch
Stanley Kubrick: Film poster artwork
Andrei Tarkovsky: Graphic artwork of Tarkovsky's films
Alfred Hitchcock: Review of David Thomson's The Moment of Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock: Exploring Hitchcock's influence on Martin Scorsese
Alfred Hitchcock: Scorsese directs Hitchcock tribute, Key to Reserva
Chris Petit: Iain Sinclair on Content

Art and Photography:

Samuel Beckett: Bob Adelman's photographs of Beckett in Paris
Samuel Beckett: Save the Portobello Road Mural campaign
Andy Warhol: Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg on Andy Warhol

Theatre:

Samuel Beckett: A new production of Endgame begins in Dallas, Texas.

Thank you to all link contributors, who can be found on the
A Piece of Monologue Twitter page.

Disjecta: This week's links

(Image: Paul Buckley's design for the 25th Anniversary edition of Don DeLillo's White Noise)

A number of interesting articles and reviews in this week's selection. Jonathan Jones speculates on the degeneration of Philip Roth's artistic powers, Will Self meets The Road director John Hillcoat, and Joyce Carol Oates takes time out of her busy schedule to answer questions. There's also a link to Žižek's recent appearance on The Today Programme, a review of Celan's correspondence, and fifteen things you may or may not already know about coffee.

Literature:

Philip Roth: Jonathan Jones on The Humbling and Roth's late career
Don DeLillo: Celebrating the 25th anniversary of White Noise
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Writer's son his father's rejects 'Old Testament' image
Paul Celan: Benjamin Ivry on Celan's Letters
J. M. Coetzee: The New Yorker briefly reviews Coetzee's Summertime
Philip K. Dick: Controversy grows over Google's Android/Nexus product line
Joyce Carol Oates: Questions and Answers

Philosophy & Critical Theory:

Slavoj Žižek: Žižek appears on BBC Radio 4's The Today Programme
Feminism: The Guardian reviews 'the feminist year ahead'

Music:

Jazz: Miles Davis' b-flat trumpet, on display in LA's Grammy Museum
Stewart Lee: Lee chooses his top musical influences
Samuel Beckett: Morton Feldman's Neither, words by Samuel Beckett

Film:

DVDs of 2009: Sight and Sound Magazine's top picks
Disney: Racial and gender stereotypes in Disney animations
Will Self: Self meets John Hillcoat, director of The Road

Television:

The Wire: A profile of the career of Michael K. Williams, The Wire's Omar Little
Mad Men: Life lessons from a Mad Men art assistant

Art:

The art of Henri Privat-Livemont

Etc.:

The Onion: Front pages 1988-2008
Cardiff Arcades Project
Coffee: Fifteen Things Worth Knowing About Coffee