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Buying Hemingway

Hemingway famously hated the covers of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell To Arms and I am not much of a fan either. The jackets, designed by Cleonike Damianakes Wilkins for Scribner's, embody Art Deco styling of their time, 1926 and 1929 respectively, and feature vaguely Pre-Raphaelite figures in repose, some clad in togas, some not.

The covers feel like an attempt to soften the prose that they cover, to give them dignity and to ornament the modern, short, declarative sentences inside. They're odd, yes, but what surprises me as a new bookstore owner, fiction buyer, and designer, these Hemingway designs are exactly the same as the designs on the editions available today.

What was wrong then is more wrong now. Though I searched for alternate editions to sell, none were available. I did find a lovely design by Paul Sahre of Old Man and The Sea and a new Vintage Classics edition of In Our Time which was redesigned and reissued when the book came out of copyright.

I'll be curious to hear what our patrons think. Maybe the old designs will sell. Ken Burns' new Hemingway documentary on PBS may introduce Hemingway to a new generation of readers or inspire those who never read him to try. Sadly, we force teenagers to read these books as part of American Lit canon, which seems about five or ten years too soon. If you haven't read them, you are fortunate, I envy you. The craft is unmatched.