Hilobrow Cover Art (8)

By: Joshua Glenn
May 5, 2009

Will wonders never cease? These covers keep flooding in. Thanks to everyone who’s contributed to this important cultural archaeology project.

Check out the entire series.

aspidistra

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caldwell

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nabokov-laughter

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miller-focus-550

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mccullers-lonely-550

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maugham-cosmo

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christie-dichirico-550

Thanks, Jonathan Lethem, for this fine example of a different hilo phenomenon: the use of highbrow art to set a lowbrow mood. Cf. Schoenbergian dissonances in horror movie scores.

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greene-brighton

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greene-man

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lewis-babbitt

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steinbeck-cannery

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HILOBROW COVER GALLERY: Orwell’s 1984 | Huxley’s Brave New World | Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday* | Sartre’s Les Mains Sales | Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème | Zola’s Pot-Bouille | West’s Miss Lonelyhearts | Faulkner’s Sanctuary | Bowles’s Let It Come Down | Himes’s If He Hollers Let Him Go | (Not) Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling | Céline’s Death on the Installment Plan | McCarthy’s The Company She Keeps | Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 | DeLillo’s Running Dog | Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd | Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front | Butler’s The Way of All Flesh | Koestler’s Darkness at Noon | Huxley’s Time Must Have a Stop | Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow | Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment | Hoagland’s Cat Man | Isherwood’s The Last of Mr. Norris | Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | Lawrence’s Love Among the Haystacks | Lawrence’s The Thorn in the Flesh | Caldwell’s A Lamp for Nightfall | Orwell’s Keep the Aspidastra Flying | Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark | Miller’s Focus | McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter | Maugham’s Cosmopolitans | Christie’s The Boomerang Clue ** | Greene’s Brighton Rock | Greene’s The Man Within | Lewis’s Babbitt | Steinbeck’s Cannery Row | West’s The Day of the Locust | Warren’s All The King’s Men | Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence | Huxley’s Antic Hay | Hardy’s The Return of the Native | Fante’s Ask the Dust | Louys’ Aphrodite | Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov | Orwell’s Burmese Days | Maugham’s Cakes and Ale | Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London | PLUS: Classical LPs with Racy Covers
* Actually, the cover image depicts a scene from a different story in the same issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries.
** Agatha Christie is not a highbrow author. But check out the De Chirico-esque cover imagery.

Categories

Pulp, Spectacles