In Praise (Or Condemnation) Of The Book Dust Jacket

“The right cover is like a beautiful coat, elegant and warm, wrapping my words as they travel through the world, on their way to keep an appointment with my readers. The wrong cover is cumbersome, suffocating. Or it is like a too-light sweater: inadequate.” Ernest Hemingway was less diplomatic in his response to the heraldic figure composition on the jacket for A Farewell to Arms, designed by Cleonike (“Cleon”) Damianakes in 1929: “I cannot admire the awful legs on that woman or the gigantic belly muscles [on the man],” he wrote to his editor.