robert goodin, McSweeney’s 21
Hi, I’m the husband.
Today I’d like to bring to your attention the work of a Robert Goodin, whose illustrations appeared in McSweeney’s 21.
Above is a strip of illustrations for the story “The Strange Career of Doctor Raju Gopalarajan”, by Rajesh Parameswaran. I was drawn to his clean, pencil-sketch style - which is not apparent in his illustration portfolio. I found out later that he has each panel for sale on Comic Art Collective for $30 each. I like the panels together, in a strip form, better than them individually.
McSweeney’s 21 is not as elaborately designed and made as the previous two, it looks like your everyday paperback. The cover makes a panoramic illustration (by Keith Jones), though, and supposedly there are eight covers made for this issue. Hm. There are 14 stories, each accompanied with a strip of illustrations (same format as the one shown above), followed by “a letter received by the office of Ray Charles at various dates throughout 1999″. The illustrations actually have something to do with the stories (after you read each story, go back and look at the strip). Of the 14 stories, I followed and enjoyed two. The last story is called “Grandpa Clemens & Angelfish 1906“, by the esteemed writer Joyce Carol Oates. I had no idea what to make of it until I consulted with Google and found out two things: first, Mark Twain is only a pen name, and the famous author’s real name is Samuel Clemens; and second, this little piece of information from Amazon, regarding the book, Mark Twain’s Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens Angelfish Correspondence, 1905-1910,
Having lost his wife to death and his daughters Jean to epilepsy and Clara to a music career, Twain recruited 12 girls between ages ten and 16 to act as surrogate granddaughters in his lonely, depression-ridden last years. Bright and, above all, innocent, these “angelfish”–members of the Aquarium Club–were welcome guests at Twain’s New York apartment and later at Stormfield, the club’s headquarters, always properly chaperoned. The aging writer may seem pathetic, but the wealth of letters collected here are dotted with charm and wit and represent a genuine contribution to Twain scholarship.
There you have it.
[…] Eggers, as a writer and the boss of his own publishing house, offers a very different point of view of book cover design. He’s limited by what he knows (an old version of Quark) and what he has (2 fonts?), but he has the freedom of not working for a marketing and editorial team. Not to take anything away from what Eggers has accomplished, but in a way, his job is easier - he’s an artist who only needs to care about his own vision; where as a designer needs to interpret each book, each author and think how to portray that book and speak to that particular audience. A good book cover designer’s portfolio will display a variety of styles - each suited for a particular book; an artist designer can survive with one style. That said, I think McSweeney’s Quarterly is great and beautiful and incredibly fun (even though I don’t get most of the stories…). But the latest issue of McSweeney’s is unusually tame (Eggers gave us a preview of the next issue, which is bound by magnet - yes you read it right). […]