the modernist principles pioneered by Paul Rand, Alvin Lustig, and Leo
Lionni, who imbued their work with theories of European art. While
Bacon admired these designers, he points out that as the book covers they
did were generally for “heady” works of criticism, analysis, and literature
with small print runs, they could do virtually anything they wanted with
little interference. His orientation, on the other hand, being resolutely
commercial (heavy-hitter books with big runs), required that he navigate
around sales and advertising people and countless others with numerous
opinions.
This he did—with the help of staunch supporters like Frank
Metz, art director at Simon & Schuster for over forty years, and Harris
Lewine, iconoclastic art director at Harcourt Brace and various other
houses. Having editors as allies was also a plus; Robert Gottlieb, for
example, when he was at Knopf, not only kept the merchandising people at
bay, but kept authors at a distance too. According to Bacon, writers make
literal suggestions that result in dumb illustrations. He recalls one occasion
when Norman Mailer managed to get through to him. “Mailer was very
diffident,” Bacon remembers. “He called me ‘Mr. Bacon.’ We both sort of
bowed and scraped to each other. And it turned out that what he wanted—
he actually loved the jacket—was to know if a very tiny postage stamp of
his girlfriend could go somewhere on the front. As it turned out, there was
no way it could hurt, so I said, ‘Sure, why not?’”
Bacon didn’t do thumbnails or multiple sketches—just one
iteration of any idea. But he was accommodating. “If people didn’t like
something about a Cole Porter tune, he just tore it up,” he says. “And I did
the same thing with the jackets.” For the 1961 publication of Joseph Heller’s
classic Catch-22,he did as many as eleven versions. “I did a jacket that just
said ‘Catch-22’ in very large lettering, and underneath, I can almost
remember how [the subtitle Heller wrote] goes: ‘A novel wildly funny and
dead serious about an Assyrian malingerer who recognized the odds.’
Gottlieb liked it but didn’t do it. Then I did one that had [the protagonist]
Yossarian bull’s-ass naked, but with his back to you, saluting as a flight of
planes went over. I liked that one. Then I did the finger. Then I did a
couple of modifications of those. Then at some point I came up with the
little guy that I tore out of a piece of paper, representing Yossarian in full
flight from everything.” The finished jacket doesn’t conform to any of
Bacon’s other book jackets, but it became a true icon, which makes it a
typical Bacon after all.
Bacon designed most of the jackets for Heller’s other books, an
association that Heller once commented on: “The coverage of my life as an
author, from Catch-22to Closing Timethirty-three years later, may be
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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