The uptight lit snobs are wrong: we're suckers for looks

By Sharan SaikumarWhen I picked up The Sense of An Ending, I hadn't heard of Julian Barnes. I didn't know that he'd been shortlisted four times for the Man Booker and or had been hailed as a modern day Nabakov. I picked it up for far more shallow reasons. I picked it up for its sheer physicality, its presence, for its title that was tinged with morbidity and the sense of doom that had seeped onto the cover.[caption id="attachment_115774" align="alignleft" width="380"]  I believe in judging a book by its cover. Reuters[/caption]The Uptight Literature Snob (ULS) will no doubt sneer at this cavalier attitude to fine writing claiming that the only correct way to select a book is to sit down and imbibe the first page, ponder upon the authors' previous titles, critique his writerly style, only then make an informed choice. I however think it's perfectly okay to breeze into a bookshop and be mesmerised by the smokiness wafting off the book jacket and tragedy hidden in the blackened edges of the inside pages. Let it be said once and for all — I believe in judging a book by its cover.This peculiar method of selection hasn't let me down so far. It has introduced me to great writers like Mark Haddon (via The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time), Jose Saramgao (via Blindness), Hunter S Thompson (via Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas) and even PG Wodehouse (via Do Butlers Burgle Banks). And this time I met Julian Barnes. He told me a wonderfully subtle story about the imperfections of memory and our ability to deceive ourselves about our pasts, perfecting it as we approach our future. The cover promised a poignant, elegant tale and the book delivered just that.[caption id="attachment_115773" align="alignleft" width="180"] The Sense of an Ending[/caption]One would imagine that celebrated authors with powerful content would turn their literary noses up at any attempt to – god forbid! — 'sell' their book. That they wouldn't care a whit for the dominant colours on cover, the choice of photo or graphic for the visual, the clarity of the font and the casing or smoothness of paper that covers the slim hardback. And yet Julian Barnes did all of that and more. He went one step ahead and proudly claimed, "Those of you who've seen my book — whatever you may think of its contents — will probably agree that it is a beautiful object. And if the physical book, as we've come to call it, is to resist the challenge of the e-book, it has to look like something worth buying and worth keeping."When we are called upon by the aforementioned ULS to ignore the medium and look at words alone, we are in essence ignoring that very real part of a good book — a pleasurable reading experience. It starts right from setting up the expectations and being absolutely clear about the mood of the journey it's going to take you on — emotional, sexual, mystic, spiritual or plain amusing — telling you in advance what to bring along for the ride. Greg Camsfield of the Modern Language Association adds that "Leather-bound, gilt-edged volumes tell us not only what they hold but indicate that they need to be read reverentially in the face of transcendent genius." Harlequin romances, on the other hand, the demand to be read on the pot and thrashed in the bin.[caption id="attachment_115777" align="alignright" width="180"] Book cover of  Blindness[/caption]The thousands of dollars and endless hours spent on designing a single book cover stand testament to the fact that the ULS is wrong — we are suckers for good looks. We take exactly eight seconds to figure out whether the book is worth pulling off the shelf and I can promise you, dear reader, that in those eight seconds, we are not making an intellectual decision; we are making a purely visual one. My visual synapses in those seconds seconds threw up The Sense of An Ending. And yet again, they were dead right.Of course there are the 'fakes' — the great book covers with crap content — just like there are well-dressed men with crap character. They'll break your heart a couple of times but over the years you will learn to eke out true genius from a horde of handsome pretenders and eventually be left with something (or someone) that's not only nice looking but also may be worth hanging on to for a lifetime.As a blogger, ex-marketer, evangelist of socialfootprint.in and would-be novelist, Sharan Saikumar wears many hats, none of which really fit.