From: jclute@cix.compulink.co.uk (John Clute)
Subject: Re: (whorl) BEATING AN EIGHT-LEGGED HORSE
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 11:59 +0100 (BST)

In-Reply-To: <200009021918.MAA02421@lists1.best.com>
A couple comments:
        1) I thought the _New Sun_ covers were abominable. But this made 
no difference.
        2) I thought the _design_ of the _Short Sun_ covers was 
philistine, and destroyed any virtues the covers might possess.
        3) I think Jim Burns usually does very well with books he 
illustrates, and that these covers--if the art can be abstracted from the 
design of the whole--are meritorious but failed attempts at doing 
illuminations of a text of quite extraordinary visual difficulty. None of 
us on this list seems really to know what any of the main characters in 
the book look light at any one moment. Fixing this sort of thing into a 
visual representation is something Jim was not able to do. He was probably 
the wrong kind of artist for the job, though he is unusual in the fact he 
actually reads the ms he's illustrating, with great care. But find the 
right artist. The world of _Short Sun_ is immensely less fixable than the 
world of its predecessors, all of which have execrable art. Is there any 
_good_ Gene Wolfe visual?

Best,
John C


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