LITMIR.BIZ

      INTRODUCTION

      The book you now hold in your hand represents a collective effort by a disparate band of visual artists to use their expertise as painters, illustrators, graphic designers, and political cartoonists to capture the meaning and essence—perhaps even to reveal the deeper truths previously neglected by the keenest of readers—of some of the world's most famous books.

      It is likely that you were told as a child by a grown-up who had finally had enough of your name-calling antics in the backyard or in the pool or in the living room or in the backseat of the car, or who saw your shrill refusal to try something new as an early-stage form of neofascism, that you cannot judge a book by its cover. This, of course, is not true.

      How could it be? Had these adults never seen a copy of the magazines Juggs or Black Inches? Had they never considered the poison dart frogs of Central and South America, the monarch butterfly, or the Nerium oleander shrub, all of which had been rendered by evolution to be stilled explosions of the most dazzling and flamboyant colors found in nature for the express purpose of signaling profound toxicity to potential predators? These were books with covers that cued an absolute and urgent comprehension, the sort that relied on the most knee-jerk of judgments. In other words, hand somebody a book that has a photo on the cover of a 400-pound clown wearing an SS uniform who's crouching down and shoving a taxidermy squirrel that's holding an ashtray up his ass and the person is unlikely to read the title, Antiquing with Greg, and think, Well, Nana's birthday is coming up and maybe there's something useful in here about Hummels and Depression glass.