A cover story.

Today I recalled an interesting anecdote from my past. I can relate it, but unfortunately I cannot illustrate it, which may make reading this irrelevant. But what the hell I'm not doing anything else and obviously neither are you. So here's the story. When I was in my 30s, I read a book called Playing for Time by Fania Fenelon. It was a true story of how she survived at the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau and later at Bergen-Belsen by performing as a singer and musician in the camp's orchestra. It was a harrowing, disturbing, and important book.  However, I was very offended by the cover and wrote to the publisher to tell them so. What offended me was the visual of what was obviously the naked arm of a young and healthy woman resting on a highly polished violin.  Printed on the arm in an elegant typeface was what was supposed to be a concentration camp tattoo. I chided the publisher for having such a ridiculously glamorized image for such a nightmarish biography. The publisher wrote back politely telling me that my comments were greatly appreciated and that they were redoing the cover and would send me a free copy on completion, which they did. The new cover showed a young blonde woman in the foreground, with full makeup and windblown hair and behind her a handsome Nazi officer. The suggestion being that of romance which had nothing to do with the book and created a cover far more offensive than the one I had complained about. The point being that even people in power—in this case the publisher—can be raging a******s.

Note: The somber, and appropriate, cover above is what is being sold today. Despite a diligent search of the Internet I could not find either of the previous paperback covers. Maybe the publisher was wise enough to destroy any evidence.