It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So often,\u00a0The Stranger\u00a0<\/em>is talked about as an existential novel, and more particularly, existential in bordering on a sense of nihilism. This conception, however, entirely misses the point. By definition, existentialism allows the individual to determine for himself what is of value, and wedded to this sensibility in Camus’ novel, and in his work in general, actually, is a deep connection to the material world–to the earth and the sea and the sky. Camus urges us to awaken in ourselves the connections we have to the world around us, and embrace our material-ness.\u00a0That\u00a0<\/em>is what the final moments of\u00a0The Stranger\u00a0<\/em>are about, and, arguably, what the novel as a whole is about. It was this realization that inspired this cover.<\/p>\n I was interested in deviating in a substantial way from the design approaches I saw with most of the other cover designs for this novel. For the most part, these designs focused on a lone figure–the stranger himself–in some sort of sparse background, in an apparent attempt to communicate or echo the bleakness of the novel. Again, though, this seems to color the reader’s experience in a way that’s disingenuous. After all, if the novel is about a man coming to terms with the absurdity of life–staring into the abyss–and not recoiling or cowering, but embracing that absurdity and finding beauty in it, shouldn’t a cover design speak to that beauty?<\/p>\n I chose to have the starry night sky, the core image from the passage above, as the primary image on the cover. I played around with more abstract representations of the stars and night sky, but nothing really had the same impact as an actual photo with all its variation in color. I liked this image also for its black foreground that allowed for a clean space to work with in the bottom third or so of the cover. In that lower portion, I wanted to complicate the simplicity of the night sky. I decided to include a prison window in that darkness. I was striving to play with the idea of perception. In the novel, the protagonist Meursault has his revelation–becoming self-aware–while in prison, and much of his thoughts seem to generated from what he sees outside his narrow window. I wanted in (or out) the window to be something not fully discernible but that might suggest a mysteriousness or beauty, and I think that’s accomplished in some sense, especially with the colors complementing the night sky. Conceptually, I hope the placement of the window in what is essentially the earth helps suggest what Meursault found outside his window, and what was awoken in him.<\/p>\n Overall, it’s certainly not the best cover for this novel–it might not even qualify as a “good” cover, but I think it’s successful in pushing past the somewhat stale conceptual direction much of the covers seem unable to escape. Perhaps because I love this novel, and because it’s had such an impact on me, I think it’s a shame that so many of the cover designs belie the beauty of the text. Sure–the lone figure walking the beach may come to mind when thinking about\u00a0The Stranger<\/em>, but should it?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The process of designing a cover for a book one knows well is a difficult task, as there are so many aspects to consider and there’s a need to land on a single approach lest the cover become some sort of terrible collage. In my approach, I sought to channel one of the most moving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":267,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions\/267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/i620.photobucket.com\/albums\/tt284\/Cody_2ZZ\/The%20Stranger%20Book%20Cover_zpsbzmd4rfj.jpg\")
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