![]() ![]() This moral interpretation of the work of selling her writing is of a peculiar yet utterly characteristic bent. Publishers today know what they are doing when they paper Berlin’s stories with these radiant portraits, photographs taken by her former husband, the jazz musician and entrepreneur Buddy Berlin.ĭuring the aforementioned 1960 literary negotiations, Berlin herself was so miserable with the “mercantile ring” of her contract, in particular the fact of being paid for a novel she had not yet written, that she ended up calling it off, explaining that “Nothing ever has hit me quite so hard, morally.” In a 1960 letter to the poet Edward Dorn, Berlin relays the advice of her agent during painful literary negotiations: “Forget it, sign-put your face on the book jacket and you’ll sell a million copies.” In 2018, Picador published Welcome Home, a “portrait” of Berlin comprised of letters, photos and memoir fragments. Her lipstick and earrings are picked up and highlighted by the rose and cerulean of the title font. ![]() On the cover of my copy, Berlin’s portrait is almost offputtingly stylish. We’re comparing covers of our editions of the 2015 posthumous collection of Lucia Berlin’s short stories, A Manual for Cleaning Women. I’m Whatsapping my friend Ulises in Oakland. “Yours looks like an ad for American Apparel.” ![]()
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