Illustrator Si Scott on the Power of the Pen

Throughout his life, UK-based illustrator Si Scott sketched for fun, but it wasn’t until he went away to Buckinghamshire Chilterns University, left discouraged, then returned a year later that he realized he could turn his passion into a career. His design sensibility draws comparisons to Tim Burton and tattoo artist/MoMA exhibitor Kiki Smith and has mega-brands including Victoria’s Secret and Uniqlo enlisting his services. Recently, he designed the cover for Zadie Smith’s essay collection Changing My Mind—a blissful mix of modern-meets-whimsy typeface that’s enough to make you want to improve your handwriting. Here, the 32-year-old musicphile expands on his creative process.

   

Let’s talk about the cover you did for Zadie Smith. The book is a collection of short stories—Smith herself describes it in the foreword as being rife with "ideological inconsistency." Why did this cover come out looking as it did?

I wanted something that felt like Zadie’s writing. She’s quite cool, so I needed a font like that—without being flowery or too girly, it’s whimsical with a bit of an edge. That’s what Zadie’s got. Reading her stuff is not like reading Darwin, but it’s edgy.
 
You’re known for eschewing computer-based design. What techniques were used for this particular cover?

I think nowadays, a lot of people use computers and find it easy to just ape whatever is in trend and ultimately rip-off other designers. I really looked up to people like Vaughan Oliver who had their own distinct style and that's what I really try and do with my work. I use rulers. I use pens.
 

Books on Film: A Sleeping Giant

A castle is erected out of 30,000 copies of Sleeping Beauty in the shoe department at Dallas' Neiman Marcus. Photograph by Allison McCutcheon

Have a cool photograph that conveys something about the love of reading? Send your submissions to ELLELitLife@gmail.com

If You Get Stuck Make a Pie and Other Rules for Writing Fiction

I'm a sucker for writer biographies, especially when the author's process is unspooled, laying bare their weird ticks and obsessive compulsive behaviors (Nabakov never used an eraser!?). I'm always writing under the assumption that there's some trick I'm not aware of, what Steven King calls a "magic feather" in On Writing (his memoir on the craft), that can rescue me when I'm inevitably staring at a blank computer screen and thinking to myself...crap. I've got nothing. When I came across The Guardian's ambitious survey, asking some of the world's most important literary giants working today to impart their ten rules for penning fiction, I poured over the thing. The cruel joke is that most of the advice here (and in any book on writing ever published) is some iteration of this evergreen: Read a lot. Write a lot. Still, I found a few practical—albeit, somewhat depressing—tips I plan on trying to adopt next time I come to the page, including my favorite piece of advice  from Joyce Carol Oates (pictured above) who urges "Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst." Below, a few other rules to live—and write—by.

"If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to ­music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient."—Hillary Mantel

"Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied."—Zadie Smith

"The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-it on the wall in front of my desk saying "Faire et se taire" (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as "Shut up and get on with it."—Helen Simpson

"Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils."—Margaret Atwood

"Write slowly and by hand only about subjects that interest you."—Annie Proulx

(And if my handwriting is just too terrible to read, I'll try this...)

"Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet."—Zadie Smith

Photo: Marion Ettlinger

Melissa Kushner, Founder of the Nonprofit Goods for Good

What does Goods for Good do? We basically take surplus goods from corporate organizations and provide them to orphans and vulnerable children in Southern Africa and Haiti—basic stuff like school uniforms, school supplies, and health and hygiene materials.

Sounds like a challenging job. Do you find much time to read? I do most of my readings on the long flights to Africa, since I’m back and forth several times a year. So I usually bring a stack of books with me. And when I stay in Malawi, where I spend most of my time in Africa, there’s no electricity, so I often get a lot of reading done. That’s where I get the most peace and quiet.

I really like your sweater. Thanks, I just grabbed it out of my mother’s closet.

So Middlesex is pretty intense. Do you ever read anything light? I toe the line. In grad school, I read a lot of books on urban development and economics. So now I try to read more human stories that are uplifting and inspiring, mostly non-fiction stories of people working in their communities to change the way the world is. It’s nice to connect to people doing interesting things in the world through books.

Have your read anything particularly uplifting recently? I’m reading a really amazing book called The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. It’s about a Malawian boy that didn’t have enough money to finish high school. So he went back to his village and said, “I’m not going to be defeated. I’m going to find a way to help my village.” He basically foraged for trash to use to build a windmill. Everyone in his village said he was crazy, nuts—that the witches got to him. Then one day he was able to light his parent’s hut with the power he generated from the windmill—that he built out of trash.

Photo: Kelly Stuart

Joshua Ferris on The Unnamed, Giving Up, and the Problem With Scotch

Joshua Ferris is one of those authors I wish had a book coming out every month. His debut novel, Then We Came To The End—about an advertising agency undergoing massive layoffs thanks to the dot-com bubble-burst—was expectation-blasting, an expansive satire about cubicle culture that felt fiercely original when it came out in 2007 (and feels eerily timely in 2010).

Ferris is mining completely different ground in his second novel, The Unnamed, a perceptive, moving story about a successful Manhattan lawyer, Tim Farnsworth, who’s poised to lose his family, job, and arguably his sanity when a mysterious disease comes back without warning. The ailment? He can’t stop walking. It’s a dark, compelling, at- times-a-bit-unrelentingly-sad read that plumbs deep existential issues—mortality, the mind-body paradigm, etc. In other words, it’s not the book you want to grab on the way to the pool. But it is a book you’ll want to grab at some point (maybe when you’re sick in bed?), if only to discover one of the great young American authors working today. (Not to mention, Scott Rudin is making it into a movie, so don’t wait until after they swap this really beautiful cover out for some cheesy one where George Clooney is traipsing over the Brooklyn Bridge). Below, the author talks about almost ditching his sophomore effort and why not having a boss isn't always a good thing.

I’m going to start with the obvious question, which is where did you get the idea of Tim’s disease?

I have no idea where the idea came from. And I wish I could be much more clarifying for the both of us because it would be interesting to, for me to, ah, remember. I was in possession of this idea, and I thought, “Well, this has the legs for a novel,” no pun intended. 

Huh. 

I do remember telling a friend of mine the whole plot, basically.

One reviewer actually described the book as emotionally taxing. 

Oh, sure.  Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if emotionally taxing, if that’s a negative or a positive thing. It’s not a read at the beach. It’s about a man’s psychic, physical, and familial dissolution. I mean, these aren’t subjects that one usually discusses over brunch.  

Amy Bloom on the Original Iron Man

 

“The Superman comics, which I read devotedly, had a big influence on me. I read them all. I read Superman, Superboy, Supergirl, even though that was so lame. I read, like, Bizarro Superman. I read the History of Superman. Also, the History of Krypton. Ultimate Universe Superman. They had the same impact on me that Tale of Two Cities had on me, which was the idea that you might look like one kind of person and be another. And that was both fascinating and reassuring to me. The idea that people might see this short, round little girl with pink harlequin glasses and gigantic pigtails, but that I really was a superhero. It made me think even more than I already did about the depths unplumbed in other human beings.”

Amy Bloom’s latest, Where the God of Love Hangs Out, is out now.

Photo: DC Comics

ELLE Book Addict: Alexa Brazilian, Fashion News Editor and Fitzgerald Buff

Today marks the debut of ELLE Book Addict—a returning literary-themed questionnaire we’re asking our well-read editors, contributors and writers to answer candidly, if only get to know our staff a little more intimately. (Wasn't it Oscar Wilde who said, "It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.") 

To kick off the series, we sat down with fashion news editor Alexa Brazilian, who's been traipsing through icy slush puddles and enduring Nor'easter-conditions outside all in the name of New York fashion week. (We snapped her at the Alexander Wang show above). What else can we tell you about Alexa except that she kind of reminds us of a J.Crew model—in the sense that you sort of want to own every. piece. of. clothing. she. has. on. The way she puts it all together—a grandma sweater, a leopard printed scarf, a tweed blazer (that she probably picked up from Brooks Brother's boys department)—makes you stop and think damn, she looks cool. This Boston-born editor also happens to be a ferocious reader and an admitted book adulterer.

Name: Alexa Cavedon-Brazilian

What you do at ELLE: Fashion News Editor

Book(s) you’re currently reading? I think it’s bad form to cheat on one book with another, but I’m constantly doing it. Right now I’m reading Redeeming Features by Nicholas Haslam; Cheerful Money by Tad Friend; Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Matthew Joseph Bruccoli; True Compass by Ted Kennedy; Dior by Dior: An Autobiography of Christian Dior translated by Antonia Fraser; I've been rotating between these five the last few months depending on my mood. Plus I just added JD Salinger’s Nine Stories to the mix in memoriam.

Favorite fictional character? I’ve always had a thing for Dick Diver in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night.

If you had to tattoo the name of an author or a book title on your arm, who/what would it be? “FSF 4 Eva”

Favorite book when you were 12? The World According to Garp by John Irving and The Basil and Josephine Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Favorite book when you were 21? The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Still my favorite.

Shoes you couldn’t get through fashion week without? My Bass penny loafers. I’ve decided flats worn with confidence trump heels any day.

Classic novel you’ve never read but know you need to? The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

Author you wish would show up in the front row at fashion week? Dorothy Parker and Hunter S. Thompson.  I’d like to sit in between them.

Photo: Kelly Stuart

Books on Film: In Good Company

Shakespeare & Co, Paris, February 2008, by Yoni Goldberg