Something I spend too much time thinking about is the cover of David Mamet’s 1986 essay collection Writing in Restaurants. Not because it’s necessarily good—because, spoiler, it’s really not. It’s a book that drives me nuts and I’ve tried to sit down with it more than a few times, and each time I do I realize that the only reason it exists is that 1. It’s David Mamet, and 2. It was the 1980s after Glengarry Glen Ross won the Pulitzer. Of course he could be like, “Hey, Penguin, I want to fart out my thoughts on how women drive me crazy and also on playing poker.” Just like just about everything about Mamet, from his work to his personal views, I don’t have to like it, but I do admire the chutzpah. I do love some of his work and I appreciate an angry Jewish man from Chicago more than just about anybody, but what gets me is that there might be no book cover more aimed specifically at me, even though I was only five when it came out. The cover for Writing in Restaurants really has it all.
Even though the essay the book gets its title from, “Some Thoughts on Writing in Restaurants” has basically nothing to do with actually sitting down and writing in a restaurant besides a mention of “The writer” who is sitting at a table while Muzack plays; it’s about—I think—“unproclaimed operative rituals,” as Mamet puts it. If that’s something you’re interested in, then grab a copy. I’m here to talk about the book cover. This is one of those books I keep on my shelf because I like to look at the cover so much. The font, the color, Mike Nichols giving an eloquent and very charitable blurb. But it’s the illustration by Roberta Ludlow that gets me. The cigar, the pen and pencil resting atop a piece of paper, and, most importantly, the coffee. I truly believe nobody at Penguin read this book and the publisher just told Ludlow “Hey, we’ve got a David Mamet book coming out called Writing in Restaurants” and the artist told them “Say no more,” and sketched the very literal beauty above, unaware that there’s very little in the book about the act of writing in an actual restaurant. I’ve been thinking about this cover again because I’ve found myself wandering towards random diners and thinking I’m going to go inside and get an hour of writing by hand in every day. I need to get away from the computer more.
I also got to thinking about the artist. I get really obsessed with book cover art, and I’d put the image on the front of Writing in Restaurants up there with some of my favorite covers of the era. But I couldn’t find much more of Ludlow’s output from the 1980s, save for the above cover for Don Johnson’s album Heartbeat that the actor released the same year as, yup, Mamet’s essay collection.
Other little bits:
I’m obsessed with Liana Satenstein’s Vogue article on the Bukharian queens of Queens.
This isn’t the point of the article on the anti-vaxxer protesters interrupting dinner at Dame, but I’d love to read an interview with the bouncer from Carbone. That doesn’t sound like an enjoyable job.
“To be one of Browne’s clients is to submit completely to his vision” - Loved this piece on Thom Browne.