The new Penguin Classics

While those orange-spined Penguin Classics paperbacks are justly beloved, even publishers get tired of the same old design. Witness Penguin’s new Deluxe Editions, featuring covers by notable graphic artists: Art Spiegelman for Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy, Seth for The Portable Dorothy Parker (with a hilarious cartoon bio of Parker on the inside flap), and Roz Chast for Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm. Though unfamiliar with Gibbons’ 1932 satire before taking the assignment, Chast says she found the characters ”all kind of nutty and very funny” and focused on them for her cover. Besides, she adds, ”I’m just happier drawing people than I am landscapes.”