Judging a Book by its Cover

(I thought maybe I should do a series of brief write-ups detailing my reactions to the covers of books which I have not read.)

I think we should slightly tweak the word serendipity to produce a word meaning "the faculty or phenomenon of finding v̶a̶l̶u̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶g̶r̶e̶e̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶s ̶ WEIRD OR BIZARRE THINGS not sought for; also : an instance of this." I'm thinking serendopeity.

Okay, there's the obvious (so tired) yuk-yuk inherent in the title, bringing unavoidable thoughts of  diminutive pubic freeloaders.

I'm wondering if Mr. White has a flair for coming up with such vaguely disquieting book titles, since he's also the author of How to Catch Bottomfish.

I wasn't sure, at first, if this was actually the cover of a really cool novel about the perils of fast love in the city. Because I could see a hipster novelist going this way with the cover design of such a book. Nothing wrong with a lark like that.

But no. The crab you see on the cover is the sort of crab the readers of this book are presumably attempting to catch. It's a Pacific Coast guidebook.

I haven't read it. I am judging this book only by its cover.

I have to say that my first impression is that I feel huge empathy for the crab. I don't even need to consume entheogens to say that. The crab seems to feel the menace of the human pursuing him. You just know he would be looking over his crabby little shoulders in terror, if he had  crabby little shoulders to look over. The photograph is like the poster for a Hitchcock movie with an all-crab cast produced for a viewing audience consisting solely of crabs whose greatest fear is crabmen. Those boots are absolutely terrifying in this photo.

I also find this cover a little funny. Because we know catching crabs is going to involve a lot more work than walking on a beach and stalking a crab who just happens to be taking his morning constitutional there. Usually, we are going to need to go to Crabsville, the bay or the ocean, the tidal estuary and so on. 

Part of me wonders if the crab in the photo is dead. Have the eyes lost their magic luster of life? Does the crab look a little too dry to you? True, some of the appendages are dug down into the sand but that could be the photographer making life look more like art to look more like life. Look what creepy Matthew Brady did on the battlefield. Need I say more?

Would I read this book? Hell Yaw, Son. Don't think that means I want to catch or stalk or otherwise impede the life narrative of crabs in the wild. I just read everything. To see what's going on over there. 

I'd like to think the crab pictured on the cover of this guide is still alive and enjoying the Pacific froth and protozoa and algae as much today as he was in his crab salad days (oops, wrong choice of words). But my guess is he was whacked shortly after signing off on the release form for the photograph.

On the brighter side, I do think he will have descendants who will live to see America, the Vegan. And I don't think it will be that far off. McDonald's will probably be more about hydroponics than hydrogenated oils.

But now I have succeeded at doing what I set out to do with looking at this book cover, and that is get hopelessly lost and totally lose my thought trail.

Thank you very much, How to Catch Crabs.