ABOUT JAY RYAN When I was working on my book I had a lot of struggling writer fantasies about “What will it be like when I sell my book, I just know it will be the key to golden happiness forever.” Well finally I did sell it and there were waves of euphoria sitting at my fucking desk in a big cubicle in an awful midtown office I shared with three other people, there were big huge washings-over of pride and joy but also unexpectedly much anxiety and dread, so much so that I didn’t sleep really for almost a whole week. I was coming into work like a zombie thinking Oh my god, did this really happen, I can’t believe it. So there was that part of it which I didnt plan on in any of my hungry fantasies, but one of the things about this whole wild experience that brought me true heart-busting no holds barred joy was seeing the cover art come into being at the hands of Jay Ryan. Early on in the process (and even in the “still just a dream” phase) I had some wacky notions about cover art ideas, things I wanted to try, but really to be honest I was so happy someone was publishing my book that they could have printed it up at Kinkos in just black and white and I would have been grateful, plus I’d heard other tales of authors not having any control over their covers and being disappointed etc. and having to settle for things that look to me when I see them in the bookstore like stock photography, like a stark white picture of a bed with nothing else in a blinding white room etc. But then one day at work my editor sent me a note saying “Have you ever heard of a guy named Jay Ryan? He does a lot of indie rock posters and I saw some of his work and I think he’d be perfect, we should see if maybe he’d be interested.” As it turned out I hadn’t heard of the name Jay Ryan but looked on the internet at some of his posters and recognized his stuff and was blown away by his work and got really excited thinking “John’s right, this stuff is good, oh man, I hope he goes for it.” And then as it turned out too, he had even already done a book cover (and the illustrations inside) for a very A-list author, Michael Chabon’s The Final Solution and I known you’ve seen that one and it’s a fantastic cover. So I was all wound up and crazy and sweating through ten shirts because this was the big-time and I had my fingers crossed—please, I thought, this guy is the one—and he read my book and he agreed to do it and I was incredibly grateful and happy. A little while later I got an e-mail from John saying Here are Jay’s ideas and I will never in my life forget the feeling of sitting there waiting for Photoshop to open up, it seemed to take a fucking year with all those names flashing at the bottom but then it finally did and I had an out of body experience looking at those sketches, they had my name on them and the name of my book and everything (the one bad part about this, but which is funny now, is that a woman came over as I was waiting for Photoshop to open, a woman I worked with, and she started making unsolicited comments about the sketches like Oh I like this, I don’t like that, as if she knew what the fuck she was talking about and meanwhile this is my dream, this is a once in a lifetime thing here and she had to come over at that exact moment and ask me some dumb question and start in with her commentary, but like I said, I guess its just kind of funny now and I’m not at that job anymore and she is still). Anyway, John and I picked the one we liked best, the one we both felt represented the book most truly (we both agreed instantly which one) and then Jay went to work and then one day, one boring day at work last summer John sent me the image, still in the early draft stage but in full brilliant color, of the girl flying the kite of the boy and I’m telling you the truth when I say I nearly wept tears of gratitude and joy, I loved it so much and it so exceeded every expectation I ever had about what would be on the cover of my book (if I ever even finished and sold my book, which there were plenty of days when I was sure neither would happen). We got the final version sometime in the fall—appropriate I think because of the tone of the book and the wind and blowing leaves in the lovely blue of the image—and the rest as they say is history. But its still recent history for me and every time I look at the cover, which I must admit is often, I feel blessed and happy that John had the idea to ask Jay and especially that Jay said yes and came up with something so brilliant that so perfectly captures everything I wanted to say in the book. Even if you buy the book and you’re not that into it, the cover alone is worth the price of admission. So that’s the story of my book cover, which is a huge deal for me but only a tiny little part of the story of Jay Ryan, which you can learn more about by buying his great book, 100 Posters, 134 Squirrels, which is out now on Punk Planet/Akashic Books. It’s a greatest hits collection of his rock posters (well, almost all of them are rock posters) and it’s a beautiful, illuminating book that I think you’ll love even if you’ve never heard of Shellac or Iron & Wine. I don’t know how to describe visual art that well (or any kind of art now that I think about it), I just know what I respond to, I know what moves me, and Jay’s work, especially when taken as a whole in his handsomely produced book, is some of the most moving art I’ve seen.

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