Johnathan Coe other books and Context for What the Carve Up

Bio and the context of What a Carve Up

Childhood and breakthrough

In august  16th 1961 John was born in a suburb of south-west of Birmingham. In short his parents were were busy professional workers; his father worked in the physicists industry whist his mother was a teacher. His fascination of writing book started when he was a kid. The most interesting face about his first book is that the first few pages of the what a Carve Up contain content from his first book, The Castle of Mystery.

Through out his school days, he developed his writing skills and eventually wrote his first ever full- length novel and sent it to a publisher. After school, he attended Trinity College where he wrote a number of short book and another full-length novel, The Sunset Bell. Warwick University was the place where he won a decorate for his thesis on Henry Fielding's Tom Jones. His first breakthrough to the industry came when he completed The Accidental Woman, the first of many novels that were sent to publishers. The book was finally published by Duckworth in April of 1987.

What a Carve Up

What a Carve up was a movie that the BBC screen 20 years before he wrote a book with the same title. The movie was notable for noticeable for starring Sid James. He watched the screening as a child and really enjoyed the comedy movie. This caused him to repeatedly watch the movie during the two decades.

What a Carve Up is based on the changes made by then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. In terms of culture, this was a time period of civil unrest caused by the Falkland Island invasion and large protest due to government dismantling of heavy industry. The Thatcher era saw the rise of people working in the stock exchange having better salaries and people purchasing more their social houses. Many of these aspects of this era were incorporated in to the plot.

As I have not decided which to read yet, I am still investigating each writer's books. 

Other books 

This is one of many of Johnathan Coe's books. The cover for the the Rotter's club shows two young people that has the title above them and other content side of them. The overall design reminds me of period somewhere from 1930's to 1970's due to their clothes and the colour scheme. This suggests

In this book cover,  we have iconic signifiers, the characters wearing, and and the indexical signs, the threatening facs. Combining these signs together results in book showing  2 threatening males standing and staring at something.  This implies that these characters live in harsh environments where crime is committed. Their angry face expressions suggests that they are intimidated  and dangerous people to hang out with.

This book cover is a perfect example of an aggressive and retro colour scheme making the design look dynamic. The red and yellow symbolises the sense of optimism. This is keyword of the Pop Art applied into their drawing to ensure they appealed to a mass audience. This connotes that the story features a convention that symbolises diverse culture and the consumer boom.

This creatively designed book cover for Johnathan Coe's story shows elegant woman and well dressed man that connotes middle - higher class attendees. The use of elegant designed hats signifies European woman who take pride in looking good in public. This is effectively designed because there are loads of photos of middle class people in Paris wearing high quality clothes that enable people across the world to recognise the code. 

This is a great example of Johnathan Coe's book cover  looking very unusual due to the scaling. There is a large male's head looking down onto the people standing on the balcony. This metonymy may connote that this happy person has arrived in an island where it has small inhabitants. This iconic signifier suggests to the reader that this is a fictional story that has exciting an plot. 

The the only arbitrary signifiers are the title that tells the reader the name of the adventurer. The word' Guliver' looks hand drawn, therefore, it symbolises old typography. This enable the poster to convey that this story took placed 200-400 years ago. 

The size of the head makes the right section of cover the focal point. The eye is particularly noticeable because the eye has a large contrast between the blue and the white. 

There is a possibility that the book cover was produced digitally. The clean and straight lines may suggests that this was not hand drawn. If it was developed on paper, the artist must of had a high quality pencil, wax for the colouring and screen printing equipment for the silhouettes.  

references:

http://www.jonathancoewriter.com/biography.html
http://www2.hlss.mmu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/jonathancoe.jpg
http://www.jonathancoewriter.com/books/rottersClub.html
http://www.jonathancoewriter.com/books/storyOfGulliver.html
http://www.jonathancoewriter.com/books/expo58.html