Below (and above on the banner) is the final cover design, commissioned by Water Street Press, for the book to be published later this summer. I think it does a brilliant job of capturing the
overarching – you could say “heady” – themes of the novel. Here's why.
Think of the cover as an easy-to-read thermometer displaying a temperature that’s diagnostically accurate and definite, yet without so much as a word, much less a number. What you see is no ordinary fever. Clearly there’s something wrong with the patient, but he just doesn’t seem to know it or care. Why?
By the way, the headshot is not supposed to look like the
protagonist, John Bertram (“Bert”) Gropes whose name was obviously mutated and
recombined from the name John Scopes of the original Monkey Trial. Although
Bert is endowed by genetic tampering with a unique and single gene from a monkey
indigenous to the Caribbean’s Isle Libido, Bert’s resemblance to a monkey is –
shall we say – more subtle than the guy on the cover. After all,
it’s only one powerful gene unique to a monkey that he carries.
The owner of the head – let’s call him “Humonkey Dude” –
is endowed with more obvious missing-link features than Bert. Note how the
vainglorious human in Humonkey Dude has attempted to mask his simian attributes, but
utterly fails. One can only imagine what
the rest of his body looks like. There are a number of “tell-tail,” if you
will, morphological features that allude to the whole story.
The hair on top looks pretty normal, at least in isolation. If you were to crop the
image from the forehead up, you’d think he might turn out to be a good-looking
guy. But his beard only goes so far in in covering his mega-monkey-like
maxillofacial protrusion, the kind that people can’t stop staring at, no matter
how hard they try, when casually striking up a conversation with Humonkey Dude. And there’s no toning
down his nose that looks like it can easily smell that banana daiquiri lip balm
you’re wearing four and a half banyan trees over.
Let's not forget to mention those water-jug ears. I read where
super-stud Daniel Craig, who plays a convincing James Bond, is self-conscious
about the size of his ears. I can even see Humonkey Dude emerging from the
surf, dripping wet, shirtless, causing every hot-blooded, bikini-clad beach
babe-oon to swoon. Even Barack Obama said, when announcing a federal
anti-bullying initiative, that he was teased in grade school about his big
ears. I would not be going out on a limb
to say that, compared to what others say
who are running for high office these days, Humonkey Dude’s looks imbue him with no less than industrial-strength
Presidential gravitas.
The tongue, however, is the key to the whole cover, and perhaps the novel itself. It’s
possible that the seemingly permanent panting pose Humonkey Dude strikes is due
to a rogue Miley Cyrus gene that could have been inserted into his zany zygote
way, way back when. But that’s not it. You
have to ask yourself: What is causing him to express such passionate feelings with
that patriotic unfurling of his flag? It’s what he sees. He’s looking up at the
words “The Hot Monkey Love Trial.” Clearly he’s moved by the title and what it
promises. The Hot Monkey Love Trial will set him free.
