When they said, "Don't judge a book by the cover," I nodded enthusiastically. I mean, yeah, it was a wonderful feeling that, for once, there was a piece of advice which I was already following.
I mean, come on, what does the cover tell you anyway? It demonstrates how good the cover artist is, not how good the author is. Even if the author did have a say in it, it only tells you how capable he is as a judge of art...not how capable he is as a writer. (Ah, well, THAT's a losing argument I know. I mean, if people take so seriously what an actor has to say on politics or sociology, no matter how reluctantly he is coerced to say it, what's the point someone telling them that being a good actor does not necessarily mean that he is an expert on sociology or politics?)
But it is not all that nitpicking logic which decided me on not judging a book by the cover. It was just that I cut my reading teeth on books borrowed from the library in Neyveli. And most of them were what we called 'bound books' with a binding that looks just about the same on all of them. If I had to judge books ONLY by the cover, Shakespeare and Mills & Boon would all be assessed the same; PG Wodehouse would seem just as funny as Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Which comparison, if you know PGW - and Solzhenitsyn of course, would have PGW spinning in his grave.)
So, from a tender young age, I judged books by the blurb and a bit of a sample read, rather than by the cover. The idea that people could judge books by the cover never ever crossed my mind...and came as a shock when I was told that it was indeed true.
It should not have been so much of a shock, though. I mean, if ever there was any other species which both prided itself on its ability to think as well as displayed extreme reluctance to apply that ability, I do not know of it. So, judging by the cover WOULD be the norm because it probably placed the least stress on what Poirot calls the 'little gray cells'.
I should have known, because books are not the only things that get judged 'by the cover'. I mean, how often do the opinions of people get discounted because he 'looks like a fool'? (AND given undue importance because he looks wise? That, too.) Or because HOW he says it - his accent, his inability to speak fluently - overpowers any assessment of WHAT he says. How often does a degree or a position automatically hand over the victory in an argument, regardless of the logic of the stances of the opponents? People get judged 'by the cover' all the time.
What, indeed, is racism or caste-ism or sexism? Taking the physical or social attributes of a person as definitive indications of their ability and/or character is but another form of judging by the cover.
So, while we keep prating of not 'judging by the cover', the corporate world, knowing full well that THAT is exactly what people will do, merrily keeps pushing products on the strength of the cover. The biggest margin earners are the ones which sell MAINLY or ONLY because of the cover! What we call big name brands.
And so, I still continue not to judge by the cover. The problem is I do not know whether to be proud or ashamed of it!
