Elvis Costello and the Attractions – "Everyday I Write the Book" (1983)

Chapter one: we didn't really get along

Chapter two: I think I fell in love with you

You said you'd stand by me

In the middle of chapter three

But you were up to your old tricks 

In chapters four, five, and six

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

Who are they kidding?  We judge books by their covers all the time.  Publishers know that, and design their book covers accordingly.

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Dust jackets for books are a relatively recent invention.

Until a couple of hundred years ago, publishers sold books as unbound sheets of paper.  The customer (who was usually relatively affluent) usually ordered a customized binding for his book.

The earliest dust jackets were akin to gift wrapping.  They enclosed the entire book, and were torn open and discarded by the book’s owner.

An early dust jacket

Modern dust jackets began to appear in the 1850s, and had become common by the 1880s.

After 1900, publishers began to spend less money on book bindings.  Colorful paper dust jackets were relatively cheap to produce.

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American women read more than American men – a lot more.  

“I’ve read at least 100 books in the past year.  Seriously.  Probably more like 150 to 200,” one woman recently wrote on a literary blog.  “My husband?  I'm guessing zero, unless you count picture books and comic books he has read to the kids.”  

(Two observations on that comment.  First, if she’s really reading 150 to 200 books a year – which I doubt – I’m guessing most of those books would make Fifty Shades of Grey look like great literature.  Second, I’d say the over-under for that marriage is maybe three or four years.)

The gender gap grows even wider when it comes to fiction.

“When women stope reading,” the British novelist Ian McEwan once said, “the novel will be dead.”  

Men account for only 20 percent of the fiction market in the U.S., Canada, and Britain.  I’m guessing that a larger proportion of the books read by females are literary novels.  (Book clubs consist almost entirely of women.) 

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You can a book that’s being marketed to female readers by its cover.

Novels set in Italy are usually intended for female readers.  

Any book with “amour” or “Provence” in the title is almost certainly “chick-lit”:

Books with the names of bucolic English villages (real or imagined) in their titles are also books intended for female readers – especially if they have something to do with a church and are set during World War II:

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Mystery is a popular genre of novel these days, and it’s usually easy to tell a mystery that was written for women from one that was written for men.

A book that features a protagonist named “Aurora Teagarden” and has a cat on the cover is definitely intended for women:

This mystery novel is obviously trying to ride the coattails of Gone Girl.  That mega-bestseller was a woman’s book, so it’s safe to assume that this one is as well:

Here’s another mystery for female readers with a gull-related title:

Here’s one more mystery aimed at female readers:

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This cover doesn’t look like one that would appeal to women, but women are very into vampires – so I’m assuming this a women’s novel:

Women are into dinner parties, too – hence, I’m betting this is chick-lit.  To take the analysis one step further, I’d say this book is mostly intended for young women from New York City (or young women who wish they lived in New York City) – the choice of that apartment building for the cover was no accident:

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The cover of this Danish mystery novel makes me think it’s not really a book for women – although I’m guessing it will be read by as many women as men:

In case you think that cover looks familiar, you’re right.  The publisher is obviously hoping that its cover will subliminally appeal to fans of this very well-known Scandinavian thriller:

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This cover mystifies me, but odds are that it’s intended for female readers: 

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“Everyday I Write the Book” was released in 1983 on Elvis Costello’s eighth studio album, Punch the Clock.  It’s not much of a song – it’s far from the best song on that album – but it was Costello’s first U.S. top 40 hit.  (Go figure.)

Here’s “Everyday I Write the Book”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Elvis Costello and the Attractions – "Chemistry Class" (1979)

You've got a chemistry class 

I want a piece of your mind

The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway’s Greenbrier Division – a 77-mile-long rail line that ran from North Caldwell to Cass, West Virginia – opened for business in 1900.  

It served farms, orchards, quarries, tanneries and especially sawmills, and was profitable until the 1930s.  But traffic fell off after that.  

The C&O abandoned the line in 1978 and donated the right of way to the state of West Virginia, which removed the rails and ties and opened the Greenbrier River Trail to hikers, bikers, horseback riders, and cross-country skiers in 1980.

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I recently hopped on the trail at Marlinton and rode north to Sharps Tunnel and back – a total distance of about 22 miles.

I spent the night before my ride in one of the two apartments above Appalachian Sport, which sells hunting, fishing, and camping gear and rents canoes, kayaks, and bicycles:

(My room was up the stairs)

I stopped for breakfast at the Dirtbean, a café, art gallery, and bike shop in downtown Marlinton, which is home to barely a thousand souls:

The Dirtbean café, art gallery, and bike shop

Marlinton is over 2000 feet above sea level.  When I hit the trail at about 10:30 am, the sun had yet to get over the mountains that rise on both the east and west side of the Greenbrier River valley, and the temperature was only 39 degrees:  

The high was expected to reach 65 or so, but that didn’t help me when I started my ride.  I put on two bike jerseys, a fleece pullover, and a windbreaker, and was still chilly for the first several miles of my ride.  (On the way back, I shed the fleece and the windbreaker.) 

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The Greenbrier River Trail – let’s call it the “GRT” for short – stays pretty close to the Greenbrier River (which flows south into the New River, which flows into the Kanawha, which flows into the Ohio, which flows into the Mississippi).

The Greenbrier River

The Greenbrier is the longest river in the eastern U.S. that has never been dammed.  It’s a good place to go canoeing or kayaking, and is popular with trout fishermen.

I saw a couple of dog walkers before I got clear of Marlinton, but didn’t see another soul on the trail  until I returned to the town two hours later.  

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I started my ride at the old Marlinton train station:

A short distance north of the train station is a large water tank that was used to refill the boilers of the C&O’s steam locomotives:

The next noteworthy sight on the GRT is Sharps Tunnel, which is 511 feet long.

This is what you see as you approach the tunnel from the south.  The bridge that leads to the tunnel is about half as long as the tunnel is:

Here's a view of the bridge from the trail:

Here's what you see as you enter the tunnel from the south:

Here's the view of the north end of the tunnel from inside:

Sharps Tunnel curves in the middle, so there’s a point where you can’t see the light at either end.

There was an elevation gain of roughly 100 feet riding from Marlinton to the tunnel, which meant that the return trip was a little easier to do.

Here’s my new bike at milepost 60, which was the midpoint of the ride:

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After the ride, I hit the local Dairy Queen for a chili cheese dog.  

I had originally planned to grab lunch at the Subway, but there were several people waiting in line and the woman making sandwiches reminded me of good ol’ Uncle Joe from Petticoat Junction – she was movin’ kind of slow.  (Marlinton’s too small to have a McDonald’s, Arby’s, or Taco Bell, which are my go-to fast food franchises.)

I left town on WV 39, a winding two-lane highway that went up and down through the mountains.  The views were beautiful, but I would have enjoyed them more if I had been a passenger instead of the driver.

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I spent a good part of my GRT ride listening to Armed Forces, Elvis Costello’s third album.

Writing in Rolling Stone, Janet Maslin thought the album’s lyrics were almost too clever for their own good:

There's an overload of cleverness on the LP – more smartly turned phrases than twelve songs ordinarily could bear. . . . Costello's songs are dense the way Bob Dylan's used to be, driven by the singer’s faith that if this line doesn't get you, the next one will, and compressed so tightly that they lend themselves to endless rediscovery.  He has something like the younger Dylan's rashness, too, being hotheaded enough to oversimplify anything for the sake of a good line, and being a good enough writer to get away with it.  His puns are so outrageous they're irresistible. 

The U.S. album cover

Matt LeMay of Pitchfork questioned whether the album was well-served by its “extravagantly layered” production – which was characterized by “dense instrumentation and rich, effusive textures,” and which “often serves to conceal, rather than reveal the nuances of Costello's songwriting”:

In the end, the greatest strength of Armed Forces may be the same thing that makes it less viscerally powerful than Costello's two prior records – its songs absolutely demand to be appreciated for their craftsmanship. 

I disagree.  Most pop records exhibit too little craftsmanship, not too much.  Some records benefit from bare-bones arrangements and heart-worn-on-the-sleeve vocals, but Armed Forces is the better for its smart (and smart-ass) lyrics and tour de force production.

Click here to listen to “Chemistry Class.”

Click here to order it from Amazon.