This Dutch book cover was made for Jonathan Stagge’s novel Death’s Old Sweet Song, which first appeared in 1941 and was later published in the Netherlands by Uitgeverij De Ster. The Dutch title is “death sues.” This caught our eye—and gave us a laugh—because it brought to mind an occasion when we rented a cluster of three bungalows with a pool in a Guatemala beach town. We partied all day and night and by the light of the next morning were shocked to see that the pool had become like soup, almost as bad as what you see on this cover. We figured it was a mixture of booze, sunscreen, sweat, windblown dust, and bodily dirt. We couldn’t even see the bottom. We felt terrible—but not terrible enough to intervene—as a hotel employee went into that bisque, to well over his head, in order to pull the drain. Later we found the meager remains of a hotel chair in the firepit and remembered we’d burned it when we ran out of firewood. As bad foreigner behavior goes, it was complete. We were banned from the place for life. They even taped photocopies of our passports up at the front desk—so said another group of friends who booked a bungalow there months later. And after we’d gone to town and bought them a new chair. Guess they never heard that holding grudges is unhealthy. Anyway, we found this cover in a Flickr group, so thanks to the original uploader, for both the art and the memory.
