The Overworld

THE OVERWORLD

A black Ink and black color pencil drawing on an 11 x 14 size coquille board. It appears in the book, "THE EYES OF THE OVERWORLD," by Jack Vance, published by Underwood-Miller in 1977.

A truly great philosopher once wrote, "The best that a man can ever hope for in this world is the love of a good woman, everything else is a very distant second best." So I've been thinking, and thinking, about what my distant "second best" can be, and I recall talking to a book dealer once who said to me, while his wife sat nearby, "Books are my passion, there is nothing in the world that gives me as much pleasure as reading a good book!" I smiled at his wife and said to her, "He means it's his second best pleasure in life, right?" But she frowned at me and said nothing! I must assume he told me the truth, poor guy!

But, I must admit that a good book is something special, especially if it's written by Jack Vance. I did however, have a problem when I illustrated his books because while I was reading his stories they were so absorbing that I often forgot to underline descriptive words and sentences, or to bracket interesting paragraphs that might make a good illustration. When it came time to do the illustrations I would discover that I had forgotten to make notations in the manuscript. I had to go back and re-read lots of sections in the manuscripts. Jack Vance made me work overtime!