After many words, it’s time for some pictures!
And so, here are images of the covers of the successive editions of Face of a Hero.
First, here’s the exterior art of the Harcourt, Brace and Company’s 1950 first edition of the novel. This illustration by Ben Shan shows a man’s face, above which is superimposed an image of a group of B-24s under attack by enemy fighters. The painting is finished in shades of red – bright red to black-red – while for the airplanes, and the circle superimposed on the figure’s right eye, the only other color is no-color-at-all: white. It seems that rather than create a literal rendering of a B-24 in flight, or, an aircrew standing before their plane, Shahn has taken the novel’s title quite literally, and simply shown a man’s “face”, the group of airplanes almost being an afterthought.
The title page is straightforward in presenting the book’s title and publisher, but it maintains a theme of military aviation through the sketch of an airman’s helmet, goggles, and oxygen mask. Oddly, for a novel set relatively late in the Second World War (1944 through early 1945) the sketch shows an A-8 oxygen mask, dating from 1940. The name of this little sketch’s artist isn’t listed.
Here’s a close-up of the sketch…
…which is embossed on the front cover in red.
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Pocket Books’ 1951 paperback edition of Face of a Hero is very, very different, and not just in size and binding! Al Schmidt’s cover art is very literal to the novel, featuring a clench-jawed aerial gunner pressing the firing handles of his twin fifty-caliber machine-guns, as a flaming German fighter plane – visible through his turret’s broken plexiglass – dives to earth. Well, the painting certainly catches your attention and unambiguously communicates the nature of the story. But, there’s a problem here: Being that our determined gunner has neglected to actually don either his oxygen mask, and assuming that his plane is at typical B-24 bombing altitude (certainly above 15,000 feet), he’d have a hard time staying conscious. (Oops.)
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The Popular Library (US, New York), and Panther (UK) paperback editions of Face of a Hero (British title The Sky is a Lonely Place), both published in 1959, approach the novel’s cover illustration in a manner utterly different than by Shan and Schmidt. Both cover paintings are mild variations on a theme of Good Girl Art, albeit much more so for the Popular Library than the Panther edition. The latter is a bit more sedate, in 1960s drugstore-spinning-metal-book-rack-romance-novel kind of way. But, I guess this would’ve helped sales!
The reader unaware of the true nature of Face of a Hero would be surprised (and disappointed?) to discover that there’s no romance in the novel, and whatever eroticism is present (if one can charitably deem it eroticism in the first place!) is intentionally characterized as fleeting, perfunctory, and coarse. At best.
Popular Library edition, cover art by Raymond Johnson
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Panther edition, artist unknown
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Steerforth Press’s 1999 publication of Face of a Hero, the impetus for which arose from Lou Pollock’s 1998 letter to the London Sunday Times concerning the ostensible parallels between Falstein’s novel and Catch-22, bears a cover design that is simple and completely realistic: Instead of image symbolizing the story, or, a realistic and detailed depiction of a B-24 Liberator in combat, we have a instead a portrait of Louis Falstein in flying gear with a B-24 as a backdrop, as shown in this post. Smartly, the publisher added indirect praise for Falstein’s novel by mentioning Catch-22 on the cover.
As an homage to or inspired by the book’s 1950 Harcourt, Brace and Company edition, the publisher included an element from that edition’s title page: An aviator helmet with goggles.
It would be interesting to consider the design and art of a future edition of Face of a Hero, but as of 2022 – and a world where collective knowledge of the Second World War is inexorably sliding beyond the horizon of memory – I think that eventuality is nil. C’est la vie.
Just Three References…
Falstein, Louis, Face of a Hero, Harcourt, Brace & Company, New York, N.Y., 1950
Falstein, Louis, Face of a Hero, Pocket Books, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1951
Falstein, Louis, Face of a Hero, Steerforth Press, South Royalton, Vt., 1999