A New Ripper Book

[Jeff Leahy]

While I would agree, that your view on this cover is a moral, and thus a personal issue, I also think you have all got a rather over inflated and romantic view on the reality of business.

If Andrew Cook is to be condemned it is for the basic dishonesty of trying to defend the cover on intellectual grounds..

When in reality a simple….”actually I had no choice that’s what they decided” might have been a more reasonable and honest reply to the situation. I think you all over estimate the control authors have over their work in a commercial environment.

Authors and Producers with control tend to have so because of very small copy runs and or commercial potential, not because of integrality and honesty…

That said; thank God someone is prepared to remind us that we have responsibility..

If only to our own sense of morality.

Pirate

PS I hope you don’t mind if I don’t post on both Cook threads…this new casebook craze of 'multi threading' is doin’ my head in

[Robert]

Nats, I see what you're saying. The Jackie Kennedy thing was a one-off - I assume she changed her dress next day. If you click all the links on the left of the page, you'll see each page headed by little photos - maps, the backyard of Hanbury St, Michael Maybrick (I think), Carrie Brown (but in life, not the morgue pic). Well, if Stephen had put in one of Kelly there so that people would see it, but not see it, every time the page came up - that's the kind of thing I mean.

[Natalie Severn]

Robert,Thanks,I take your points.But I am reminded here alittle of Jackie Kennedy,who on her way back from Dallas was still wearing a skirt covered with her husbands blood and brains.She was asked to change it before stepping off the plane on her return to Washington but she refused saying----"I want people to know what they did to Jack". And thats the point I am making here sort of...
Best

[Natalie Severn]

Sometimes AP,when you talk about "Thomas", you conjure up in the mind a picture of a tragic young man sometimes with a child like playfulness and innocence,preferring to cut out pictures of women,lay them out and play doctors with their bits than join a distasteful adult world where rumpy pumpy gets forced on everybody as a duty to perform.Thomas is often presented as an autistic person, done out of his inheritance and done the dirty on by his Uncle Charles etc.Now Thomas might have been all these things,but if he really was all those things then I do not believe he could have been Jack the Ripper. Because the real Jack was a good deal more vile than that,and he was vicious and cruel in the extreme,- in my view a kind of " personification of evil".And I wonder here,might the ripper"s actual "work" be a problem for you when you are forced to really look ,at the remains of Mary Kelly?
Do you believe Thomas who you once said had a toy dagger ,could have actually done this?
I am being serious here.

[Cap'n Jack]

Whatever you do, Natalie, and whatever you say, there is no plausible, or logical motive for using this cover apart from a crass desire to make money from a sensational and disturbing image of a murdered woman.

[Robert]

That's just it, Nats : they will see it. They'll see it all the time. It's on the cover. Someone taking the book off the shelf to get at another book, might have his thumb on what's left of Kelly, without even knowing. So I'd rather the picture had been inside the book.

Don't put me down as a nutter here - I quite appreciate a good joke about the crimes, and I don't see why poor old Sutch should have got such stick. It's just that the casualness of the position of the image seems to me to be not quite right.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Natalie

You surprise me. Why should it be on the cover?

Hi Stephen,
I have thought hard about this .First I do respect the views of AP and others who feel strongly that to have such a picture on a book cover is pornographic and/ or worse ,and that such a picture might trigger violent tendencies in susceptible people.If this can be proven to be the case then I am certainly with those who would like it removed from the being on the cover of the book.

But the counter argument might be that Jack the Ripper has been somewhat glamourised over the years and his actual deeds obscured and minimised by the length of time that has passed since he committed the murders.
Therefore it is good to let people see the monstrosity of his crimes, and the vandalism of what he actually did to those who became his knife victims.

[Stephen Thomas]

I am not convinced that the picture should not be on the cover.

Hi Natalie

You surprise me. Why should it be on the cover?

[Natalie Severn]

Quite frankly AP I dont see why it shouldnt be the case that Stewart may have been involved. As I see it a recommendation would still be perfectly in order. After all Stewart isnt claiming he wrote it is he?
Finally,I am not convinced that the picture should not be on the cover.Jack was not nice,not at all nice and you cant hide from that fact when you look at the corpse of this once pretty, twenty five year old woman, who called herself Marie Jaenette Kelly.

[Monty]

Hypocrisy

Let he who is without sin and all that AP.

After all, the use of text from classic childrens literature in a book about a serial killer questions the high moral footing you stand upon.

Monty

[Cap'n Jack]

Yes, agreed, it is good to see SPE once again enjoying the 'insanity' of these boards... and I do hope he will stay awhile in Bedlam.
I'd remind him that it did take the Pirate quite a few posts to tease the salient fact out of him that he, SPE, was actually involved in the production of Andrew Cook's new work; and it would have been perhaps more suitable for him to hold his recommendation for that very reason.
But no matter, die is cast, and here we are.
It seems violently odd to me that Paul Begg has been given the opportunity to read this new volume by Cook, and SPE, has not, especially when he has been intimately involved in the publicity and production of the basic material designed to ensure this book sells.
In a similar position I would have slapped Cook around the back of the head, and told him to get that despicable cover off his book, and not bother with the documentary because it doesn't change Jack ****.
But hey. 'I'm just a soul whose intentions are good, please Lord don't let me be misunderstood'.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Stewart
Thankyou for your post. Its such a treat to see you back on the boards again and I can understand your exasperation about the unexpected trajectory this thread took ,before most of us could get hold of the book and read it .
Do stay here though,your input is so valuable and appreciated,
Best Wishes
Norma

[Ally]

Oh Stewart,

Asking AP to get his facts straight is like asking a blue whale to fly. AP doesn't even have a passing acquaintance with such pesky details as facts, indeed he can't be bothered with them in his own work and world so why in the world would anyone expect him to have his facts straight in regards to other people. He don't have them wings.

[Stewart P Evans]

Wrong Yet Again

Oh please boys and girls don't try and obscure my noble motive here by ascribing devious purpose to my simple message that the use of this image is incendiary and seriously tacky.
Oh yes I'll take a pop at anyone, regardless of their status or impact in this weird and fractured world we inhabit, but you see it was Stewart Evans who started this thread with a glowing, nay almost nuclear, reference to Cook's new book, and that was after he had studied the cover on the Amazon site. His silence in regard to the cover image is, I think, telling.But that doesn't mean to say I attempt to discredit the man for no good reason whatsoever, I merely question his good judgement in faithfully promoting the work whilst clad in the image we see.Part of the problem I have with this image is that I believe constant exposure to it deadens our normal receptors and responses to situations of horror, shock and mutilation... some posters here do exhibit symptons of such prolonged exposure to such an image, attempting to qualify or quantify the image as normal, simply because they now think it is so.
I believe almost all writers in this field develop similar problems with an image like this one, and begin to see it as a normal situation for such images to be published on book covers and the like. The lack of response from these writers is, I also believe, very telling, and does them no credit or good.
Same old story really, when you expect someone to stand up and be counted they are too busy on the studio couch.

The lack of a response from me has been because I have been enjoying a (probably permanent) break from the boards and the insanity that goes on here.

I started this thread with a simple recommendation that Andrew Cook was responsible for some very good books, and research, and that his new Ripper book would include a fresh approach with new information. Also that there was to be an associated TV documentary. I did not start the thread with "a glowing, nay almost nuclear, reference to Cook's new book..." as a mere reading of the initial thread will show. Also, I hadn't, and still haven't, seen the book.

Further this was not "after I had studied the cover on the Amazon site" as I hadn't even looked it up on amazon, I had merely been told that it was being advertised. I was totally unaware of what the cover was going to be, and, I believe if you check, at the time that I started this thread, 25 March, the cover had not been devised or added to the amazon pre-publicity. But that, as I say, is academic as I hadn't even looked at it.

I would appreciate it if this particular poster got his facts straight before posting his nonsense, and that he did not presume to be aware of what I have 'studied.' For those who have spoken on my behalf I thank you.

Goodbye.

[jmenges]

My interview this morning with Andrew Cook is now up as a podcast.

Thanks everyone for their questions,

JM