Six Degrees of the Library Collection, David Sedaris to Chip Kidd

In the spirit of the theory of six degrees of separation - that any two people in the world can be connected to one another through six relationships - we bring you what will become a semi-regular feature called “Six Degrees of the Library Collection”-- a walk through the connections between seemingly random items in the HPL collection.

Humourist David Sedaris has a new book out called When You are Engulfed in Flames. Its cover features a Vincent Van Gogh painting called Skeleton with Cigarette.

Vincent Van Gogh is the subject of a biographical novel by Irving Stone called Lust for Life.

Lust for Life is also the name of a song by Iggy Pop that features prominently in the film soundtrack for the movie Trainspotting.

Trainspotting the movie was based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Irvine Welsh.

Irvine Welsh and fellow Scots writers Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith each included short stories to a book called One City, which was published as a fund raiser for Edinburgh’s One City Trust.

McCall Smith and Rankin, in addition to be a wildly popular writers, are both members of a committee that advises on the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, a prestigious British Book award which was last awarded to Cormac McCarthy for his novel The Road.

The book cover for McCarthy’s The Road (and Sedaris’ new title too for that matter) was designed by Chip Kidd, who in addition to being a leading book designer is an author in his own right of The Cheese Monkeys and his newest, Learners.