Book design for the paperback Less Than Zero

This is an example of my buying a book mainly because of how intriguing the cover was.  Time and place are important in fiction, and I particularly like novels that are set in a city and give the reader a sense of what it was like to be in that city at a certain moment in its history.  So the picture of Los Angeles vanishing in mist, or smog rather, and the description of the story on the back cover as "set in Los Angeles in the early 1980s," together piqued my interest.  In a nutshell, the novel is about the boredom, drug-use, apathy, and nihilism of a group of Hollywood kids during the early stages of the MTV era.  The cover photograph, and the abundance of white/nothingness, does a good job of evoking this "lost generation."  Now, having read most of the book, it also hints at one of the images repeated throughout the story: a billboard that states, "Disappear here."

There are numerous editions of Less Than Zero, all with different cover art; this one is published by Vintage.  The cover design is by David J. High and the cover photograph is by Chris Hiller.