The cover for the paperback edition of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay featured the Empire State Building because readers didn’t like the comic book renderings on the hard cover edition, Michael Chabon said Tuesday.

“Readers were turned off by the comic book thing,” Chabon said. “It was a marketing thing.”

Chabon made the comments during a talk at Stanford University. The talk primarily focused on what he called the “ghetto-ization” of short stories.

Chabon told the audience to look at the short story medium as less strict with genres.

“I like to look at guys like Italo Calvino and Borges,” Chabon said. “They were right on the lines where they couldn’t be easily defined in terms of genre.”

To read the rest of the surprisingly excellent article by The Stanford Daily, click here.