The Cynglish Beat: What’s in a Cover?

I wanted to achieve a few things with this cover, besides keeping the pages together, 1. It had to draw a viewer's attention. 2. It had to have some class & a professional look (too many self-published books look like amateur shit). 3. It had to have a 'retro' feel, so as to harken back a few decades to the era of the real Beat Generation (Allen Ginsberg & Jack Kerouac, not Bongo Buddy & the Beatniks)