Vineland Release

[Nicholas Peter Spencer]

Andrew mentions the pre-Vineland journalistic hype in Britain: the 
article entitled 'The Quest for Pynchon: close encounters of the word 
kind' was written by David Gale and appeared in The Tatler Dec1989/Jan 
1990 vol 285 no 1 p.188-192.  Gale manages to find out the street on 
which Pynchon lives, but not the house number.  He cals it F street, and 
walks up and down it for a bit, and then decides to give up looking.  
This story seems to be true.  In October 1989 I returned to Oxford for 
my second year of undergraduate study and met up with a pal who said he'd 
been working for The Tatler during the summer.  Unlike me, my pal had no 
interest in Pynchon whatsoever.  In fact he asked me, 'Have you ever 
heard of Thomas Pynchon?' at which point he proceeded to tell me about 
the Tatler story, the appearance of Vineland the following January, and 
Gale's quest.  My friend was the office lackey who took Gale's calls and 
relayed them to the subeditor, so he was privy to all the vital 
information.  After months of haranguing and pleading, I finally got my 
friend to tell me the name of the street on which Pynchon lived.

The other important feature of the Vineland release was that it was one 
of the flagships of Waterstone's aggressive attempt to take a larger 
slice of the bookselling business.  Waterstone's began selling copies of 
Vineland as soon as they got them, i.e., before the official release 
date, official promotion, reviews, etc.  I got my own review copy of the 
book from Secker and Warburg a week before the official release date and 
it was a second printing - thanks to Waterstone's.

Nick Spencer