1st of GR, etc ^

[Dexter C. Palmer]

	I think you're right: I'll be [quite happily] surprised if 200,000
people rush out like I will to drop $27.50 for a book from an author who
deliberately shuns the limelight, and whose only new output in the last 20
years has been a few essays, some liner notes, and *Vineland.* The only
comparable occurrence I can think of in recent times is William H. Gass's
*The Tunnel*, but Gass had been publishing nonfiction essays, collections
of literary criticism, and excerpts from *The Tunnel* continuously over
the thirty years he supposedly spent writing it.  I don't know if the cult
reputation of Pynchon will be enough to move that many copies. Sure, lots
of people have purchased *Gravity's Rainbow* and no one will probably buy 
M&D who doesn't already own a copy of GR, but a great many of those
people didn't like it (horrors) or (even worse) didn't *finish* it. And
think of all those poor college students who probably hate Pynchon because
their first exposure to him was having Lot 49 mercilessly diced and
dissected before their eyes by a bored professor in a 100-level English
course. They can't be counted on to buy M&D either.
	With regard to increase in monetary value, I have higher hopes for
my first edition, first printing copy of *Infinite Jest* (a book that
latched on to the market of Pynchon fans with pit-bull tenacity). There
were only 25,000 of those, with considerable successive printings (if
memory serves, it went into its fourth printing within 2 weeks after its
release date).  Not as rare as GR, or as good, or as cultish, but we take
what we can get in hard times. 

					--D.

P.S. When Henry Holt and Co. took out that ad in Publisher's Weekly a few
months ago with the cover of M&D in it, they announced that, not only
would there be a first printing of 200,000 copies, but a "major print and
*television* campaign" [emphasis mine]. I've seen neither hide nor hair of
an advertising campaign since then, but can we really expect TV ads? 
"Hello out there in TV Land. You may not know my face, but I'd really like
you to buy this book I wrote--" 

On Sun, 23 Feb 1997, Everett & Son Books wrote:

<snip info on prices of rare editions of GR>

> 	Henry Holt is reporting the first edition of "M&D" to be set at 
> 200,000 copies; "Vineland" was 100,000 in the first. Does anyone besides me 
> think Holt may be over-estimating the literary taste of America?
> 
> best, Dale.