Red-spined AtD?

[Tore Rye Andersen]

I have a red-spined copy as well (in addition to a couple of green-spined 
ones), but it took some effort. After trawling through a number of Danish 
bookstores and finding one stack of green-backs after another, I contacted 
15 different online booksellers through the ABE Books site. Ten of those 
replied, and only one had a red-backed copy (which is now in my possession). 
This little survey is not strictly scientific, of course, but it does seem 
to indicate that there are more green-backs than red-backs out there. Still, 
there may be a warehouse or two out there full of as yet undistributed 
red-backs, and it may turn out that 125,000 copies of each variant were 
printed. But right now it seems as though there are more green-backs on the 
street.
The interesting thing of course is why Penguin has issued two different 
versions. Normally these things are done as cheap gimmicks, to sell more 
copies of a book (nerds like me can't live happily without at least a copy 
of each variant), but I can't really see Pynchon approving of such a 
gimmick. On the other hand, the two versions tie nicely in with the doubling 
motif in AtD, so Pynchon may even have requested two versions to be printed. 
And if John Bailey really has a red-backed British edition as well, as he 
writes, then there are (at least) two different British versions as well 
(the other Jonathan Cape version is black), and the color variation suddenly 
appears very deliberate.
Perhaps one should simply contact Penguin Press and ask about the different 
bindings: Was it deliberate, or was it dictated by the availability of 
binding materials? And how many copies of each variant were printed?

Just for the record: There are no internal differences between the two 
variants. The paper and printing quality is the same, and so is the ISBN 
number, dustjacket etc. The only difference is the binding: One has a light 
green back and brownish sides, and one has a red-brown back and 
cream-colored sides. Also the green back has a kind of waffled texture, 
whereas the red back is smooth.

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