ATD marketing

[pynchonoid]

Maybe Quail's insider friends know the details for
Pynchon's new novel, but it's not uncommon for
publishers to begin planning and executing a marketing
(includes public relations and other promotional
activities) plan for a book many months in advance of
its publication, just as they begin to take orders
from distributors and booksellers in advance.  So,
while the buzz from these first events in ATD's
marketing program probabably won't last all the way to
December, they've certainly got the momentum moving,
quite a few journalists are now involved in the new
book's story and are likely to watch for further
interesting developments from the wacky blog-o-sphere
and online Pynchon cults - they prepare the way for
more coverage of the next events in the roll-out.

Maybe it's my imagination, but there seems to be a
whiff of disapproval of overt marketing tactics for
Pynchon's book, as if the art is somehow tainted by
the commerce of the actual object itself, which raises
a host of interesting issues that have been addressed
by more able thinkers than myself. This "disapproval"
(if that is the correct word) is of a piece, seems to
me, with the kind of Pynchon reader who does make of
TRP a sort of cult figure, readers who perpetuate the
myth of the "reclusive" Pynchon (in the face of
reports that, contrary to the received notion, he
leads a normal social life, responds to reporters when
he's interested in doing so as with Hajdu and Playboy
Japan, mingles with folks who make hit TV shows,
etc.), who attribute the power of his writing to drugs
rather than hard work and genius,  who otherwise treat
him as an idealized Artist who has somehow managed to
avoid all the pitfalls of celebrity and enmeshment in
tawdry commercial activities, and so on - instead of
accepting him as a complex, multifaceted human being
and artist who doesn't fit easily into that sort of
box of expectations. 

http://pynchonoid.org
"everything connects"

http://OnlineJournalist.org

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