NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED

[Paul Mackin]

On Mar 23, 2006, at 12:23 PM, Jeremy Beacock wrote:

> ... someone posted only a couple of days ago regarding the first  
> paperback edition of GR; have become a little curious about GR's  
> publishing history just recently, and hoped that the old hands  
> could help a new poster out.

Gravity's Rainbow had an interesting and fairly unusual debut in that  
on that momentous day in 1973 ( in January I think) you could buy the  
same identical  book with either a paper or  a cloth cover. The   
paper version only cost $4.95.  Quite a boon for impecunious p-fans.  
Fewer people had to wait to finally be able to afford a reprint. (and  
get that smaller print and all the typos)

The point  of the Times article was that such a practice might be  
the  answer  to poor sales of literary novels.






>  I recently bought a venerable n-hand copy; soft yellowed pages,  
> old fashioned binding and strange foreshortened green gold cover.  
> It's a Bantam edition, still has typos (mainly homophones-  their/ 
> there kind of stuff), and a frontispiece proclaiming that NOT ONE  
> WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED; the fine print states that it is a March  
> 1974 edition, the impression given that it is a first impression  
> (i.e. no first details). Cover blurb quotes extensively from what I  
> assume are contemporary reviews  ¡]'It isn't plausible to call a  
> work of fiction great the week it's published, because the future  
> will decide that' - touchingly old fashioned in its modest ambi!  
> valence) - and the back cover namechecks Catch 22, Sotweed Factor  
> and Slaughterhouse 5 (& who reads those, these days?). $2.50, btw.
>
> Am not normally interested in such things, but the curious thing  
> about it is that I found it in Taipei, Taiwan; a cosmopolitan  
> place, to be sure, but still, not a place where one runs into  
> fabulously early editions of anything. All I have to suggest  
> anything of its history is that at some point it fell into the  
> hands of at least one (not terribly dedicated) language student - a  
> few tentative underlinings on the first page, a couple on the  
> second, a frenzy on the third, culminating in the tartan of  
> Prentice's blanket, and after that, nothing - and that it has been  
> sold in taiwan at least once before. Still.
>
> As I say I'd be grateful for any clarification altho' mildly  
> disappointed were i to find it's a late 80s edition; regardl! ess,  
> it's good to begin it again, especially on the Taipei MRT around  
> the 10th anniversary of the tawian strait missile crisis. A  
> screaming came across the sky, and all that.
>
> thanks for any help...
>
> JeremyB
>
> Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Make PC-to-Phone Calls to the US (and  
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