Books and Gresham's Law

[Tore Rye Andersen]

I just received my copy of Weisenburger's updated and revised companion to 
GR, and with 65 pages of new material - including illustrations, diagrams 
and useful maps - this really seems to be worth buying. I've always felt 
that Weisenburger's original companion was probably the best book on GR. 
More than most interpretations it really succeeds in showing the true 
accomplishment of Pynchon's novel.
My only complaint about the book has to do with the binding: I shelled out 
60 dollars for a nice, sturdy library binding, but whadaya know: Even though 
the cloth binding seems solid enough, the University of Georgia Press hasn't 
followed the standard U.P. practice of providing the book with a sewn 
binding - the pages are just glued into the book (unlike the previous 
Pynchon companions from the same publisher).
It seems as though books are subject to a version of Gresham's Law: Bad 
bindings drive out good bindings. The same tendency can be observed in the 
first editions of Pynchon's novels. V. and GR had sewn bindings in full 
cloth (and the small Lot 49 had a sewn binding with half-cloth); Slow 
Learner and Vineland had glued bindings in full cloth; Mason & Dixon had a 
glued binding in half-cloth; and Against the Day merely has a glued binding 
in papercovered cardboard. Nice dustjackets notwithstanding (and both M&D 
and AtD have beautiful jackets), the new books are simply not built to last 
as long as e.g. GR. Am I the only one who finds this a bit sad?

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