IVIV (0) Dustjacket

[Mark Kohut]

Regarding the use of the word "a novel"....yes, it is JUST almost always
a label for consumer guidance. For stores to know where to put it. 

IF it is not there for some authors, it is because the belief is that all of the book's audience already knows that is what it is. 

This trend has accelerated since GR because of the profusion of books and the simple belief within houses that 'one must be clear"....[reduce to certainty--trp].....

I cannot speak to any real reasons why Gravity's Rainbow did not have the word "a novel" on it, but my guess is 1) they believed that there could be
no real confusion then (the confusion feared is between fic and non-fic) 2) it would sell by the attention it would get--true---and there would be no confusion....[my true story: however, I found my copy---a hardback copy;
I did not then know there was a simultaneous paperback copy and that this store, a Waldenbooks, had it low on a RACK! not on a table in the front. maybe the staff did NOT know to put it on the novel table?]


--- On Tue, 8/18/09, Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:

> From: Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com>
> Subject: RE: IVIV (0) Dustjacket
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Tuesday, August 18, 2009, 4:11 AM
> 
> David Payne: 
> 
> > 4. Are there meaningful constellations in the stars on
> the back 
> > of the dustjacket?
>  
> If you smoke enough dope, I'm sure there is. But I thought
> of exactly
> the same thing (and even spent a fruitless minute trying to
> identify 
> meaningful patterns in the stars). The back of the jacket
> reminds me 
> of this bit from Lot 49:
>  
> "Under the symbol she'd copied off the latrine wall of The
> Scope into
> her memo book, she wrote *Shall I project a world?* If not
> project
> then at least flash some arrow on the dome to skitter among
> constellations
> and trace out your Dragon, Whale, Southern Cross. Anything
> might help." (82)
> 
> > 5. What's with the way that some covers say "a novel"
> and others do not?
>  
> That's a very interesting question, and it seems that
> Penguin Press had
> a hard time deciding whether to label IV a novel or not.
> The design has
> shifted back and forth a number of times, and even though
> the published
> version says "a novel" on the front cover, the image
> displayed on Penguin's
> website doesn't:
> 
> http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781594202247,00.html?Inherent_Vice_Thomas_Pynchon
>  
> - and neither does the cover of the Advance Uncorrected
> Proof, as shown here:
>  
> http://www.thomaspynchon.com/inherent-vice.html
>  
> On the one hand, the genre label on the cover of IV does
> seem rather 
> innocent. Many American books are identified on the cover
> as “a novel,” 
> and in most cases this label should just be considered a
> piece of helpful 
> consumer guidance. On the other hand, I would say that this
> seemingly 
> innocent label does have a say in how we approach the work
> in question. 
> Of course, the vast majority of long, fictional prose works
> are novels, 
> so the label would seem to state the obvious. I do think,
> however, that 
> the explicit categorization of the text as a novel already
> in advance 
> guides the reception along certain paths while cutting it
> off from other 
> paths. 
>  
> Take GR, for instance, which didn't classify itself as a
> novel in 1973. 
> Even though most critics predictably enough considered the
> work a novel 
> anyway, the lack of a publisher- and/or author-sanctioned
> genre label 
> allowed a few critics to take other, more unconventional
> approaches to 
> the text. In 1976 Edward Mendelson began his essay on
> Gravity’s Rainbow 
> with the following observation:
>  
> "In both its range and, one may predict, its cultural
> position, Gravity’s 
> Rainbow recalls only a few books in the Western tradition.
> To refer to it 
> as a novel is convenient, but to read it as a novel – as
> a narrative of 
> individuals and their social and psychological relations
> – is to misconstrue 
> it. Although the genre that now includes Gravity’s
> Rainbow is demonstrably 
> the most important single genre in Western literature of
> the Renaissance 
> and after, it has never previously been identified.
> Gravity’s Rainbow is 
> an encyclopedic narrative [...]." 
>  
> And in his review of AtD Luc Sante writes of Pynchon’s
> “impatience with 
> the limits of the novel form,” argues that “Pynchon
> thinks on a different 
> scale from most novelists, to the point where you’d
> almost want to find 
> another word for the sort of thing he does,” and
> characterizes his previous 
> works as “extended prose poems.”
>  
> Of course Mendelson and Sante could have made the same
> arguments even if 
> GR HAD labeled itself "a novel," but their attempts to
> consider Pynchon’s 
> works outside the bounds of the novel genre would have been
> much less 
> obvious if Pynchon or Viking from the beginning had
> categorized GR as a 
> novel. The absent genre label on GR simply expands the
> limits of what can 
> be said of the text and enables alternative
> contextualizations, across usual 
> genre divisions. 
>  
> Case in point: David Foster Wallace's wonderful Infinite
> Jest does share a 
> number of formal and thematic similarities with GR, and it
> exhibits a
> similar desire to experiment with the limits of the novel
> form. Still, on
> the front cover of IJ, in a metallic, shiny and very
> visible oval, IJ
> proudly proclaims itself "a novel," and despite its formal
> innovations it
> has had to settle for being considered just that by the
> critics.
>  
> http://booksellercrow.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2008/01/20/infinite_jest_cover.jpg
> 
>  
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