trp biz

[Robin Landseadel]

On Jul 22, 2009, at 1:05 PM, Doug Millison wrote:

> Since they all appear to have achieved perennial backlist bestseller  
> status - in print continuously, steady sales, foreign language  
> versions, reprints with new covers, taught in college lit courses &  
> etc., I imagine that Pynchon receives generous advances for his  
> books and otherwise manages to profit from them and live the NYC  
> life to which he's grown accustomed on Manhattan's Upper West Side  
> if that's where he still lives.  If the publisher hasn't yet earned  
> back the ATD advances, chances are very good that over time it will  
> be a money maker, imo.  I'd also be surprised to learn that he  
> hasn't earned $ over the years via film rights options.  But I don't  
> know of any TRP endorsement deals, unless that's how you might  
> interpret some or all of the book cover support quotes he has  
> supplied over the years.

For quite a long time I worked at the wrong end of the book trade, as  
a wage slave for Borders. One of the main attractions of the job were  
the remaindered tables. By 2000 there were stacks and stacks of first  
edition hard-bound copies of Mason & Dixon—along with Delillo's great  
doorstopper "Underworld"—piled up on the rolling tables & on sale for  
about six bucks a pop. I think I bought about 4 copies of M & D. just  
to be on the safe side.  Mason & Dixon has a real good shot of being  
the least read* of all of Pynchon's books on account of the sheer  
anachronism & density of language—and a thing of beauty it is as well.  
Point being that the massive heaps 'o remaindered copies in no way  
slowed down the industrial strength juggernaut of the Pynch industry.

When "that useful substance" finally becomes legal [I know, I know— 
dream on] I'd like to visualize OBA as a spokes-smoker, probably with  
that stupid paper bag still covering his head, blue billows of smoke  
pouring out from underneath.

* Gravity's Rainbow is probably the one book that more people would  
claim to have read without actually having been read. And its language  
challenges  ain't exactly no Swiss picnic neither.