[Bulk] Pynchon, books and readers
Matthew Cissell
macissell at yahoo.es
Thu Jun 21 22:16:21 CDT 2012
First, thanks for the responses. I'm a bit tardy to respond given that at midlife I've just now contracted chickenpox; it sucks. So I'll try for a brief response.
Before anything else I should say that Adam Roberts book is good in many ways, I just happen to disagree with his treatment of TP. (Mark, I understand your irritation at his use of the word "obscene". They said that about Joyce, too.) Roberts' book has added some things to my reading list at the very least.
When Roberts treats TP's book sales as driven by university syllabi, he is calling TP a 'writers writer', ya know, someone who writes books that are only consumed by students and professors of literature or the aspiring writers of the world. I suspect this is well off the mark. Part of my irritation is that he presents this view without evidence. I mentioned that I want to address this in my work and some expressed interest. I'll save you all the blah-blah and try to make this short.
One way to confirm Tp's presence in university syllabi is to find out what universities have courses that involve TP's work, how often those classes are offered, and what or how many of TP's texts are used. I reckon most places do not have a John Krafft with his admirable course (had I only know of it years before...). I also suspect that CoL49 is more often on class reading lists than GR. I don't plan to contact every university to find out, just enough to get a fair idea.
(Sidenote: I believe Martin Eve from Sussex did something interesting by showing the growth in PhD's involving TP in Britain. It's the kind of thing that intersts me.)
The more daunting task is to find out more about the readership; I am working on a couple of surveys to achieve this. One will be for the P-list but I suspect that more than a couple of p-listers came to TP through uni course work in the humanities. My real interest is in the TP readership that did not come to him through studies of literature, people like our house physicist (unless there is another) Mr. Prashant Kumar. The task is daunting in that I realise how difficult it might be to reach people and get enough respondants to make it worthwhile, afterall a study is only as good as the size of its sample.
There are a multitude of readings of TP's work that are very insightful and much of the study has rendered useful information e.g. about the Kenosha Kid. But as far as I know there is little information (if you know of any let me know) about TP's work and the place it has in U.S society and culture. I say U.S because I am aware that my study will be limited to the U.S even though TP has been important for writers and thinkers in many different places e.g. Elfriede Jelinek.
In other words, I want to plot TP's trajectory through U.S social space and triangulate his position. I hope that gives an idea of what I'm working on. If it's not clear I'll blame it on the fever and lack of sleep.
ciao 4 now
mc otis
----- Original Message -----
From: Tom Beshear <tbeshear at att.net>
To: Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es>; pynchon-l at waste.org
Cc:
Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2012 5:42 PM
Subject: Re: [Bulk] Pynchon, books and readers
Adam Roberts is a British SF writer of some distinction, tho' even he can have loopy opinions, i.e., that GR couldn't have enjoyed popular success -- we know that in the '70s the Bantam paperback told close to a million copies, on top of a lot of trade paperbacks from the original publisher. Perhaps it didn't sell nearly as well in the UK, which might color Roberts' opinion.
As for whether GR is SF, well, it was a finalist for the SF Writers of America's Nebula Award (won instead that year by Arthur C. Clarke's retrograde Rendezvous with Rama). The early 1970s fell during the last years of the New Wave in science fiction, a movement that saw a loosening of subject matter (sexanddrugsandrocknroll), a political liberalization, and a focus on stylistic experiments that rejected SF's use of transparent style (i.e. writing that doesn't call attention to itself). GR would fit comfortably on a shelf of books like Dhalgren, Crash, Stand on Zanzibar and The Female Man, let alone Harlan Ellison's short stories or works like Pamela Zoline's "The Heat Death of the Universe." GR may not look like SF now to a lot of people who learned about SF post-Star Wars (gadgets, anyone?), which set the commercial writing genre back decades, but it looks like SF of the time.
But at any rate, if Roberts says it's SF, it's
----- Original Message ----- From: "Matthew Cissell" <macissell at yahoo.es>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2012 10:01 AM
Subject: [Bulk] Pynchon, books and readers
Hey P-listers
Forgive me if this has come up before. Are many of you familiar with "The History of Science Fiction" by Adam Roberts? Its one of the books I'm chipping away at. In chapter 13, Prose Science Fiction 1970's - 1990's, he gets around to TP. First, he writes that GR, "has a plausible claim to be the greatest SF novel of the 1970's." Granted, Roberts does have a very wide definition of SF, but how many of you would call it SF?
Second, and this is where he really got my attention, he writes of GR that "it is too long, too complex, rebarbative and obscene ever to have enjoyed popular success (that it is still in print today is almost cetainly because universities require their students to buy it)."
The last bit is so speculative it hurts. Does he have any numbers about book sales or university courses? This is the kind of unfounded claim that I address in my ongoing work. I think one would find that CoL49 is more often included in sylabi at universities.
Mark, your mail is part of the angle missing from my field of vision. When will you provide a downloadable version of your knowledge and experience related to publishing?
ciao
mc otis
________________________________
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: Prashant Kumar <p.kumar at physics.usyd.edu.au>
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2012 9:32 PM
Subject: Re: Pynchon eBook Trailer
In filling in all around Pynchon, this would be an interesting exercise, getting and using ALL the facts and educated guesses
one could get........I kinda wish I had time.........
But, short answers to provide some framework.....Writers get "advances"--an upfront loan paid back by royalty deductions later---
upon which to live while they write their books. TRP had to get these, and especially of some liveable-on size after Crying of Lot 49..
We know by hearsay that he wrote the story that became Lot 49 because he 'needed' money, so royalties from V. (and any initial advance
for GR--if there was one) might have entropied his worklife. (is this a psychological 'objective correlative" for his early concern with entropy?
One might also remember how he was said to be always running in Positively Fourth Street...'fearing time was running out"? )
Anyway, he broke through into, perhaps, enough sales to live on when Lot 49 was published in paperback. He went wide. Lot 49 was
many readers' intro into his work and soon enough the Academy was assigning it so sales continued and grew.
Then GR was a legitimate NYTimes bestseller.....(minimum 50,00 sold, very minimum....surely over 100, 000, 200,000 then....and
earlier ones picked up again.....)
And he got grants......a macArthur when, 80s sometime)...a Guggenheim earlier?........
Bigger advances for later works, I'm sure...(aspect of book accounting not much known: an author can sometimes NOT sell enoough copies
to earn the royalties that pay back the amount they were advanced YET.....
the publishing company still can make nice money on the sales after deducting losses for unclaimed advances.....(work it out sometime w
made-up amounts....)
And, with Pynchon, unlike any flash in pan, literary or purely commercialm he has always been in print so is always earn ing some royalties...
i would essay this too-quick guess.....Today, 2012.....TRP sells maybe 5,000 paperback copies of all his books except GR and Lot 49....
(and, yes, that is a reductive generlaized number and I'll bet some plisters might want to speculate on the varying ongoing sales of the various novels)
I'd say 10,000 GR a year....and over 20,000 Lot 49 a year........
so, do some math....
And flame me for hasty stupidities......
From: Prashant Kumar <p.kumar at physics.usyd.edu.au>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
Cc: Tyler Wilson <tbsqrd at hotmail.com>; P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>; "against.the.dave at gmail.com" <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2012 10:36 PM
Subject: Re: Pynchon eBook Trailer
Stupid follow up question (it was me who asked the original): how does that translate into average yearly income?
'cos if we imagine (entirely for argument) that TRP gets 15% on books at $30 ea. and 100,000 (I have no idea whether this is a realistic figure) sales for the lifetime of a book, say 20 years, then that's a grad student's stipend of $22,500 p.a.
On 16 June 2012 04:30, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
I don't know 'nothin, Tyler, but if I have time i may try to get some answers...
>
> but your post remeinded me that I wanted to answer the post of whoever asked
> what a writer like Pynchon earns.........
>
> And the answer for most writers' printed books is 8 to 15% royaltes--from list price---per sale.
> A writer loses no royalties when one buys new from amazon, and such.....(some exception to that
> if the publisher has terms regarding lower roylaties if they have to sell at standard wholesale (and higher--what are called 'special sales") prices.)
>
> There are often bonueses for hitting bestsller lists---almost always the NYT...
>
> TRP surely had contracts at 15% after GR....earlier ones could have been lower--10--12.5%
> but have surely been renegotiated since........
>
> Writers typically get 50% of all
subrights deals.........paperback license, movie rights, Czech editions, etc.)
>
> One aspect of p's ebook deal that some in the industry wonder about is Why/How did penguin get all of them?
> Deals?...why din't they--harper, no slouches---fight to keep the ones they 'own"?
>
> Ms. Jackson and Thomas obviously wanted Penguin for all..........
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Tyler Wilson <tbsqrd at hotmail.com>
> To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Cc: against.the.dave at gmail.com
> Sent: Friday, June 15, 2012 12:18 PM
> Subject: RE: Pynchon eBook Trailer
>
>
>
> Any of you folks know anything about--or seen before--the artwork in P's eBook trailer representing Slow Learner?: the bird, the train, the pyramid... I have never seen those graphics, and it seems I would have by now, my not-quite-healthy interest long in the running. I've a distant recollection of reading that he did not at all care for the cover art of the
Little Brown first edition. (Can anyone confirm this?) So perhaps these graphics were created for the trailer instead?
> Can anyone school me?
> With all my gratitude,--T
>
>
>
>
>
>> From: against.the.dave at gmail.com
>> Date: Wed, 3 Jun 012 2::5::8 -500<
>> Subject: Re: Pynchon eBook Trailer
>> To: scuffling at gmail.com
>> CC: pynchon-l at waste.org
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 3,, 012 at ::7 AM, Henry M <scuffling at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >
http://greg.org/archive/012//6//2//thomas_pynchons_e-book_trailer.html
>> > greg.org: the making of: Thomas Pynchon's e-Book Trailer
>> > By greg
>> > Thomas Pynchon's e-Book Trailer. Four words that I, for one, ever > expected
>> > to type in this sequence, but here we are. After Long Resistance,
>> > Pynchon Allows Novels to Be Sold as E-Books [nyt] Thomas Pynchon on
>> > Kindle someday,
>> > but not yet ..
>>
>> Thomas Pynchon - The Complete Collection - eBooks
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urNQSSEEBGA
>
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