Fwd: Cape CL49

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

Yes, Tore's list of changes is awesome.


On Tue, 11 Sep 2012, Don Higgins wrote:

> Thanks. That saves me a lot of time. Yeah, I had a feeling they would be errors. 
> "such times often brought her near panic" (Lip, 12) is changed to "such things often brought her near panic" (Pic, 7).
> So the British V. and the U.S. Lot 49. The Bantam paperbacks are better each time, though only slightly with regard to V.. Why wouldn't Vintage go back to Cape as was done with V.?And why doesn't anyone care? 
> On to GR. 
> --- On Tue, 9/11/12, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> Subject: Fwd: Cape CL49
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>, "Don Higgins" <bencanard2000 at yahoo.com>
> Date: Tuesday, September 11, 2012, 10:30 AM
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Tore Rye Andersen
> Date: Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 2:21 AM
> Subject: Re: Cape CL49
> To: against.the.dave at gmail.com
>
> I'm not currently subscribed to the p-list, but saw the posts about
> textual variations in Lot 49 and thought I'd pipe up - feel free to
> forward to the list:
>
> The Cape '67 Lot 49 is just a reprint of the Lippincott edition, same
> pagination (183 pages) etc. In 1974, Penguin published a paperback,
> which was also based on the American text, but had a different
> pagination.
>
> In 1979, however, when Picador published their paperback edition, the
> text was changed significantly. As opposed to the first two British
> editions of the novel, the Picador edition employs British orthography
> throughout (substituting gray for grey, windscreen for windshield,
> towards for toward etc.). Furthermore, the Picador edition and
> subsequent Vintage editions (which are reprints of the 127-page
> Picador edition) have sometimes even dropped entire sentences. So
> hyphenations are really the least of it...
>
> A few examples:
>
> The sentence on p. 19 of the Lippincott/p. 10 of the current Harper
> edition which reads ""No," said Oedipa, and told him all" is missing
> in the Picador/Vintage (p. 12).
>
> A brief passage on p. 122/99 which reads: "[...] he went on, trying a
> smile. "Always just that little percent on the wrong side of breaking
> even. Twenty-three years" is also missing in the Picador/Vintage (p.
> 84).
>
> Mucho's exclamation on p. 144/118: "Because the world is so abundant.
> No end to it baby" has gone AWOL in the Picador/Vintage (p. 99).
>
> The phrase "some headlong expansion of himself, some visit" on p.
> 178/147 is likewise missing in the Picador/Vintage (p. 123).
>
> There are also a number of significant misprints in the
> Picador/Vintage editions:
>
> On p. 126/102 (Lippincott/Harper), Oedipa feels "wetness against her
> breast." In the Picador/Vintage (p. 87), she feels "wetness against
> her breasts" - a slightly more sexualized Oedipa in the Uk editions,
> then.
>
> A worse misprint is found in the important passage about the old
> sailor and dt/delta t: In Lippincott/Harper (p. 129/105), delta t is
> described as "a vanishingly small instant in which change had to be
> confronted at last for what it was" - which makes perfect sense. In
> the Picador/Vintage, however, "change" has been replaced with the
> equally loaded word "chance" - transforming the dense passage into
> gibberish, more or less. But since 1979, that gibberish is what most
> European readers of The Crying of Lot 49 have had to cut their teeth
> on.
>
> In other words, to describe the differences introduced in the Picador
> (transforming American English to British English, dropping sentences,
> introducing misprints) as "textual variations" would really be too
> kind: they're errors, plain and simple, which should really cause us
> to react as Bortz:
>
> "Oedipa showed him the paperback with the line in it. Bortz, squinting
> at the page, groped for another beer. “My God,” he announced, “I’ve
> been Bowdlerized in reverse or something.” He flipped to the front, to
> see who’d re-edited his edition of Wharfinger. “Ashamed to sign it.
> Damn. I’ll have to write the publishers. K. da Chingado and Company?
> You ever heard of them? New York.” He looked at the sun through a page
> or two. “Offset.” Brought his nose close to the text. “Misprints. Gah.
> Corrupt.” He dropped the book on the grass and looked at it with
> loathing."
>
> All best,
>
> Tore
>