IV, buzz and book sales

[matthew cissell]

Hey P-listers,

   How many of you folks spend time looking at those Amazon book sales
numbers? Not that it's clear how that number was arrived at (some
algorithm) but we get the gist: small number big sales, big number low
sales. It's the kind of thing authors look at, but so do some scholars.
Like John Thompson in his book Merchants of Culture (which was recommended
to me by our own wonderful Mark Kohut). In that excellent work Thompson
shows how an Oprah mention can turn into a massive change in book sales (as
was the case for Night by Elie Wiesel) but so can a movie adaptation.
Thompson focuses on Ian McEwan's book Atonement and how its sales spiked
after the movie release.

   It seems reasonable to ask how much the release of IV will change its
Amazon book number. Additionally, if buzz builds and the movie is nominated
for some award (see James English "The Economy of Prestige" on prizes and
awards) this should also have some effect on book sales. Won't this bring
TP's writing to the attention of many new readers? Will we see his other
book numbers tic upward? These questions are pertintent to the study of
Pynchon's work in that it deals with the growth of the reading community
composed of TP's readers and thus eventually the position and value of his
work in society.

   I think it would prove interesting to see how many people that view the
film 1) were previously aware of the author, 2) had read the book, 3) or
planned to read the book or others by the author. This could be done with a
short, well designed survey as people leave the cinema. Sadly, here in the
Basque country that is pretty much impossible for me to do. Anybody in an
anglophone urban area up for the task? Hey New Yorkers, any takers? How
about the UK crew?

  Harold Bloom (the once great Critic before the arrival of the Usurper
from Durham) has made his claim for the Bard as the inventor of humanity. I
would put forth that TP is one of a chorus of writers who continue to
reinvent and/or challenge ideas we have about ourselves, and as such this
writhing new world of paranoias and plots (for that is surely the sign of
our times) corresponds more to TP's fiction than the Weltanschauung behind
the aesthetic ideals of a certain critic, tempered though he be of late.

On a hill
mc Otis
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20140930/7eb70c10/attachment.html>