IV, buzz and book sales

[Charles Albert]

I suspect that most will come for PTA,  but hope that some will stay for
TRP...

Love,
Cfa
On Sep 30, 2014 10:48 AM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> The crowd seeing it at the NY Film Festival probably skews higher towards
> at least knowing who Pynchon is, and probably having read at least a book
> or two of his. It will be interesting to see how wide a distribution the it
> gets. The movie may be a gateway to the book, but I'm not sure that road
> leads to GR.
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: matthew cissell
>
> Sent: Sep 30, 2014 5:38 AM
>
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>
> Subject: IV, buzz and book sales
>
>
>
> 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 hillmc Otis
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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