N(exctly)P - Valley of the Dolls

[matthew cissell]

Hi all,

    NPR has a piece (
http://www.npr.org/2016/07/02/484384679/valley-of-the-dolls-still-sparkling-at-50
) on Jacqueline Susann's "Valley of the Dolls" that is "still Sparkling at
50".  Apparently Candace Bushnell was inspired by it and calls it a "darn
good read". Must have been because it was at the top of the NYT Best Seller
List for a long time, about a year. That was 1966.

    You know what came out in May '66, right? Yep, The Crying of Lot 49.
And TP's little novel didn't make it to the NYT BS list. But which book
would you say has the greater cultural capital now? Which do you think has
"performed" better over time? If you guessed CL49 then eat a cookie.

   By using Amazon book rankings, I have tracked and compared Pynchon's
novels over and against other novels that came out at the same time. I did
this for about two years. The numbers clearly lean in Pynchon's favor.

  Now if you think that focuses too much on book sales, I would urge you to
look in other areas. For example, it is Pynchon who gets on The Simpsons
and whose book is read by Don Draper.

   Also, perform a survey of people around you (better yet with undergrads
and grad students and profs) and ask them if they recognise the names (TP,
Jacqueline Susann, etc.) and then ask them if they can name any works by
those authors.

In Greece at the IPW I asked attendees how many had read "Valley of the
Dolls" and of course John Krafft's hand went up and a few others but
clearly a number of Pynchon scholars didn't recognise the author or her
novel. (That is in no way a criticism; I myself have not read VotD nor a
number of other books that came out at the same time as Pynchon's novels.)
This gives us an idea of the authors' respective amounts of capital.

   We see at work two economic logics that give rise to two different
production cycles, one short and the other long. The "Best Seller" garners
immediate economic profits but it is not widely read as time goes on. The
other is oriented towards the pole of restricted production that disdains
immediate success and economic profit in preference for cultural and
symbolic capital. (See Pierre Bourdieu "The Rules of Art" p142-145.)

Someday I'll present that information in a more complete manner.

ciao
mc
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