Fwd: Library of America
Mark Kohut
mark.kohut at gmail.com
Tue Aug 8 20:47:40 UTC 2023
Hello Back---
The LOA "philosophy" is, usually ,to do all, almost all, of an author. The
original model was the French Plieade editions. I was tangentially "there"
due to a boss who thought this pup was smart enough to be asked questions.
This American pup did not even know of the French Plieade editions, lol...
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/books/reading-and-writing-an-american-pleiade.html?searchResultPosition=1
All that a writer wants to call his "Collected Work" if that person,
as Roth was and DeLillo is, is still alive. Preparing and publishing such
a prolific writer all at once is not optimal for sales. Library budgets
are annual, so........I cannot imagine not continuing with DeLillo.
They take a lot of work and money to get done.
It is my circumstantial-evidence-only opinion that Pynchon has rejected,
will continue to reject, any LOA treatment..Or else he would have
been there before some we know. Remember when Candida got* Gravity's
Rainbow* into the elite Everyman's Library editions---catalogued
and everything---then Tom left her for Melanie and that edition never ever
appeared.(I'll bet this was part of Tom's unhappiness with Candida, who was
a force beyond her writers sometimes.... Remember when V was a Modern
Library edition---I have
that edition and is the one I finished it with---until it wasn't? I'll bet
Tom killed that too....
For similar reasons for why he would never give a Nobel speech, he does not
want his fiction in such elite-segregated form, imo.
Mark
On Tue, Aug 8, 2023 at 3:42 PM rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all
>
> I've been reading the first LoA volume of Don DeLillo's 80s novels (a
> second volume covering the 90s will be out later this year). I would agree
> it is the high point of DD's career overall, but I wonder if the two
> volumes will be it. Which also leads me to wonder whether Pynchon will be
> so presented in future (fwiw, I think it may be hard to form a collection
> for those writers who have written several large novels like Pynchon or
> Gaddis)
> I do intend to next read the Portis LoA collection discussed here
> previously.
>
> rich
> --
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>
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