Library of America

[Erik T. Burns]

Oh I thought it was comprehensive & chronological, instead it's a best-of
approximation.

Which is fine, even though I am not a great fan of White Noise. There is a
lot of really good work before that  including Americana, Running Dog,
Great Jones Street, End Zone and Ratner's Star. I do really like The Names,
and Libra is a masterpiece especially if you are at all given to
"conspiracies".

Amazons, too, is worth it.

A-and Underworld, well that will stand among the best of the century. Just
different and majestic.



On Tue, Aug 8, 2023, 22:07 Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> The volumes would have been, I suggest: V, Lot 49 and GR....(GR shorter by
> far than Underworld and so)
> Vineland, Slow Learner and M& D.  Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge. The few
> non-fiction pieces MIGHT be here too BUT
> since never collected, I doubt it. This might be the reason a couple pretty
> major stories of Roth's are NOT in his LOA editions.
> Never in a book.
>
> On Tue, Aug 8, 2023 at 4:47 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >
> > 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
> >> --
> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >>
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>