SLPAD - 94 - Low-Lands - 7 - market

[Mark Kohut]

I do not think Cork literally bought Low-Lands for New World Writing....It
usually can't work that way.....
he might have sent it to or told the editor/publisher of New World Writing
about it.....but it might also have
come from Tom's connected creative writing teacher at Cornell.....

On Sun, Sep 24, 2023 at 2:43 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> From Reddit:
> Pynchon's editor was Corlies "Cork" M. Smith, who bought the short story
> "Low-lands" for *New World Writing* when he worked at Lippincott in 1960.
> After *Lot 49,* Cork took Pynchon with him to the Viking Press
>
>
> Thanks for the bkgd, Mark!
> Mr Smith probably isn't the one you were thinking of, as he came after the
> acquisition by Lippincott, but it does buttress the impression of NW as a
> prestigious outlet.
>
>
> Wow - imagine making the rent with 2 stories.
>
> Of course, having to be Fitzgerald would be rigorous (-;
>
> I went to the Strand a couple years ago, while quick-trip touristing in
> NYC (subways are so much nicer now than the last time I was there in 1982)
> (so much to see: 30,000 steps on the Fitbit & still couldn't sleep that
> night) - brought home John Crowley's book _Ka_ told from pov of a crow.
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 20, 2023, 7:00 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> New World Writing had a legendary acquiring editor, whose name I have
>> forgotten (at the moment).
>> Agents dealt with him?--not sure; maybe it was a woman---like they would
>> a publishing house, like a leading
>> editor at any of the prestigious ones. The leading legacy magazines--Sat
>> Eve Post; others---were not paying
>> nor publishing as during their golden age. (if I remember correctly,
>> Fitzgerald earned a comparative mid 100 grand (now)
>> one year when either two or three stories were published. )
>>
>> It was World writing....I remember Beckett's First Love; a Moravia, a
>> Landolfi.....others.....
>>
>> i used to collect these when in NYC...They often showed up at The Strand
>> outdoor table for 48c.....I read much in many.
>> I had the Catch--18 one; the early Kerouac; and others.
>>
>> Anyway, agents and publishers also knew that publication in New American
>> Review was also early marketing---buzz as they say.
>> Pynchon's agent Candida Donadio worked very well with the editor; she
>> corralled many best writers of the time BECAUSE she
>> could make them sell. She agented Heller, for example.
>>
>> NWR was gone by the time I entered bookselling. But its sales were
>> probably higher than NAR because the distribution was through
>> the newspaper/magazine outlets.....This wonderful mag appeared on
>> newsstands, in train stations, everywhere.......there was waste this way
>> but there was great reach......NAR did not get that the same way......but
>> it was healthily marketed and did sell very well.
>> I have some of those too, besides a story of TRP having lunch with
>> someone related. I am convinced, on no real evidence, that this is where
>> TRP first read
>> Ian MacEwan, some kind of friend or friendly acquaintance (or else he
>> would not have signed that letter decades later, imo)
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 20, 2023 at 12:12 AM Michael Bailey <
>> michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Diverging a little, even though I can hardly wait to get to the house
>>> description, this piece was published in 1960 in volume 16 of New World
>>> Writing, a paperback periodical first published by New American Library's
>>> Mentor imprint - and then, starting with said volume 16, by Lippincott.
>>>
>>> Wikipedia lists an impressive number of impressive authors - seemingly a
>>> step up from the outlet for "The Small Rain" which was Cornell Writer,
>>> itself pretty respectable.
>>>
>>> Kerouac, Gaddis, Picasso, Norman Mailer, Shirley Jackson, ee cummings,
>>> Borges, Tennessee Williams, Octavio Paz, Saul Bellow, W.H. Auden, Samuel
>>> Beckett, the first chapter of "Catch-18" and so forth.
>>>
>>> I can't find volume 16 online for sale at all; other numbers are, many of
>>> them, under 20$ though I did see one for almost 100. (Looking again, ones
>>> with well-known author signatures are going for up to 900)
>>>
>>>
>>> Impression I get is there were more of these literary outlets back then.
>>> I
>>> was thinking all the _Slow Learner_ stories except for "Secret
>>> Integration"
>>> came out in "little" magazines, but although I couldn't find circulation
>>> figures for New World Writing, the Wikipedia article on its successor,
>>> New
>>> American Review, shows a peak of 100,000 which is pretty good, isn't it?
>>>
>>>
>>> There's a current online successor of sorts:
>>>
>>> https://newworldwriting.net/
>>>
>>> Founded by Frederick Barthelme as Mississippi Review when he was working
>>> at
>>> the University of Southern Mississippi, changed to Blip when he left
>>> there,
>>> and to New World Writing in 2012 with the following comment
>>>
>>> "BlipMagazine has changed its name to New World Writing after the great
>>> literary magazine of the 1950s. They were, of course, thinking of world
>>> writing, whereas we are thinking more of the (perpetually) new world. We
>>> hesitated in any case, as it is a grand old name and we are perhaps
>>> insufficiently grand. Still, with some squinting, we are in the ballpark,
>>> or near the ballpark, or in a position from which we can sort of see the
>>> ballpark. Or so we hope and imagine."
>>> --
>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>
>>