SLPAD - 94 - Low-Lands - 7 - market

Sun Sep 24 19:04:53 UTC 2023

Could not be, I said to myself....they printed the legend as Hearst said to
do...
.....and NOW I know the whole story (and am blown away)...

In Brief: Lippincott bought New World Writing from the half-legendary
owner. (Cork Smith and
Sandy Richardson were Lippincott editors who got the EXTRA job of editing
NWW.....) Lippincott
owner said "we can get new writers this way too)....
Cork read 'Low-Lands" as a submission to the mag....read the why he liked
it.....He/they bought
it......Pynchon ALREADY had Candida as his agent....who, upon this purchase
called Cork up
and said, Pynchon is working on a novel......it was submitted entitled Low
Lands .....then Cork and
he worked on another title....
I knew Sandy Richardson just a little: I was at his wake too...I knew "Mac"
Talley a bit more---worked with him at my company.
I still know Sally Richardson, his wife---owe her a letter.....She is
publisher at St. Martin's Press and was
hired there as a favor to Sandy who was having an affair with her, his
secretary,.....

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Time_of_Their_Lives/btgXCwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=How+did+Low-Lands+get+published+in+New+World+Writing%3F&pg=PA1919&printsec=frontcover

On Sun, Sep 24, 2023 at 2:40 PM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> From the NYT obit
>
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/24/books/corlies-smith-editor-of-allstar-authors-dies-at-75.html
>
> ...Mr. Smith attended Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia and then Yale,
> from which he graduated, somewhat unenthusiastically, in 1951. A year
> later he went to work for J.B. Lippincott, a venerable Philadelphia
> publishing firm, and became co-editor of New World Writing, a
> Lippincott-sponsored periodical devoted to new and experimental fiction. It
> was there, while trolling through the slush pile, that he discovered the
> work of, among others, Tillie Olsen and Mr. Pynchon....
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 24, 2023, 5:09 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>>>>
>>>>