Low Lands as title?

[Mark Kohut]

Prof Krafft---
Here is the story---I went hunting thru Google Books with Low Lands,
Low-Lands and
Pynchon as the search terms, in order to find out what I could about
Low-Lands, pretty sure
contra the NYT obit of Cork, that it did not come into Lippincott as
'slush".....that Candida was
already his agent so she would have sent it.

In the course of that search I stumbled thru sections of different books
which did not have the answer
either way I was looking for.....until I found the one I sent to Michael
and the List.
As I sent, she did send the story to NWW. It was a short story
submission by an agent so not 'slush"

One of them, however, riffed a little on Low-Lands saying that Cork and
Pynchon (I think) talked
of other possible titles for V. and one of them, it said, was Low
Lands.--because of that scene in V., I presume.. (the manuscript had
been received with the tile as V. as you know)..

So, as I said, I saw no footnotes nor do I think there were any, so I trust
all of your research over this line
in a trade book. (Which are seldom fact-checked as you know)

Mark

On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 2:05 PM Krafft, John M. <krafftjm at miamioh.edu>
wrote:

> Mark, are you saying Low Lands was once a proposed title for the novel
> that became V.? For more than twenty years I've studied the evolution
> of V. from foul matter (the draft from which the fair copy for
> submission apparently was typed) to published novel, and I've read the
> correspondence between Pynchon and Cork Smith as well as interviewing
> Smith himself, and I've never heard that one. Given the proposed
> titles I know of, I'm skeptical.
>
> John
>
>
> --
> John M. Krafft
> Professor Emeritus of English
> Miami University
> +1-513-550-9114
> krafftjm at miamioh.edu
> www.ham.miamioh.edu/krafftjm
>