Shadow Ticket. Group Read 2026. Extra credit (which means not on the text itself.)..

[Mark Kohut]

Poor Me.

Since I threw a BIG Birthday party for the 50th Anniversary of Gravity's
Rainbow and have talked and
had LL stuff on TRP, I tried hard to get an Advanced Reading Copy of
ST.....a snail mail letter containing.
my most "famous' bit o' writing on TRP....accepted by the Wash Post but
then cancelled when a House writer, Michael
Dirda, turned in a piece that colonized my space on the book page....an
irony is I had been at the pub party for his memoir!...

But all I got was a free copy of the book, in a swag bag the weekend before
pub day.....

I'l send a pic of the swag bag soon....







On Thu, Jan 8, 2026 at 2:52 PM Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:

> The millennials (well, two of them) in my family are reading Shadow
> Ticket, and I'm guessing Vineland will get some renewed interest. In
> general, reading books (like vinyl records before) is in vogue with young
> people, along with book clubs. Surprisingly, not one of the eight
> millennials in my family has seen OBAA. Maybe books are on the rise at the
> expense of movies.
>
> On Thu, Jan 8, 2026, 1:37 PM rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I remember the big promotion spreads for M&D (at a bookstore in Brooklyn
>> Heights) and for AtD (at Coliseum Books, by that time on 42nd St, near
>> NYPL, closed soon after in 2007).
>>
>> I don't remember IV or BE having such promotion, certainly not ST, at
>> least
>> here in NYC
>>
>> One could argue Pynchon is just not a name that provokes such attention
>> anymore, at least with the general reading public.
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 8, 2026 at 1:01 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Scheduled to be published October 7, just in time for if---I I think it
>> > delusional but not because he doesn't deserve it--
>> > he won the Nobel...(awarded the next week)...seemingly all finished the
>> > usual number of months ahead--or more---maybe they held it back
>> > for this propitious award time? Because good books which sell by reviews
>> > and word-of-mouth mostly get planned for Earlier a bit, early september
>> > or even get them into stores in August---August is the worst month for
>> > reviews---"everyone" is supposedly on vacation--so early sales would be
>> to
>> > fans who learned
>> > of it and Pynchon has that cult as we know...
>> >
>> > Remember how rushed was the publication of* Against the Day*....I have
>> > publishing guesses about this for another post...)
>> >
>> > The publisher tightly controlled all reviewers' copies,allowed no
>> reviews
>> > to appear until pub date and anyone who got a lucky
>> > Advance copy was also approved and had to promise to not talk about it
>> > publicly in any substantive way....a common enough practice
>> > for important books, esp non-fiction ones full of factual spoilers and
>> > medis grabs....
>> >
>> > The result of so many reviews hitting all at once....be nice to know how
>> > many reviews there were and where is ....the early 'Advanced--advance by
>> > being ordered in advance--' copies as
>> > we called them flew out of the stores and there was an immediate
>> > out-of-stock state--even Amazon.  This state usually creates
>> > a supply  judgement problem and some lost sales......( Penguin for this
>> one
>> > did NOT follow the known lead of the publishers of Mason & Dixon and
>> > Against the Day,who overprinted willfully. First editions of Mason &
>> Dixon
>> > were on remainder tables years later...
>> > --
>> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>> >
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>