THOMAS PYNCHON

American Novelist

An Enquiry into the Nature: Aloes Books and the Thomas Pynchon “Piracies”

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Editor’s Note: This article, by Florina Jenkins, originally appeared on the UK Antiquarian Booksellers Association’s website but disappeared after a site re-design. Fortunately, I was able to find it here. I’ve “rescued” this article and another one, as well, so that the information remains available for the curious.

It was seeing one of our American colleagues recently describing them as “a group of bootlegged Thomas Pynchon chapbooks printed in the UK” that brought back to mind a delightful piece of original research carried out by Florina Jenkins for a London Rare Books School essay. To set the record straight, here is a pared-down version of her findings.

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In Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, Oedipa Maas, starting with a pirated paperback, attempts to find and decode the definitive text of a mysterious Jacobean revenge play. Inspired by Oedipa’s labyrinthine investigations, I embarked on a quest in search of Pynchon’s own “pirated editions.” The Clifford Mead bibliography (1989) lists six “unauthorized editions” of early Pynchon stories – elsewhere calling them “piracies” – all published in England between 1976 and 1983. Four of these, the subject of the present piece, were published as pamphlets by Aloes Books, a London-based small independent press.

Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937) is one of the most remarkable contemporary American novelists – the “most monstrous talent in the post-war West” according to Time Out. Famously, he shies away from the media, grants no interviews, no photo opportunities, and has made no public appearances beyond the celebrated bag-over-his-head cameos in The Simpsons.

With almost no clues, I started my sleuthing mission in a friend’s bookshop, where I was delighted to find some of the Aloes pamphlets. Originally published in American periodicals between 1959 and 1964, these stories were not readily accessible until the appearance of Pynchon’s Slow Learner in 1984, when the intensely private author accompanied their release with an extraordinary autobiographical introduction. He describes the painful experience of re-reading his earliest writing:

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Ray Roberts: Editor – and Collector – of Thomas Pynchon

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On May 1, 1997, Washington state bookseller Ed Smith was attending a rare-books auction at the Swann Auction Galleries in New York City. In a room full of dedicated rare-books collectors and dealers, Smith found himself seated directly in front of Glenn Horowitz, one of the best-known dealers of rare books and manuscripts in the United States, if not the world. When a U.K. proof of Thomas Pynchon’s first novel V., with a pristine “trial” dust jacket, came on the block, there was lively and aggressive bidding for this highly sought-after Pynchon collectible. Smith was certain Horowitz would come away with the prize but, to his amazement, he ended up winning the auction, paying $517.[1]Smith says Horowitz would’ve likely won the bidding were it not for a pretty & pierced young women seated next to him with whom he was flirting. According to Smith, “Glenn was … Continue reading

U.K. uncorrected proof copy of V. that Ed Smith won at auction

“When the auction ended,” Smith recalls, “[Horowitz] introduced himself and we chatted awhile. I ended up visiting his shop and purchasing a couple proofs, though no Pynchons.” Unbeknownst to Smith at the time, Horowitz was a close friend and trusted book-collecting advisor to Ray Roberts, Thomas Pynchon’s editor, who’d also had his eye on that UK proof of V..

Smith continues: “A day or so after returning home, I got a call from Ray Roberts. I had no idea who he was, but he said he was Mr. Pynchon’s editor, and I believed him. He’d apparently contacted the Swann Galleries to inquire about the UK proof and gotten my phone number. He asked me if I’d be interested in trading the V. proof I’d won at auction for ‘something special.’ He asked me to send him the U.K. proof and he would send me his ‘special’ item. I did as instructed and, in return, Ray, as good as his word, sent me one of the Mason & Dixon blue galleys.”

It was through this fortuitous set of circumstances that Ed Smith came to know Ray Roberts, who it turned out was not just Thomas Pynchon’s editor but also one of the most successful and respected editors in New York City, not to mention an avid and knowledgeable collector of modern first editions.

And it was through this transaction that the blue uncorrected proofs of Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon came to light, proofs that quite possibly landed Roberts squarely in conflict with his desires as a collector and his responsibilities as a trusted editor.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Smith says Horowitz would’ve likely won the bidding were it not for a pretty & pierced young women seated next to him with whom he was flirting. According to Smith, “Glenn was directly behind me playing grab-ass with a young woman who was with him who had multiple face/ear piercings long before they were the fashion. Charlie Agvent, whom I knew, sat behind me too and he would remember that incident.”

Can I Sue Thomas Pynchon?

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Julian Benfield is the owner of Julian’s Books, a rare and used book dealer in New York since 1997. Prior to that he worked for Xerox in engineering and marketing management, and as a computer consultant. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from The Cooper Union, and MBA from Rochester Institute of Technology. His coolest offering is currently a signed copy of Mason & Dixon.

Charity Auction booklet, 1999

In 1999 I was able to outbid other New York dealers and collectors to obtain a signed first edition of Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon. This was offered by The Cathedral School of St. John the Divine, where his son was in attendance. The following year, I was able to repeat the feat to obtain a signed Crying of Lot 49, again at Cathedral School’s annual fundraiser. While the books were just signed on the title page, I was told, after the auction, that Pynchon would be happy to personally inscribe the books if I so desired. Since I was buying for resale, I thought that it might be best to not request that. Some may disagree, but that was my choice.

Fast track to a few years ago, when I was negotiating with a potential buyer for Crying Of Lot 49, and mentioned that I never took Pynchon up on his offer to personalize the book. My customer, who subsequently paid $23,500 for the signed Lot 49, immediately asked if Pynchon would inscribe it to him. That’s where my saga started.
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Collecting Thomas Pynchon

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Collection
By Robert Nelson

If only measured by his influence on our culture, Thomas Pynchon is an iconic writer. His name is known to many who have never read a word of serious literature, and “Pynchonesque” seems to have as many interpretations as the identity of the mysterious V. in his first novel, V. Pynchon’s earliest writings leapt onto the scene to accolades rarely given to a new author, and he was hailed as one of the bright stars of a new literary generation. His first novel was a winner of major national awards and his magnum opus, Gravity’s Rainbow, nearly won a Pulitzer Prize (more on this later). His subsequent efforts have not failed that early promise.

Pynchon’s novels feature dense, convoluted plots, with wide-ranging allusions to history, science, technology, mathematics, and popular culture. One does not just “crank out” works that offer such challenges and rewards to their readers. Indeed, Pynchon has produced just eight novels over the past fifty years. Fortunately for the collector, the existence of variant forms of his novels and of many associated publications can make collecting Pynchon a challenge worthy of that found in reading his books.

Clifford Mead’s Extensive Pynchon Bibliography

Clifford Mead: Pynchon BibliographyAn essential reference for the Pynchon collector is Clifford Mead’s 1989 book, Thomas Pynchon: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources.[1] Although written 27 years ago, it remains the best description of the author’s early works. In addition, it includes the first appearance in book form of Pynchon’s juvenile writings. The presence of these contributions from young “Tom” to his high school newspaper makes Mead’s work a collectable Pynchon text as well as a bibliography.

 

Technical Writings for Boeing – Aerospace Safety and BOMARC Service News

Pynchon - Boeing Bomarc NewsNotorious for keeping his personal information private, Pynchon can make Salinger look like a publicity hound. It is known that he studied at Cornell, and that Vladimir Nabokov was one of his professors. Prior to pursuing his career in literature, Pynchon served in the U.S. Navy and then worked at the aircraft company Boeing as a technical writer. The abundance of military and technical references in his books indicates how much these experiences informed his writing. Pynchon’s articles in Aerospace Safety and BOMARC Service News are not only informative, but fun to read, even given their highly technical content.[2] BOMARC Service News poses an interesting challenge for both the academic and the collector, since none of its articles are credited. Textual analysis has identified articles that can be credited to Pynchon with varying degrees of certainty and the magazine issues containing these are rare and quite collectable.

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Thomas Pynchon, Newton’s Second Law and Entropy

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What does F = ma have to do with “Entropy”?

Among the books owned by the late UNIX pioneer Greg Chesson are two signed copies of Pynchon’s story “Entropy,” a bootleg edition and a first edition of the collection Slow Learner. In both copies, Pynchon did something unusual: along with his signature, he inscribed the equation for Newton’s second law of motion, F = ma, i.e., force (F) equals mass (m) times acceleration (a). In the bootleg edition, Pynchon went even further. Rather than cross out his printed name above his autograph, which authors sometimes do to emphasize their more personal signature (see the Low-Lands autograph below), Pynchon instead crossed out the word “Entropy” and wrote the equation beneath it.

Why would Pynchon write down Newton’s second law on a copy of a story about the second law of thermodynamics? One possibility is that this is a bit of an inside joke and a note of encouragement to a friend – hence the crossing out of the title and its replacement with F = ma in the bootleg copy. Intuitively, entropy suggests dissolution, a system that’s running down. Pynchon’s story muses on the negative consequences of the inexorable increase in entropy: disorder, death, and the ultimate end of the universe. F = ma suggests the opposite – a positive force, acceleration rather than loss of motion, an ability to act to alter the world, rather than simply let things run their course.

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How to Identify a Gravity’s Rainbow First Edition – Paperback & Hardcover

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For both the original hardcover and paperback versions of Gravity’s Rainbow, the differences between the true first editions and the Book Club editions are fairly subtle, but easy to spot.

When the Viking Press published Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow in 1973, it simultaneously issued 4,000 hardbacks and 16,000 paperbacks. The reason for publishing the less-expensive paperback ($4.95) at the same time as the hardback ($15.00) was due to the concern of Corlies “Cork” Smith, Pynchon’s editor at the time, that Pynchon’s readership — younger, college-educated, hipper — might balk at coughing up $15 for the novel.

From the Bookforum website: “Pynchon from A to V: Gerald Howard on Gravity’s Rainbow

Now the real problem presented itself: How to publish a seven-hundred-plus-page book at a price that would not be grossly prohibitive for Pynchon’s natural college and post-collegiate audience. V. and The Crying of Lot 49 had each sold more than three million copies in their Bantam mass-market editions. […] According to a letter from Cork Smith [Pynchon’s editor] to Bruce Allen (who reviewed Gravity’s Rainbow for Library Journal but wrote to Viking complaining about the novel’s price), Viking would have had to sell thirty thousand copies at the then unheard of price of $10 just to break even. By comparison, V. and The Crying of Lot 49 had sold about ten thousand copies apiece in hardcover. So how to reach even a fraction of the cash-strapped Pynchon-loving millions? Cork himself hit on the then unique strategy of publishing an original trade-paperback edition at $4.95 and “an admittedly highly priced hardcover edition” at $15, each identical in paper stock and format, differing only in their binding. The gamble: “We also thought that Pynchon’s college audience might, just might, be willing to part with a five-dollar bill for this novel; after all, that audience spends that amount over and over and over again for long-playing records.” The other gamble was with the reviewers, who rarely took paperback fiction seriously, but as Cork wrote, “We feel — as, clearly, you do — that Pynchon cannot be ignored.”

As you may know, both editions in their first printings are quite valuable, particularly the hardcover (and even superior copies of subsequent printings of the first edition), but also the first edition/first printing of the paperback edition. However, the differences between true first editions and the subsequent Book of the Month Club (“BoMC”) (hardcover) and Quality Paperback Book Club (“QPBC”) editions of Gravity’s Rainbow, both published in 1973 (Thomas Pynchon: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources, Clifford Mead, p.13), are a bit subtle, but easy to identify when you know what to look for.

NOTE ABOUT VALUE: First editions of both the hardcover and paperback editions of Gravity’s Rainbow are only of significant value if they’re first printings, although later printings of both are still pricier than later editions. Printings subsequent to the first printings are clearly indicated on the copyright page, after the line “Printed in U.S.A. by the Colonial Press Inc.” If there is no indication of a subsequent printing, then it’s a first printing (assuming, of course, it meets the other criteria in this article). See the below example:

GR-printings

Both the hardcover and paperback editions went into multiple printings after the first run. BoMC hardcover editions generally go for between $100 – $300, depending on their their condition (VG to Fine). The QPBC paperbacks are not worth that much at all and should only fetch more than, say $10, only if they are misrepresented as first editions.

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About ThomasPynchon.com

ThomasPynchon.com (formerly the HyperArts Pynchon Pages) came online in 1997. With the publication of Against the Day in 2007, the alphabetical guides to Pynchon's novels were migrated to the Pynchon Wikis.

This website is affiliated with neither Mr Pynchon nor his representatives; rather, it's aligned with the community of folks who enjoy reading Pynchon's work — and digging deeper.

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