or, Artifacts from a World I Do Not Recognize
I love coming across mass market editions of books by writers whom you wouldn’t normally associate with that format (at least for those of us who were born in the seventies or later). Below are a few I’ve come across in used book stores. I always wonder: who was purchasing the mass market edition of Donald Barthelme’s The Dead Father
Around this same period, the New Yorker was regularly running Barthelme stories; equally baffling that his stories were regularly published in that magazine, given the type of fiction they run today. (In Gilbert Sorrentino’s final novel, The Abyss of Human Illusion
Anyway here are mass market editions of John Barth’s first two books (yes, there’s a naked woman on one cover and a man fondling a woman’s breast on the other):
Check this out though–according to John Barth: A Descriptive Primary and Annotated Secondary Bibliography, Including a Descriptive Catalog of Manuscript Holdings in United States Libraries
A world in which the paperback edition of a single John Barth novel, over the span of six years, sells over 300,000 is so different from the one in which we live now. (I used to have a copy of The End of the Road with a photo cover from the film version, but it seems to have been lost somewhere along the way. Of course the film might explain some of the sales.)
I love this cover to Players
Here’s Coover’s The Origin of the Brunists
I’m not sure what I’m trying to say with all this that doesn’t boil down to the standard cliches about how no one reads anymore, how books aren’t a part of the culture in a way they once were. It’s not like I found these books on my parents’ bookshelves–it’s not like I think people were picking up a John Barth in the impulse aisle at the grocery store (but maybe they were–moving that many copies of books, they had to be sold somewhere). But it really does in some way come down to those sentiments. I know, I know, video games and the internet. But still. Something’s been lost. Not that I wish there were cigarette ads in the new William T. Vollmann, but maybe intuitively you understand what I’m saying.
Of course in the end you say, ‘Yes, The Dead Father was moving 80,000 in mass market paperback. But Dick Francis’ Knockdown was moving five million.’ You’re probably right.
It’s really hard to grasp how different the publishing world was back then–and pawing through a shelf of mass market paperbacks is also very instructive from a publicity angle, too: you see quote after quote from newspapers that barely even review any books these days.
As for the ads in the books, Paul Collins has written a couple of interesting pieces about this.
In days of yore, I drove my covered wagon to the ye olde college bookstore to barter eggs in exchange for mass market format literature. If my ancient brain recalls correctly, much of my assigned reading was published in this format.
I’ve been an advocate for the return of this format for ages, because like all of us I discovered so much literature from bargain-bin paperbacks and books left in my parents’ basement. Everything from Pynchon to Kawabata, Mishima, Portis, and Marquez.
Problem is that so many of these books (with exceptions like the sturdy Penguin Pocket series) are crusty and poorly made, with miniscule print and condensed formatting. Hard to complain when you’re getting the book for free or nearly so–or, as Scott mentions, when the art and culture-shock value are so high–but wouldn’t it be great if some of the high-quality publishers brought back the Mass Market and produced it with the same quality as today’s overpriced trade paperbacks are produced?
Closest I’ve seen is the recent Harper reprints of a few backlist best-sellers, but c’mon… $10? I want to see these things in the airport for $7.99.
I know this feeling. Whenever I’m in Moe’s I’ll head down to the MMP section just for the incongruity of seeing something like V. in that format. As John notes, it can be difficult to see them falling apart, but many of them are surprisingly robust, and, besides, I’d like to see how well a Kindle weathers a good 40 years of wear and tear.
But yeah, can’t beat them for value and for that certain aesthetic appeal they exude. Who knows, maybe they’ll become the hip new format some day.
I too, lament the absence of the mass market paperback in contemporary publishing. Seeing the numbers is especially crazy.
I gotta disagree with John above, though — I think Harper should be congratulated for those Olive Edition reprints, and I wish more publishers would follow suit. In a age when paperbacks increasingly land in the $16-18 range (esp. for ‘deluxe editions’ with deckle edge and french flaps), I think ten bucks is a good price for a new copy of say, Crying of Lot 49.
Okay, yesterday I bought a MMP copy of Giles Goat Boy, and I think it was this post that made me do it.
That, and, for some reason, the pocket-fitting trim size made me feel like its portability would somehow give me more spare time to read it in.
I am fine with paying $10 for HarperCollins small trim paperbacks. It’s their regular trade paperbacks and hardcovers that bother me. Given the price on those things, the interior paper should be guaranteed non-acidic and reasonably medium quality. But leave some of those books on the windowsill, and the paper will yellow in a matter of months. Also, the jacket paper on HarperCollins french flap editions are ridiculously thin. In contrast, Penguin’s beautiful “deluxe” editions with the better paper, and almost always a better design as well, are worth the extra bucks.
I’m not trying to rag on the Harper idea, which is a good one. But it’s kind of half-assed, is all. The books really aren’t that small, they’re not that cheap (not as cheap as a standard MM these days), and they only did like 3 titles. (One of which was “Everything Is Illuminated”…seriously?)
If we’re bitching about Harper though, special disdain must be reserved for the Harper Perennial paperbacks which all have hideous covers, layout, and fonts.
Scott’s also right: when you see some massive book in 5″x7″ form, it makes you think, “Oh, you know maybe The Golden Bough is the kind of thing I could read on the bus after all.” Which of course is why it’s important to publish them.
I’m with you, John. And another title? FAST FOOD NATION. What?
Where’s OLD MAN & THE SEA or BEL CANTO?
Yeah, the title selection wasn’t really my cup of tea, either. And yes, Soo Jin, those Harper Perennial paperbacks are frail.
Totally with you guys on the Harper Perennial. Thing that sucks is, they’re got the rights to some of the best fiction of the 20th century. Too bad it has to look like that . . .
Going back to the nostalgia factor, I can’t describe what it was like to find some of my father’s old paperbacks on a trip back my parents’ old house in South Korea. My father had been teaching himself English, so he had these mass market paperbacks of D.H. Lawrence. Lady Chatterley’s Lover (if you are going to teach yourself a language, some sex scenes have got to help!) includes the presiding judge’s opinion on the obscenity trial. Sons and Lovers has a great photo still from the movie version. Both editions are over 50 years old with quite yellow paper, but the spines and covers are intact. All this for 35 cent and 50 cent books.
On the one hand, they are cheap durable books. But, more importantly, they are artifacts from my father’s younger days, and attest to his aspirations and dreams as a young man in South Korea at a time when that nation meant little to most English-speakers except for the Korean War. It’s hard to imagine e-book files resonating with as much meaning to future children.
[...] DeLillo, etc.) who got the mass market treatment. Over at The Constant Conversation, we’re having a big nostalgia-fest, jumping off of Scott Bryan Wilson’s excellent post (with pictures) on the mass market [...]
[...] DeLillo, etc.) who got the mass market treatment. Over at The Constant Conversation, we’re having a big nostalgia-fest, jumping off of Scott Bryan Wilson’s excellent post (with pictures) on the mass market paperbacks [...]
I love my paperbacks, and even have that exact copy of Barth’s End of the Road. Call me conservative, but I don’t mind the cheap, thin pages.
My wife, on the other hand, is done with a book after the first reading, and she doesn’t understand my compulsion to keep books I’ve already read.
The Kindle generation, or the generation that reads on a screen but not a page, will be formidable, but hopefully (if I have my way) our children will appreciate a shelf or two filled with books.
Spent the afternoon at a used bookstore here in Chicago, browsing the MMF’s after reading this post. Bought five or six of them: a couple of Joseph Conrads, Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Mary McCarthy’s The Groves of the Academy, etc.
It wasn’t until I walked out of the store that I noticed the John Cheever novel I’d bought for $1.50, Falconer, was signed by Cheever and dedicated to John Callaway, a local broadcasting legend here in Chicago.
Thanks guys, you helped make my day.
[...] Waxman ⋅ March 22, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment (In)disposable BooksShareA few posts back, Scott Bryan Wilson rhapsodized about some great mass market paperbacks in his personal collection that had been unlikely to get the mass market treatment. His photos didn’t get me thinking [...]
[...] also Scott Bryan Wilson’s thoughts on book and autograph collecting at The Constant [...]