Good to see you back, Jim!

Are you on Amazon yet? (I'll check.)

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You are!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0224077651/qid%3D1139258574/202-5970279-7172642

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Hey, the release date is my birthday!

Nothing like the spirit of the staircase, Jim!! (is that the right translation??! My A level French always lets me down). Sounds like a short story in there to me ...

And thanks for the comment on Maloney's Law - who knows, perhaps one day the rest of it might be available!

)

LoL

A
xxx

Ani, yes, looks like I'm back. High John the Conqueror is on Amazon and other bulk outlets - but is languishing in the pre-order low 'one millions' just now. I hope things are scooting along nicely for you.

I found an 'uncorrected proof' for sale in Manchester a few days ago - weird. I offered to buy it, but the dealer guy (Tim K-C, google TIMKC to see what he's got) says he's happy to let me have it free. I went to the Oxfam shop near my work (which is near the publisher, J. Cape, Random House) and I looked at their uncorrected proofs rack, but it wasn't there. Guess I Could ask Cape for a copy, but it wouldn't be the same as finding it in the real world - with all those typos and without my good second (third, fourth ...) thoughts.

Jim

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Yes, Anne, I was looking for it - but of course you don't want to self-publish on it. Good luck.

Jim

Anne - Sorry for the fragmented messages but my son is hovering trying to take over the 'puter. Yes, "spirit of the staircase" is right. Strewth, here he comes again!

Jim

Naw, I just one-click pre-ordered and it shot up to the 100s....

Ani, was that you? Wow, that's it's highest placing yet, in the 169Ks. Witchy!

Jim

I asked Headline for two more of the bound proofs of TMOL after the one they sent me got very dog-eared by each child in turn asking if they could take it to school to show off. One at least I'm determined to keep pristine.

But as you say, Jim, it's weird to think of your pre-final words floating around out there. I've done some revisions for the American edition, which will therefore be different again. I keep telling myself I'm giving employment to the PhD students of the future , but really it just feels like I'm out in the street with my skirt still caught up in my knickers at the back.

Emma

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Huh! I haven't got a sales ranking at Amazon. I'm sulking now!

Ooh, I don't know. I enjoyed self-publishing my 1st novel, "The Hit List", so am more than happy to do the same with later novels if no-one else takes on my stuff!

There's more than one way to skin a rabbit, after all - as my father used to say!

)

A
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Emma -- I hadn't checked Mathematics of Love -- I will pre-order yours, too.

Ani x

Emma, I think it shows that a final, stable text is not a 'given'. Textual scholarship (different to lit crit as you will know) deals in all sorts of interesting problems - the 'final' text of Ulysses for example. Joyce would carry on revising to the last minute (after seven or eight years of work!) - so you get disputes over particular readings - then there's just plain misprints. And I think the second edition of Mansfield Park is now taken as the 'raw' material for scholarly editors to work on (since the 1920s?). Did Henry James revise previously published novels for a collected edition?

It might be worse for dramatists - good and bad quartos of Hamlet, for example. Folk songs/ballads in transmission are often changed, changed utterly, leading to a terrible beauty being born. A curious (and indeed beautiful) example is "Georgie" sung by the English traveller Levi Smith (recorded in the field by an acquaintance of mine, Mike Yates) where strange images are conjured. You can hear the performance on one of the volumes in Topic's 'Voice of the People' series. I may have raised this issue before. Martin Carthy recorded Mr Smith's version on a recent album ('Signs of Life'?) and he adds a new first verse, but otherwise keeps it pretty true. You can see a video clip on the Folk Britannia site on BBC4.

Jim

Jim

Ani - thank you!

Jim - yes, it's true that a text isn't a 'given'. Yet another place where the ground is no longer solid under our feet...

Emma

Emma - As for solid ground - check out the time of posts. I've only just noticed this. In my world, 'Thought for the Day' has come and gone (for today), but in WWworld Dr Stalkey is still to come.

Jim

Hi Jim. I just pre-ordered High John the Conquerer. Hope that does something good to your ranking! It sounds bloody brilliant, by the way, and I love the cover. I loved this in your blurb:

"High John the Conqueror" is a dark comedy, written at the Devil's dictation.

As for rankings, mine got very high at one point and I have no idea why. In fact, I am beginning to suspect that the amazon rankings are all tosh. If only I could stop myself checking it. (And for Christ's sake, the book isn't even out yet! What am I going to be like then???)

Thanks Roger, you're a sport. I've got TC on pre-order too, and I'll do Emma's tomorrow.

Yes, that bit is mine " a dark comedy written at the Devil's dictation" - but 'The Screwtape Letters' it aint. I've said elsewhere that I wrote a few paras for the agent, at her request, when she was trying to float the book to publishers ('this is good, but what the **** is it?' sort of sums up the history of HJC's reception and rejection over the years, so it clearly needed a 'hook'. Cape used the blurb (with alterations: like saying it was good and stuff, which I never dared to do) - much to my surprise, I must say (I thought they employed people for that sort of thing), but what the hell, if it works... All I need is for Richard and Judy to take notice. You don't know them, by any chance, do you?

And the Amazon thing? Oh it's got to be a joke, hasn't it? I went up something like a million places in the course of an afternoon (having dropped 800,000 or so previously) - but of course, I'll look again later, it's good for a laugh. To be honest, I find it hard to take any of this business seriously - even writing the damn things (although like most of us, I take GREAT PAINS ...)

I love the story of Oliver Goldsmith, sitting in his room and threatened with eviction by his landlady for non-payment of rent - Johnson stopped by, saw the MS of 'The Vicar of Wakefield' (and "saw the merit in it"), whereupon he took it round the corner to the bookseller (i.e. publisher) and sold it straightaway for 60gns (I think). Stroll on! Try that in Crouch End or Highams Park!

Jim