There are no dead
August 5, 2009
In the previous post, I wrote about a book soon to be published by the late William Styron. But Styron’s not the only author publishing from the Great Beyond this Fall.
Charles Bukowski fans can look forward to a new collection of poetry.
Here’s the big news, though.
Knopf will publish, in November, the book Vladimir Nabokov was working on but didn’t finish when he died in 1977 — The Original of Laura (Dying Is Fun): A Novel in Fragments.
According to Library Journal (July 2009), the book will have removable facsimiles of Nabokov’s 138 index cards.
Read below to understand what that means, from Knopf’s website (paragraphs inserted by me):
“When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left instructions for his heirs to burn the 138 handwritten index cards that made up the rough draft of his final and unfinished novel, The Original of Laura. But Nabokov’s wife, Vera, could not bear to destroy her husband’s last work, and when she died, the fate of the manuscript fell to her son.
“Dmitri Nabokov, now seventy-five—the Russian novelist’s only surviving heir, and translator of many of his books—has wrestled for three decades with the decision of whether to honor his father’s wish or preserve for posterity the last piece of writing of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.
“His decision finally to allow publication of the fragmented narrative—dark yet playful, preoccupied with mortality—affords us one last experience of Nabokov’s magnificent creativity, the quintessence of his unparalleled body of work.”
William Styron, the Marines & me
August 2, 2009
Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Sophie’s Choice, William Styron, died in 2006 but new work continues to be published.
Last year it was a collection of personal essays, Havannas in Camelot. This year it’s a collection of short fiction to be published in October: The Suicide Run: Five Tales of the Marine Corps.
The 1968 hardcover first
I collect Styron’s work, and I arrived at that collecting when I stumbled upon a first edition of his short novel The Long March while browsing a rare books store. I got that impulsive urge to own the book. So I bought it for $90.
The Long March (1952) is Styron’s second book after the novel Lie Down in Darkness (1951).
Here’s the catch: I thought I bought the first edition of The Long March, but I didn’t. At least, not the true first.
Had I done some research (and not leaped to satisfy the urge), I would’ve known the true first came out in paperback. The edition I purchased was the first hardcover edition, published in March 1968, 16 years later.
The hardcover copyright page states copyright as 1952 but not the 1968 print date.
The 1952 true first
A few years later, I came upon that true first and learned my mistake. A Modern Library Paperback. This one was signed by Styron on the title page and also included a hand-written note to the owner on Styron’s personal stationery from 12 Rucum Road, Roxbury, CT 06783.
Oh the urge… I bought it for $350. (Yes, a paperback, albeit a signed paperback with a note. Perhaps we best not go there.)
On February 26, 1953, Norman Mailer wrote a letter to Styron and said this about The Long March:
“I think it’s just terrific, how good I’m almost embarrassed to say, but as a modest estimate it’s certainly as good an eighty pages as any American has written since the war, and really I think it’s much more than that. You watch. It’s going to last and last and last.”
