Future volumes?

I'm an LOA subscriber who currently has over 190 of the main series volumes (as well as all the American Poetry Project volumes and several of the non-series volumes). For several years I've been keeping a list of authors -- I'm not sure how best to characterize it -- perhaps a combination of those I'd like to see in LOA, those I expect or anticipate will appear, or those I think deserve one or more volumes. Someplace not too long ago, I read, perhaps in an interview with an LOA person, that the purpose of LOA is not just to enshrine THE CLASSICS (TM), but to include excellent writing of all kinds. I heartily endorse that view and really enjoy and applaud the inclusiveness of LOA.

I thought I'd list some of the authors on my list to see what others think of them, or what other authors they might add:

Peter Matthiessen (novels, stories, natural history, social justice)
Wright Morris (novels)
Ralph Ellison (novels, criticism, essays)
Martin Luther King
Emily Dickinson (I'm surprised she doesn't already have a volume)
Sherwood Anderson (plays and stories)
August Wilson (series of 10 plays plus a few independent ones)
Lorraine Hansberry (probably not enough work to fill a volume, but perhaps can be combined in some other collection)

N. Scott Momaday (novels, memoirs, etc.)
Louise Erdrich (series of loosely interconnected novels)
Leslie Marmon Silko (at least Ceremony and some short stories)
James Welch (novels, especially Fools Crow)
(the previous four are outstanding Native AMerican authors, a group not so far represented in LOA, except minor appearances in anthologies)

Toni Morrison (novels)
e.e. cummings
T.S. Eliot (does he count as an American? Also, I imagine the rights would be difficult to get)

Bruce Catton (Civil War histories -- I admit some bias here -- he and I grew up in the same small town, and his wonderful childhood memoir, Waiting for the Morning Train, describes his adventures with the grandparents of the kids I grew up with)

John Updike (everything)
FDR
Langston Hughes (poetry, stories)
John Hersey (novels, reportage)
Louis Auchincloss (novels, stories)

Paul Horgan (novels, biography, history)
Wallace Stegner (novels, stories, history, more) -- surely the pre-eminent Western writer, but really much more than just a "Western" writer.

Rachel Carson (not only Silent Spring, but her other beautiful natural history writings)

Bernard de Voto (history)

Van Wyck Brooks (especially his 5-volume history of American literature)

Lewis Mumford

Stephen Jay Gould (at least the 10 volumes of his essays on natural history, and of his other books at least The Mismeasure of Man)

What about a volume containg the writings of the Abolitionists (or will they be included in the 4-volume anthology of Civil War literature?)

I also wonder whether we will see more of some of the authors al;ready included, such as Faulkner (short stories), Howells (more novels), Melville (poetry), Henry Adams (articles, letters), Baldwin (later novels), Dreiser, Kerouac, Miller (later plays), Wilder (later novels), Theodore Roosevelt, Singer (novels), Thoreau (journal selections similar to those now appearing by Emerson), Edmund Wison (much more).

"What about a volume containing the writings of the Abolitionists..."

I agree and would ask that it include an individual volume on John Brown. Not just his writings but contemporary (to him) writings about him. I'm currently reading John Brown 1800-1859, A Biography Fifty Years After by Oswald Garrison Villard (grandson to the abolitionist) and am simply fascinated.

I also ditto Bernard de Voto, Rachel Carson and many of your other recommendations.

>1 euphorb:

What is the "4-volume anthology of Civil War literature"? Has LOA indicated such an anthology is forthcoming? I would love to get an LOA edition of Tourgée's A Fool's Errand and De Forest's Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty to replace my brittle paperbacks.

I too would love to see Albion Tourgee's A Fools Errand.

Django on another thread an LOA marketing representative (DCloyceSmith or David) told us that a 4-volume Civil War anthology was in the works!!

>1 euphorb: euphorb: Great thread and great list! I'll be sure to share it with the editors and other staff members on Monday morning; we all eat this stuff up.

A good number of the suggestions listed here have their own unique "stories" that could take hours to tell, the most common thread among them being permissions issues with reluctant publishers. The one I'll single out for explanation, however, is Emily Dickinson, since she comes up a lot. A significant chunk of Dickinson's oeuvre (poetry, letters) was actually published in the middle of the twentieth century and is under copyright protection. (The Little, Brown "Complete Poems of 1924" contains barely half her poems. See http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/155 for a small list of the major collections published since the 1920s.) We continue to try to clear the rights for the entire body of work.

>3 Django6924: Django6924: The Civil War anthology currently in production will be a collection on the model of The American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence--reporting, speeches, diaries, letters, narratives, etc. The first volume will be published in January 2011, with one volume each year thereafter (one for each year of the war).

On a personal note: I'm going to hunt down Albion Tourgee's A Fool's Errand and read it for myself. Thanks for the recommendation.

David (LOA director of marketing)

>1 euphorb:
Put me down for Melville's poetry, James Baldwin, more Edmund Wilson (is Patriotic Gore included in the current volumes?) and Ralph Ellison. In fact, I like most of that list.

I 'd also like to see The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic published by loa. It's a great novel that is almost forgotten. The sort of thing that loa should definitely consider. Unfortunately, I don't know what else he has written, so I'm not sure how much there is to fill a volume.

I think we need a Bret Harte volume as well. While we're at it, maybe a volume or two on Westerns to go with the Crime Novels?

I like the idea of a collection of Westerns. Two classic candidates for that collection would be The Virginian by Owen Wister and The Oxbow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark.

Patriotic Gore is not included in the current Edmund Wilson volumes, but it would be great for a volume of Wilson that includes that to come out in conjunction with the forthcoming Civil War anthology volumes.

I'll put down some more names from my list that I left off my initial post:

Adward Albee (plays)
Nelson Algren (novels)
Ray Bradbury (novels, memoirs)
Don DeLillo (novels)
John Dewey (non-fiction)
Ellen Glasgow (novels)
Lillian Hellman (plays)
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (poetry and breakfast table books) and Jr. (legal writings)

Ring Lardner (stories)
Lewis & Clark journals
Norman Mailer (novels, reportage, non-fiction novels)
Bernard Malamud (novels, stories)
David Mamet (plays)
John Marquand (novels)
Cormac McCarthy (novels)
Mary McCarthy (novels)
James Merrill (poetry, novels, plays)
Samuel Eliot Morison (history, biography)
Joyce Carol Oates (novels, stories)
John O'Hara (some novels, but especially his many wonderful stories)
Thomas Pynchon (novels)
Upton Sinclair (novels)
William Styron (novels)
Robert Penn Warren (novels, poetry)
Thomas Wolfe (novels)

I realize many of these are too contemporary to expect any appearances soon, and with relatively few new volumes each year, it will be a long time before we see any substantial number of these -- I am also pleased to see each year the appearance of authors that I had not thought of.

I think Cormac McCarthy is being considered, which is great news.

Of this list, I'd most like to get my hands on Pynchon, Oates, Mamet, DeLillo and Mailer. And I'll also nominate Riders of the Purple Sage for a Western volume.

I'll add Harry Crews, Henry Roth, Joseph Mitchell and Zitkala-Sa in addition to Harold Frederic.

In the field of journalism, we have two excellent volumes each for WWII and Vietnam.

I vote for a volume on the Korean Conflict, a precursor to Vietnam and a war few people know much about—even though the US alone lost 34,000 men.

I'd like to cast a vote for Upton Sinclair--in particular the eleven Lanny Budd novels, which offer a portrait of the US and its move from a nation of isolationists to the superpower of the 20th century during the years from just before WW I to just after WW II. I have only read the third in the series, Dragon's Teeth, which won the 1943 Pulitzer Prize. The novels have been out of print for some time.

This is a great thread-- I actually joined just so I could add 2 cents. I think that the strength of LOA is not just that is the unofficial canon, but also its willingness to recognize books which are important for other reasons (such as HP Lovecraft, PK Dick, etc).

The one writer who I really really enjoy is Tobias Wolff. His short stories are, in my opinion, wonderful. I am very curious to see how the LOA enshrines the current selection of writers. LOA Dan Brown? Yikes

What about Native American writings such as Black Elk Speaks by Black Elk and John Neihardt or writings about Native Americans such as Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown or writings including the photography of the North American Indian such as the works of Edward S. Curtis.

edited because of you guessed it...

11> Thankfully I don't think we'll have to worry about Mr Brown getting his own volume(s) anytime soon.

>12 Texaco:

Being from Missouri, I'm glad you mentioned John G, Neihardt, who was poet-in-residence at the University of Missouri when I was there. I heard him read from "The Song of Hugh Glass" and was so impressed I read several of his Western Cycle poems and would like to see an LOA volume of sll of them.

13>

I know, but it was more in response to my own thought of the LOA's willingness to include those authors who were socially important at the time of publication (in other words popular), rather than because they were necessarily "good". Then again, maybe that is simply my impression of the included pulp writers, etc. While I enjoy them quite a bit, they strike me as falling into that same category as what Brown is now... Stephen King is maybe a better example of what I am thinking of... Not that either of these guys will be setting their rights free anytime soon...

I do wonder, are their any living authors besides Roth who have been giving so much to LOA regarding recent work?

Does anyone know if Erskine Caldwell is collected in an LOA volume or anthology? I read Tobacco Road a few years ago and rate him, on the basis of that book, just below Flannery O'Connor, although Tobacco Road was better IMO than Wise Blood and just as good as The Violent Bear it Away, and he has as good a grasp of the South as Faulkner, despite the lurid book covers used to sell his work.

How about "A collected works of the South" for great authors with small output.

How about "Collected Mysteries of the XXXX's" in which the XXXX stands for a decade. This would allow for some Mickey Spillane, Earle Stanley Gardner, and others of that ilk.

Of course I'm sure that LOA has considered all sorts of ways to keep cranking out the volumes. And it ALL depends on availabilty of these works for LOA.

I'm thrilled to see an organization such as LOA having a liaison on a board like this between them and their readership. More publishers could benefit from such a idea.

I understand where you're coming from, but I'm glad loa recognizes someone like Lovecraft who could be truly awful, but, at other times, very good. He's not a master of prose, but his style is effective once you acquire the taste. If you attempt to extrapolate any kind of social agenda from the work, you will be lucky to find anything less than deplorable, but such attempts miss the point.

Where he truly becomes significant is when the influence he has had on fiction and popular culture is examined. His brand of "weird" horror can be seen everywhere, and, at least in concept, it truly is terrifying at its core.

I'm not quite as big a fan of Chandler and Hammet, but can you think of anything more American than Phillip Marlowe and Same Spade? They're part of our folklore now.

So, no, I wouldn't set them high in the pantheon of American letters next to Melville or Whitman, but we would definitely lose something valuable if those stories were lost.

Squidblatt-

I agree with all that you said. What is really exciting to me is the inclusion of other authors who, even as a guy who has a BA and MA in literature, I have never heard of. Some of it may be due to the current focus of English programs on cultural studies, but many of the old authors are falling away. Just the descriptions have me pumped to get into some of the new finds. (IE, James Farrell-- never even heard of him, but it sounds really interesting)...

I am about to subscribe to LOA and currently only own Flannery O'Connor and Lovecraft, but I have the Hammet short story collection from the public library. I have just been reading one short story every night (takes about an hour, give or take, which is the perfect amount of time for me). Mixing it up between detective fiction, wierd tales and southern gothic has been a great experience. If I sit and keep reading any one author all the time-- ie, just plugging straight through Lovecraft-- the stories start to meld too much together. Mixing it up between these three has kept it all fresh and been a really fun way to read them. I haven't gotten to Chandler yet, but I am looking forward to his work.

On the chance that he hasn't been mentioned before, I'd recommend Garry Wills, whose best books might fill an LOA volume or two. Although his books are nonfiction, they might fall into the "long essay" category of someone like Edmund Wilson. I realize that LOA doesn't usually feature contemporary writers, though, so maybe we'd have to wait until 2025 or so.

It strikes me that many of the pulp writers in the LOA, not only P.K. Dick and Lovecraft, but also William Lindsay Gresham and Edward Anderson and Patricia Highsmith, were not very popular while they were alive. Instead, their influence has been magnified by the passage of decades and they loom large over the works produced by subsequent generations of writers. The genre writers of yore may not be Melville or Faulkner or Whitman or (your favorite canonical writer here)--but then again, neither were James Fenimore Cooper or Harriet Beecher Stowe, who nonetheless cast long shadows in spite of the literary qualities of their works.

Similarly, Zora Neale Hurston and Dawn Powell never achieved popularity or even literary respectability while they were alive, but American literature of the last fifty years is hard to imagine without their influence.

Popularity or "bestsellerdom", on the other hand, can be fleeting, however. I can confidently say that you won't be seeing LOA collections of Henry Harland or Temple Bailey or John Fox, Jr. or Lloyd C. Douglas or Hal Lindsey anytime soon.

I would like to see works (or at least compiled volume) by America's Secularists such as Susan B. Anthony and Robert J. Ingersoll.

I would love to see a John Lomax and Alan Lomax anthology. I would love an anthology of the spirituals. I would also love to see a blues anthology...I mean the real thing as they were sung by my fore mamas and papas out of Clarksdale, Mississippi.

I want to just mention how much I enjoy the critical material that is collected in several volumes. I'm referring to Poe and Henry James in particular, but the selections in several volumes of other writers are appreciated as well. Please keep printing this kind of material. Sometimes the LOA is the only source for it outside of academia.

I wanted to mention another writer, although some of her works are included in some of the poetry books, I'd like to see a book containing all works by Margaret Fuller, especially Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

Thinking about the nineteenth century, William Wells Brown could perhaps merit a volume. His slave narrative is already in the collection, but he wrote a novel called Clotel and a couple of plays in addition to histories, speeches, and other autobiographical writings. Along with Douglass, the most important African American literary figure of the mid-nineteenth century.

Ambrose Bierce also comes to mind. The stories, The Devil's Dictionary, the the best of the longer works could be entertaining.

The Fuller suggestion is a good one. How about an anthology of women novelists? Susan Warner's The Wide Wide World is a very good and quite lengthy novel. It could be combined with a couple of Hawthorne's "damned scribbling women" to make for an interesting volume or two. (Fanny Fern?)
George Washington Cable, Old Creole Days, The Grandissimes, Madame Delphine

Twentieth century:
Andre Dubus, Complete Short Stories
Ole Rolvaag, Giants in the Earth Trilogy (though written in Norwegian)
William Carlos Williams, Paterson, In the American Grain, various poems and other writings (there is an APP volume)
Joan Didion, California Writings (rights?)
Chester Himes, Los Angeles Novels
Chester Himes, Harlem Novels
William Gaddis, Novels (rights, no doubt)

Then there are the current LOA authors.

Apparently this is the end of Mark Twain, though I wonder whether there is a volume of letters and autobiographical material to be had.

Melville: Got to wait on the last of the Northwestern volumes in the complete Melville in order to get the poetry together.

James: This will be interesting. Two great novels remain, one smaller, lesser known one, and the uncompleted autobiographical works. Then there are the letters. I would love to know how it will end.

Howells: A Hazard of New Fortunes, The Quality of Mercy, An Imperative Duty. Hazard may be the most important nineteenth-century American novel not yet in LOA.

bsc20:

Another great list. Thanks for this.

I'll comment on two of these suggestions, since it's (more or less) public information now.

The first is Henry James: the next volume, containing the last three complete novels, will be published next spring and will appear on the annual form that's mailing to subscribers next Monday.

The second is Ambrose Bierce. The first volume is in production, S. T. Joshi is the editor, and off the top of my head I believe the pub date is 2011-2012.

Finally, I'm astonished to see William Wells Brown on your list--because just a couple of weeks ago we hosted at the office a meeting on his possible inclusion. I'm not sure what the upshot of that meeting was, but I do know he's under very serious consideration.

25 - William Wells Brown should be best known for: The Rising Son: Or, The Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored Race which I am currently reading. This volume includes a wonderful treatment of Jean Jacques Dessalines who in 1804 succeeded Toussaint Louvature as Emperor of Haiti. Louvature of course whupped Napoleon's arse for which Haiti shall never be forgiven.

Delighted you mentioned Chester Himes whose Third Generation and 2-volume autobiography are amongst my favorites. Don't think LOA would chance publishing his Case of Rape but one can always hope.

I've already promised that if ever able to see it through financially that I would donate $50M per the following volumes:

1) W.E.B. Dubois Writings II (a second volume of course)

2) Paul Laurence Dunbar (poems, short stories and novels)

3) Ida B. Wells Writings (including the Memphis diary, red record and autobiography)

4) Williams Wells Brown (to include the above along w/the autobiography, the travel, the novels and his Revolutionary and Civil war writings which are brilliant)

Edited because I hate touchstones!!!!

How about some John Wesley Powell, Edward Abbey, Aldo Leopold, Rachael Carson, and Wallace Stegner? Some of them have appearances in American Earth and American Sea but it would be great to see them all with a LOA edition of their own.

28: Wallace Stegner does in fact have his own LOA edition(s).

Sorry folks but I was thinking of Wallace Stevens not Stegner (no wonder I couldn't find a touchstone for it).

I would like to echo WC Williams. I have the APP book, but Paterson is a major work of American poetry that obviously is too long to be included. I also recently read the The White Mule and In the Money. While maybe not first rank, they are terrific novels with some of the strongest scenes of domestic life (including a brilliant section on the first year of a newborn) I can think of in American literature.

A propos the last 6 entries in this thread (25-30), I would like to second the addition Andre Dubus, Ole Rolvaag, WC Williams - Patterson, Joan Didion, James (will his plays be included?), Howells (who also wrote much valuable nonfiction), Du Bois (especially Black Reconstruction), Edward Abbey (I recently read his wonderful Desert Solitaire), Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and Wallace Stegner. My omission of other names in these messages means only that I am less familiar with them, not that I don't think they should be considered.

By the way, I recently analyzed the productivity of LOA during its first 28 years (1982-2009) and noted that it is clearly increasing. LOA issued as many main series volumes during the last 12 years (1998-2009) as it did during its first 16 years (1982-1997). It started out with 2 years of 8 volumes each, but did not achieve that level again until 1996 (indeed, except for 7 volumes in its third year, LOA issued only 4 - 6 volumes per year from 1985 through 1994). Since 1995, there has been a consistently higher level of output, with 9 volumes in three different years, and 10 volumes in three different years, including 2009. Not only that, but during the first 16 years, only main series volumes were issued. Since 1998, 11 special volumes have been issued, in increasing frequency, and all the American Poets Project volumes (now numbering 30) have been issued since 2003. So far in 2010, 7 main series volumes have been issued (through Shirley Jackson), and another 7 volumes have been announced for the second half of 2010 (Bellow, Roth, Galbraith, 2 of Mencken, and 2 of Lynd Ward), making a total of 14 for 2010, four more than the previous record for a year.

Thus, it looks like we can expect great productivity from LOA in the future, which is a great thing because there is so much yet to be included.

Exciting times!

(My touchstone attempts are still loading after several minutes, so I'm submitting this without completing them).

I've been meaning to post my own list of future authors for some time. I’m just the marketing/production guy at the LOA, so don't have a real "say" in this matter--except for the not-very-subtle hints I can drop in the hallway.

But here's who I’d like to see added to the LOA, which is of course limited to who I've actually read. I’ve also limited myself to writers who are either dead or over 70 years old, and since it's "my" list, I've included writers who are held up because of copyright issues.

John Adams (coming 2011), John Quincy Adams, Sherwood Anderson, Louis Auchincloss, W.H. Auden, Djuna Barnes, Stephen Vincent Benét, Ambrose Bierce, Ray Bradbury, William Wells Brown, William Cullen Bryant, Mary Chesnutt, E.E. Cummings, Emily Dickinson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Albert Einstein, T.S. Eliot, Ralph Ellison, Margaret Fuller, John Gardner, Ellen Glasgow, Caroline Gordon, Bret Harte, Charles Homer Haskins, Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Heller, Lillian Hellman, O. Henry, John Hersey, Patricia Highsmith, Chester Himes, Oliver Wendall Holmes Sr., Langston Hughes, Christopher Isherwood (American writings), Martin Luther King Jr., Maxine Hong Kingston, Thomas Kuhn, Ring Lardner, Ursula K. Le Guin, John Marquand, Cormac McCarthy, Henry Miller, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, John O'Hara, Grace Paley, Dorothy Parker, Walker Percy, S.J. Perelman, Sylvia Plath, J.F. Powers, William Prescott, Thomas Pynchon, Adrienne Rich, Henry Roth, J.D. Salinger, Carl Sandburg, Upton Sinclair, Jean Stafford, Wallace Stegner, William Styron, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut (coming 2011), Robert Penn Warren, Glenway Wescott, E.B. White, John Greenleaf Whittier, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Wolfe

A number of these are actually "in the works," although firm pub dates have yet to be set--we can only afford to publish 9-12 volumes a year, and we still have a lot to publish by authors who are already in the series.

(Edited to add a few poets I omitted.)

D, I really enjoy the insights you give into the business that is the LOA. It's just like having a front row seat!

For me, knowing about forthcoming volumes is more than just idle curiosity. I prefer LOA volumes to other books and series, and I don't like to keep multiple copies of the same works in my library. For example, many years ago I started collecting the Oxford Mark Twain. The problems with that series were that there were 29 volumes (cost), some were out-of-print (availability), and I wasn't particularly impressed with the books themselves (quality). Once I committed to the LOA Twain, I sold the Oxford Twain volumes I did have, and I the same thing has happened on a smaller scale with other authors.

These days, I am careful about starting to collect any American author because I don't know if or when they will be included in the LOA. For example, I'm glad to know that Vonnegut is going to be included because there's no good hardcover series of his works available now and I'd like to include him in my library. My current dilemma is Bradbury: Everyman's Library just came out with a huge volume of Bradbury's stories, but if LOA ever includes him I would probably chuck it later.

34: I have some of the Oxford Dickens books and then could no longer get them either, it is irritating to try to put together a set and then they disappear.

On your last point, I am with you that if I can get a work from LOA I don't bother with keeping other editions unless it's something special.

I'd love a Melville letters and journals volume (they'd both fit into one, right?). I'd really love to see the Isle of the Cross, but that's just a fantasy. A nice J.D. Salinger edition could replace all the substandard Little Brown paperbacks I own.
Thinking of the DJ author photos, Pynchon would be an even bigger problem than J.D. That picture of Salinger banging on the car window would be oddly appropriate for a future correspondence edition (the few letters I've recently read have all been fascinating).

35. I was very fortunate to have splurged back in the day (late eighties, wow) for the complete Oxford Illustrated Dickens--it seems they went out of print just a few years later. I think the deal then from Oxford was something like $200 for all 21 volumes. At the time they also had the Jane Austen (6 vols.) and Anthony Trollope (12 vols.) available along with Conan Doyle's Holmes (6 vols.) all in hardback, but I don't think any of it is readily available now. It is getting harder to find good hardback editions of classics, which I guess is one reason we love LOA so much.

Since Galbraith is on the docket, I wonder whether LOA would consider some 20th century historians such as C. Vann Woodward. An edition containing Tom Watson, Reunion and Reaction, The Strange Career of Jim Crow and Origins of the New South, and perhaps a volume of his essays, would be terrific. Other American historians from an earlier generation or two worth considering would be Allan Nevins, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Kenneth Stampp, Bernard Bailyn, and Edmund S. Morgan (the latter two still with us). Stampp's work on the Civil War and Reconstruction era reshaped our understanding and placed race at the center of the debates. Bailyn, who edited the brilliant Debate on the Constitution volumes for LOA, would also make for an excellent volume or two on the Revolutionary Era; his work uncovering pamphlet culture led to a reinterpretation of the revolution's origins, and books like The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson are wonderfully rendered. Edmund S. Morgan's colonial writings would work as well, especially his work on the Puritans and his classic American Slavery American Freedom on colonial Virginia. All these are among the best historical writers America has produced.

As I've said elsewhere, a Du Bois volume II that included Black Reconstruction would be most welcome.

Which reminds me, are there plans for a Harlem Renaissance anthology of words and artwork? The Countee Cullen announcement for APP is maybe a step in that direction. Then there are Langston Hughes, Jessie Faucet, Claude McKay . . . and more controversially, Carl Van Vechten.

I'd love to see future volumes re the following:

1) Anna Julia Cooper 1858-1964

2) Ida B. Wells 1862-1931

3) Mary Church Terrell 1863-1954

4) Mary McLeod Bethune 1875-1955

5) Nannie Helen Burroughs 1879-1961

6) Pauli Murray 1910-1985

Wells is a must. Plenty of material for a volume, I should think. I haven't read Cooper but she has received a lot of attention over the past few years.

I was shelving some previously unshelved books and ran across an old set, The Wit and Humor of America in ten volumes each about 200 pages (no touchstone) edited by Marshall P. Wilder, published by Funk & Wagnalls copyright Bobbs-Merrill, MDCCCCVII (1907). It occured to me this might be an interesting set (two volumes should do it) for LOA to look into.

I was also thinking that if LOA published volumes of cartoons, the cartoons of H. T. Webster might be fun.

Just some thoughts.

I was engaged in a discussion on the SF group when I brought up two of my favorite SF authors, from childhood anyway, and writers my mother appreciated. I trust her judgment in this implicitly. The two in question are Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore. I thought, gosh, an LOA volume of their stuff, mostly if not all short stories, would be fun. Or include them in a volume of pulp SF from the thirties through the fifties, if there is not one already. I think there are probably quite a few forgotten gems to be found there.

I like a number of DCloyceSmith's suggestions; puzzled to the point of alarm by others, but so be it. Great to see that Walker Percy may be under consideration -- three magnificent novels and a slew of provocative essays on language, religion, and meaning.

I am discouraged that there are no representatives on your list of writers, aside from Joseph Heller, of the American post-modernism school of the 1950s and 1960s -- John Hawkes, William Gass, John Barth, Robert Coover, Paul West, Walter Abish.

They are not in critical fashion today, at least by some conservative power brokers, but Hawkes and company created some powerful, lyrical, and important writing (without them, no Pynchon or David Foster Wallace). Gass, with "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country," "Omensetter's Luck," and "The Tunnel" to his credit, is one of the best living American writers. He is also one of the finest essayists/literary critics of the postwar era.

Any chance of at least an anthology of writing from this very American school of writers?

Ummmm, John Barth. That would be a good one!

43. WilliamMarx:

Just a reminder that this was my personal list of who I think might be worthy for inclusion in the series--not a list of who will be or might actually be. I'm just the marketing and manufacturing guy (who happens to read a lot). I have little involvement in the selection process, and some authors on "my" list will almost surely never be in the series. My sole intention was to add to the discussion.

As for "John Hawkes, William Gass, John Barth, Robert Coover, Paul West, Walter Abish" -- the simple reason you don't see them on my list is that I personally haven't read any of them (yet).

PS -- Sorry for the multiple deleted postings below. I somehow copied some random HTML code into my message and the thread went rogue on me.

DCloyceSmith:

Understood. You mentioned that some of the writers you listed were being considered. And since you didn't (along with the other contributors to this thread) list any of the writers I tossed in -- I forgot Donald Barthelme -- I wanted to add them to the discussion.

How about Stanley Elkin? A postwar comic master.

WilliamMarx:

Some on my list are indeed being considered or are even in production--but given the breadth of who's on my list, that shouldn't be a surprise. For example, the first volume of Ambrose Bierce has (finally!) been scheduled for Fall 2011.

Several entries on my list (basically, a number of those published after 1922), as well as a number who have been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, are in copyright limbo or are in active negotiations.

In general, I'm reluctant to discuss forthcoming projects when we're in the process of negotiating the rights--because I don't want to raise expectations, because often we're dealing with several different publishers who hold the rights to a single author's works and they all have to say yes, and because there's simply no better way to upset the rightsholders (and to start a bidding war) than to make such negotiations public.

That said, I will say that Donald Barthelme (another author I haven't read) will very likely appear in the series, although I'm not sure exactly where he is in the process.

bsc20:
Yes, Elkin, another writer I missed from that period. He would be a great addition ...

Is Edith Wharton played out? I'm not familiar with the later novels but Glimpses of the Moon seems to have a small reputation.

I have wondered about that as well. There are a number of additional novels, both earlier and later, as well as nonfiction books, including travel and essays about writing, that have not been included. I am not familiar with them, except by title, so have no opinion on their quality.

I often think that the titles LOA gives to their volumes is an indication of their intentions, as least as of the time the volumes are issued. For example, if dates are included in the title (such as Novels 1895 - 1920, to make up an example), that is an indication that works that fall outside those dates are still considered for future volumes, or sometimes other limitations are used (e.g., American Writings). However, where the title is simply "Novels" or "Novellas and Other Writings," as with the Edith Wharton volumes, that implies to me that no more volumes are contemplated within those categories.

Yes, that seems to be the pattern. They clearly chose the four best-known for the Wharton Novels volume. But because there are so many later novels, perhaps there is room. And yes, a good deal of travel writing is out there too, though again, I'm not familiar with it.

Edith Wharton played out...you're kidding right??

Edith Wharton does not (cannot!!) play out and her entire oevre of novels, novellas, short stories, travel, war correspondence and design (interior and landscape) shall always be in vogue.

Were she not of a certain class I wouldn't be surprised if she threw a cookbook in the mix.

I did not mean to imply that Wharton's work is passe. I was asking whether LOA was finished publishing it, which would be a shame.

Oh dear, my bad; didn't mean to go ballistic on you bsc20.

I see there's been no discussion here over the past few months, but as I only just joined this group (though reading through it was very, very helpful when I was thinking about whether or not to become a subscriber -- so thanks for that!), there's no harm in reviving it...

First, for what's already planned to be included: a December 2007 newsletter I recently discovered pronounced that Sherwood Anderson and Thomas Wolfe would eventually be making their way in, which I hope is still the case because both are great news. There's been talk round these parts that Cormac McCarthy is also lined up for inclusion, which is just as exciting! Also very happy to see "Coming 2011" next to Kurt Vonnegut's name, because it'll allow me to replace my now-rather-dingy paperbacks purchased all those years ago; I can give them away to friends and get them hooked, and instead glory in a gorgeous new LoA edition (which surely can fit many of his short novels into a single volume!). Also, as mentioned above, an edition that included Melville's nonfiction (especially poetry) would be marvelous.

Now here's my list of writers about whom no promises have been made:

Wendell Berry (my favorite American writer)
T. S. Eliot
William Gaddis
William H. Gass
Ernest Hemingway
Ursula K. Le Guin
Jospeh McElroy (of whose work just about everything is out of print... which makes him, though a contentious writer, perfect for an eventual LoA restoration job)
Thomas Pynchon
Wallace Stegner
James Still (also has a couple of out-of-print novels)
David Foster Wallace

But of course, there is so much that the LoA has already released that I have yet to read... so take as much time as you need with these others, and thank you so much for all you've done already!

I love LOA but am really shocked that Wallace Stegner has not yet been published.

To all those who have posted noting the lack of LOA volumes featuring Eliot, Hemingway, Wallace, Pynchon, Stegner, et al, I'd like to just say that those writers are not really underrepresented in print today, and that while a uniform LOA volumes of their work would be nice, I am MOST happy with the LOA selections, resurrecting seriously and unjustly neglected works such as the war reportage volumes, Agee's film criticism, and most recently and spectacularly, Lynd Ward's graphic novels.

As weirdfishjacek has already remarked, with such a huge and delicious banquet already spread before us, it would be ungrateful to complain about the lack of savories.

Good point Django, I absolutely agree and apologize if I have offended anyone (especially David!!!) at LOA.

Reporting Civil Rights: Part Three 1974 - 9/10/2001
Reporting Civil Rights: Part Four 9/11/2001 - Present
Reporting Civil Rights: The Beginning - 1940

I am shocked that LOA has never published Hawthorne's Notebooks. I don't have a problem with LOA publishing Lovecraft, Dick, and other quite readily available authors and works, but the Notebooks have been out of print for decades, and their re-publication would be a great addition to this durable canon of American literature.

Perhaps DCloyceSmith could give a whisper into someone's ear to correct this oversight. (By the way, I am thrilled to hear about the forthcoming Bierce volume. Maybe some nice editions of Ben Hecht and James Branch Cabell could be considered as well.)

To all:

All your fantastic comments and suggestions deserve a response of sorts, and I hope you don’t mind a long post.

First: never fear--I certainly don't take "offense" to any of these suggestions or even the occasional impatience voiced that we haven't yet published a title or author. The debate occurring in this thread (and its tone) is in no way different than that which occurs in the hallways of our office, during editorial planning sessions, or in our advisory meetings. In my ten years at the LOA, I've voiced many of these same frustrations myself, especially when a title or author is stalled or late or inert or just not moving along fast enough.

I've already mentioned copyright issues that are holding up many volumes; painstaking textual issues are holding up others (like Melville's poetry, Faulkner's stories, and Pound's Cantos). We’ve already announced our forthcoming Vonnegut editions, and we are very close to announcing deals on a few other titles and authors, including one we seemed to have finally nailed just two days ago.

There's also the cost of some of the books we publish--even those in the public domain. Each year we need to try to balance (on the one hand) titles that we hope will do better than break even with (on the other) titles that we are pretty sure won't. We don’t always get this exactly right, but in general things have evened out. Even so, some of our "short-run" titles are so expensive to produce that we simply can't produce them without funding. (I often “joke” every time we sell a few dozen Francis Parkman sets that we miraculously converted positive inventory to negative cash yet again.*)

But, let me assure you, we have absolutely ruled out publishing $70-$100 books (with a corresponding first-tier subscription rate for more expensive titles), since that really defeats the purpose of what the LOA is supposed to do: make American writing available to a wide, non-specialist audience. I'm upset enough that a handful of our thickest, slower-selling backlist books now retail for $45 to $50, and we resist doing even this whenever we can.

Which brings me to the likes of Hawthorne's Notebooks and Thoreau's Journals and William Prescott (and so on). They're all big, thick, time-consuming, expensive projects that have been on the "to do" list since the founding of the LOA in 1982, but we haven't been able to afford to do them--a situation we’re now fervently trying to rectify, with some success.

While it’s certainly true that some high-profile, strong-selling titles might be less "necessary" in terms of the marketplace (since they are already available in other editions), the unanticipated irony is that those very titles--Carver, Steinbeck, Lovecraft, etc.-- are bringing us to the attention of more readers. As a result, in spite of Parkman (who I pick on as a random example), our backlist sales have risen dramatically in recent years--entirely contrary to industry trends. So, just as important, now that our audience is actually growing, more major donors and charitable sources are willing to fund our books. (In politics and in charity, few people want to give money to a loser.) This trend largely explains how we managed to get the funds to finally publish Capt. John Smith a couple of years back, Emerson's Journals this past spring, John Adams this coming winter, and Jonathan Edwards in a couple of years, and it's also why it looks like we might be able to announce funding for a few other such surprises in the next few months.

As I said at a staff a meeting a while back, it’s the nature of my job that I basically get to read American classics only in LOA editions these days and I, for one, would like to finish reading Howell’s novels before I die.

* I know that the bean-counting part of my job bores some folks, and sounds like excuse-making to others, but I think this is an important point to make: When the LOA was founded, printing a double-volume set with 1,600 pages in each book didn’t seem like an insurmountable problem for a “new” title with a press run of 10,000 copies. But nobody back then seemed to have thought about how much those same books would cost to keep in print once sales slowed down to a few hundred copies a year. Not an insignificant number of our backlist titles actually do cost a lot more to print, store, and distribute than we receive in revenues from bookstores or subscribers.

> 65

I feel I have to applaud you on your communication to the interested amongst us. This is a breath of fresh air. If only all companies were as open and approachable.

David,

Your extremely useful post has demonstrated once again the value of your participation in this group. For those of us outsiders (all of us except you) who love to make pronouncements on what should be included, speculate on what will or might, and wonder why certain authors and works have not appeared, your descriptions of all the factors that go into these decisions is a breath of fresh air. Your reasons are all eminently understandable, but yet so foreign to our everyday lives that we need to be continually reminded of all the considerations other than simply fulfilling some collective wish list.

Thanks again for sharing and for taking the time to contribute to these threads. It is very much appreciated (actually, I suspect you enjoy contributing to this group as much as we enjoy hearing from you).

Added a couple of minutes later:

> 66 I am amused and very pleased to see that we both hit on the phrase "breath of fresh air" to describe David's message. That is very apropos. Your post must have appeared while I was writing mine.

> 67

Nice one :-)

> 65

I might add that it is nice to receive this first confirmation that Melville's poetry, Faulkner's stories, Thoreau's Journals, and Hawthorne's Notebooks are on LOA's radar screen.

65
Thank you. What an excellent explanation of the business end of the important task of bringing the American canon into the light of day. The list of worthy titles is endless, and I applaud your perseverance. Like euphorb, I am so happy to know that Hawthorne is on the radar screen.

Thank you David, looking forward to John Adams!

Back to mithering for Things I Want, although I did genuinely appreciate the real world considerations posting. I am another vote for Baldwin and great American Westerns. Also some more of the great nature and adventure writers, including Mary Austin.

I'd definitely purchase a Hawthorne notebooks. Never having come across them in any used (or new for that matter) bookstore I admitt they were never on my radar, but they look like superb reading:
http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/nh/pfanb01.html

Thank you David! Your posts are fascinating and extremely informative. As everyone else has said throughout this thread, it's great to have an insider here to clarify all these fine points. And yes, great to hear that Melville's poetry and Faulkner's stories have not just been overlooked (though I never *really* began to believe that was the case, at least with the latter anyway). I wonder of what these "painstaking textual issues" consist.

I'm also glad that collections of already-available stuff are so helpful to LoA's cause, since admittedly a lot on my wishlist (and among my favorites of what LoA has put out to date) *is* easily available elsewhere. Not all, of course (Mardiiiii) but a good deal.

>74 weirdfishjacek:: "I wonder of what these 'painstaking textual issues' consist."

For Melville, the LOA agreed to use the authoritative Newberry-Northwestern texts, which has taken years to complete. In 2009, the scholars working on this project finally issued the penultimate volume of Melville's works, containing the "published" poems. The unpublished poems and fragments are currently being gathered for the final volume. The basic textual challenge has been to collate the multiplicity of texts, revisions, corrections, and variants.

For Faulkner, the LOA has restored all the passages deleted or altered by his editors, using the original manuscript and typescripts unless Faulkner agreed to the change (and he often protested quite strenuously). That basically means comparing every version and reading all the correspondence. Noel Polk supervised this process for us for each of his novels. (When we published our editions, both Vintage and the Modern Library also replaced their own texts with the "corrected" or "original" texts, as noted on their covers.) The stories now have to undergo the same process.

And don't get me started on Ezra Pound's Cantos...

David

> 75

David, can you expound on Ezra Pound's Cantos? :-)

Moving on swiftly, these conversations has increased my appetite to add to my puny LOA library and I am going to phone America on Monday although I think the time difference from Eastern Australia is 15 hours or so which means phoning 11pm Monday night.

I intend to bag

Steinbeck: Travels with Charley & Later Novels
Whitman: Poetry & Prose
W. James: Writings 1878-1899
W. James: Writings 1902-1910
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Audubon: Writings & Drawings

Really looking forward to the Audubon and Whitman titles. I have plenty others on the radar of course, only the small hurdle of cash is in the way :-)

> 32

Yes Henry Miller, Hemingway, TS Eliot, JD Salinger and wouldn't it be great if you could print Bill Bryson?

I know this is all about what people want that is not available yet but I want to say THANK YOU for the Washington Irving. I think he has gotten lost in the shuffle and is a much more varied and interesting writer than he's credited for being.

> 10

I'd like to read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair too.

I'd like to see a volume dedicated to American Music:

1. John A. Lomax
2. Alan Lomax
3. Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton Jelly Roll Morton and Alan Lomax
4. Lost Delta Found John W. Work
5. Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans Louis Armstrong
6. Treat it Gentle Sidney Bechet
7. Danny Barker Danny Barker and Alyn Shipton
8. Eubie Blake Eubie Blake and Al Rose
9. Music is My Mistress Duke Ellington
10. They All Played Ragtime Rudi Blesch and Harriet Janus
11. The Story of the Jubilee Singers: With Their Songs J.B.T. Marsh
12. Music and Some Highly Musical People James M. Trotter
13. Bricktop Bricktop and Jim Haskins
14. Hear Me Talkin to Ya:The Story of Jazz Nat Hentoff and Nat Shapiro
15. Miles Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe
16. Rage to Survive: The Etta James Story Etta James and David Ritz
17. Faith in Time: The Life of Jimmy Scott Jimmy Scott and David Ritz
18. Lady Sings the Blues Billie Holiday and William Dufty
19. Shadow and Act Ralph Ellison

80
Yes, a volume of memoirs/remembrances by Blues masters ought to fit well into the American canon.

This weekend while browsing in a favorite used bookstore I came across a two-volume set of the complete works of O. Henry, and I was surprised to find that he's not yet published by LOA. Perhaps a future offering?

> 80 Don't forget Beneath the Underdog by Charles Mingus.

Also Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life by Winton Marsalis

The Dirt by Motley Crew (ok maybe not)

On the other hand, I wonder what a non-Jazz/Blues volume would look like.

It would probably have a lot of rock memoirs and criticism. Some of the guys who wrote for the early Rolling Stone have gone on to major careers in music criticism, like Greil Marcus. I wouldn't mind seeing an entire series on American music criticism. Of course most, if not all, of the stuff on rock, and I suspect blues and jazz as well, are still under copyright and would probably be hard to spring loose at this time.

James Branch Cabell...

OK, so what about a Space volume? I am thinking a volume covering the original cold war space race (sputnik, first man, moon landing, etc) through the space shuttle era (challenger and columbia disasters). It is something so significant to the progress of modern history, I have to imagine that there are some incredible selections that could be included.

My wishlist has one author: Richard Yates. Has the ever been a time when all of his novels were in print at once?

I'm not sure whether I've mentioned it before, but an LOA edition of William Gilmore Simms' The Yemassee and de Forest's Miss Ravenal's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty would be greatly appreciated, as my paperbacks are almost worn out.

I wonder if the LOA has ever considered doing a Sci-Fi anthology, especially since Americans have made significant contributions to the genre. There are a lot of early American Sci-Fi novelists whose work could go into a multi-volume anthology (along the lines of the Fantastic Tales and Crime novels anthologies):

Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester, James Blish, Nelson S. Bond, Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown, Algis Budrys, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Octavia E. Butler, Harry Clement Stubbs, Samuel Ray Delany Jr., Harlan Ellison, John M. Ford, Ursula K. Le Guin, Joe Haldeman, Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Henry Kuttner, Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr, Walter M. Miller Jr, Larry Niven, Chad Oliver, Frederik George Pohl Jr, Lester del Rey, Ross Rocklynne, Clifford Donald Simak, L. Sprague de Camp, Norman Richard Spinrad, Theodore Sturgeon, John Holbrook Vance, Alfred Elton van Vogt, Donald Allen Wollheim, and Roger Zelazny.

Scott:

Short answer: Yes. And there will be news on that within a year.

--David

88

That's actually a good and useful idea. As I believe I mentioned above, I have no problem with publishing readily available works, but publication of the hard-to-find stuff is really an event.

>88 mattsya: & 92

I agree that Richard Yates would be a great addition to the series.

But as far as I know all his novels (and the collected stories) are indeed very much in print. That's not to say the LOA couldn't/shouldn't do an edition of his work, but his having an edition in Everyman's Library makes securing hardcover rights slightly more complicated.

> 94

There may be a volume already (?) but would a work on the Native American Indians be worth considering? I think so, if the material was there. From an indigenous perspective, it would be great to have a book which looked at poetry, conflict, family, nomadic life etc. (perhaps arranged thematically). Just a thought.

LesMis you are so correct, there is not one volume, to my knowledge, dedicated to the North American Indian...what's up with that David...how about Neihardt's 'Black Elk Speaks' or Dee Brown's 'Wounded Knee.'

I agree that there is no volume dedicated to the American Indian, and that this is an oversight that is long overdue for correction. Although Neihardt and Dee Brown are both worthy of inclusion, both are white. In the first post of this thread, I mentioned 4 American Indian authors whose works are eminently worthy of inclusion -- N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko, and James Welch. There are many more, including a great deal of fine poetry and short-story writing. Both fiction and nonfiction by Gerald Vizenor should find a place in LOA. The anthropological writings (as well as the fiction) of Ella Cara Deloria is worthy of revival (via LOA, of course). I have been collecting Native American writing for many years, and I can attest thjat it is a very rich and extensive literature. In addition, there are more works by white authors in the vein of Dee Brown's 'Wounded Knee.' In particular, 'Indian Country' and 'In the Spirit of Crazy Horse' by Peter Mattheissen come to mind (and Matthiessen is an author whose broader oevre, consisting of fiction, natural history, meditative travel, social justice, and more is worthy of inclusion in toto). If I were writing this post at some time other than after midnight, I might have taken the time to expand on the richness of Native American literature.

>94 LesMiserables: & 95

There are at least three areas of American Indian literature to discuss (not to mention historical and anthropological studies):

(1) traditional and oral Native American literature in the original language, up to and including the material transcribed and recorded by Frances Densmore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Densmore)

(2) literature in more "modern" forms (novels, memoirs, stories, etc.) written in or translated into English during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

(3) what's commonly referred to as the Native American Renaissance, beginning with the publication of N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn in 1968—and the more successful of these authors are, needless to say, all in copyright (or are still quite young)

We did include a generous amount of songs and poems in the American Poetry anthology: http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=18

Anthologies of various types have been in various planning stages over the years, but any such volume(s) would be a huge undertaking. Much of the good stuff is in copyright, and an anthology would need to be representative of many traditions. The focus, of course, would need to be on material that actually originated with American Indians. Much of the material published in English was actually written down by whites in "free" translations, and many argue that texts such as Black Elk Speaks were dolled up for white audiences (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Elk_Speaks#Controversy) and are suspect as representations of the American Indian experience.

Similarly, Dee Brown was white, although I don’t think many people would suggest that his work suffers for it.

Regardless, whatever we do will cost a whole lot of money, both because of rights and because of texts that require better translations. There’s a reason that the two major anthologies of American Indian literature were both published by McGraw Hill and Prentice Hall and cost $65 and $90, respectively.

Finally, I can't imagine that a single-author volume by an American Indian author wouldn't happen in the next few years--assuming we could secure the rights.

How is that I live almost 50 years and have never heard of House Made of Dawn which I will purchase via Amazon as soon as I finish this sentence.

I've also not heard of Frances Denmore and will seek to learn more. Man, the information you learn in this forum outranks anything you could learn in a Ph.D program.

Texaco, I predict you will love House Made of Dawn. I first read it nearly 40 years ago, and it still has an indelible impression on me -- I'm inclined to reread it now. It was the first novel by a Native American to win the Pulitzer Prize. You might then enjoy some of Momaday's later nonfiction books such as The Names and The Way to Rainy Mountain. Another absolutely astonishing and deeply engrossing novel is Fools Crow by James Welch. Also try Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko. These books and others have spawned an extensive secondary critical literature -- for starters, look at Four American Indian Masters by Alan R. Velie and Native American Renaissance by Kenneth Lincoln.

> 99

Texaco, I agree with you about this forum, and in that regard, you have certainly been among my best teachers here.

Oh wow, thank you euphorb!!!

Craig Lesley's Winterkill is also well worth the time.

I'm a little embarassed to admit buying the Lovecraft volume, but I had a nice enough time going through a story or two when the winter wind was howling and I wanted something a little different. Since he was a prolific letter writer and it looks like the books are hard to come by, the LOA should do a Lovecraft letters volume. I have a feeling it would do well.

Why are you embarassed to admit you purchased Lovecraft??

Don't be embarrassed about Lovecraft, it is a great volume. It was my first pickup, I am now up to about 18 volumes after a year of subscribing/buying other volumes. I still haven't finished it, about halfway. I find that to best enjoy Lovecraft, I have to fit stories in between my other volumes... I would be curious about a Lovecraft non-fiction/Letters volume as well.

104
Heh. I had most, if not all, of Lovecraft's stories in lurid paperback editions, the way God intended them. Still, I went for the LOA edition. The mysterious attraction of an acid-free clothbound volume with sewn-in bookmark...

To echo some of the people that already posted... Uhm.. What's so embarrassing about Lovecraft?

The pulpy elements to Lovecraft make me uncomfortable. But, there are interesting and nicely drawn out details that are quite impressive. For instance, Innsmouth, the town itself is nicely built up and the panic of fleeing that bedroom, through an adjoining room no less, is quite tactile. The frogmen...it didn't matter so much. I did also appreciate the description of the ocean, the tide and liminal qualities when the main character was talking to the alcoholic who supplies the town's back story.

But please don't take offense to what I may or may not find embarrassing. What I've read of his letters, including the doodles, I think are fascinating and really display his intelligence as a writer. It would be an honest way to quiet the critics of LOA's recent selections. Again, these letters seem hard to find in print.

For a lot of folks (myself included) "pulpy" is a good adjective. I haven't read Lovecraft myself, but from what I understand he has both an unfettered imagination and an unfettered vocabulary. When he's brilliant, he's brilliant, and when he's awful, he's uniquely and brilliantly awful. Am I right? If so, I don't know why I haven't read him yet.

Anyway, never be embarrassed by your taste. There's plenty of "low-brow" work out there that is amazingly good and will stand the test of time. The original Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Marvel comics, to name just another one.

There shouldn't be any such thing as a guilty pleasure.

mattsya - That's about as good a description of Lovecraft as I've heard. I'm probably going to steal it sometime.

I've got the complete Arkham House Lovecraft hardbacks as well as the LOA volume. There's also decent volume of Robert E. Howard's Cthulhu stories out there somewhere. Good stuff.

>110 mattsya:

You are an idealist! But, don't fear the guilt. Guilt is what makes us human, and otherwise complex creatures. In it's own way Lovecraft's horror is an expressive form of guilt. Think of all the similarities to his work and Shakespeare's Macbeth.

May I put a bid in for diaries/journals. It seems to me that one of the special and perhaps unusual characteristics of the LOA is its willingness to take on long term projects. Complete journals (as opposed to selections) paint a picture of the life of the writer in the small details. Maybe I am just nosey, but it is often the commonplace, the quotidian and the trivial which is most engaging. My set of the 9 volume Pepys (+ Companion & Index), for instance, is so much more interesting than any compact edition because I can surround the major events in S.P.s life with his account of his frustration that his wife had not hung up her clothes...

I am sure the U.S. is full of vast accounts of daily life.

>113 Beresford:

This is why I enjoy the Local Color movement in American literature. I, personally, don't know of a Pepys equivalent in US history, but you can get a sense of some of that everyday stuff in writers like Jewett and Hearn or some not yet in the LOA like Bret Hart and George Washington Cable.

That aside, I'm much in favor of your main point as far publishing letters and diaries. Maybe we should hope for more journalistic volumes. Or additional volumes devoted to life in particular cities.

Unfortunately it's all very dependent on literacy rates and having enough time each day to write. Usually the wealthy were the only ones who were able to read and write, as well as having that time each day to record their thoughts, actions, etc.

I think one of the more interesting hybrids is Henry Mayhew, who seems to have recorded close to verbatim, the conversations/interviews he conducted with the underclass.

http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=MayLond.sgm&images=images/mo...

http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/MayLond.html

J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur?

http://books.google.com/books?id=CBgOAAAAIAAJ&dq=Crevecoeur&pg=PA73#v=on...

The "March of America series" is an incredible collection, if you have access to a library that has them, they make excellent browsing.

It's a large series, as this world cat keyword might demonstrate:

http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=kw%3A%22march+of+america+Facsimile+Series%22&am...

I read about half of this one recently and enjoyed it:

http://books.google.com/books?id=_pgOLXAHWLkC&lpg=PA1&ots=tASEMeZDhu&amp...

But again, most of these are accounts or recollections, not a Pepys style swath of large and small.

From what I can gather, Ben Goodkind tried to start a liberal arts news paper in San Francisco and didn't have much success; then did some rail travelling and produced two books of slightly fictionalized account of these travels. Kind of reminds me of Henry Miller or Jack Keroac. I don't think it would be a bad idea to bundle in with a few other American travel narratives.

http://books.google.com/books?id=FR5IAAAAIAAJ&dq=Ben%20Goodkind&pg=PA5#v...

http://books.google.com/books?id=Dh9IAAAAIAAJ&dq=Ben%20Goodkind&pg=PA1#v...

I've had requests (read: yearnings) granted recently with the Bowles and Lovecraft volumes, but I'm still gunning for an Ambrose Bierce omnibus. Any takers?

I'm amazed there hasn't been one yet!

Right? Make the suggestion to their customer service email. If they get enough of them, I don't doubt it will happen. Here's hoping...

David already announced Bierce for fall 2011.

Oh, wow, I didn't know that. That's glorious! Thanks for the info!

>121 veilofisis:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/109400 which leads to http://blog.loa.org/2011/02/forthcoming-from-library-of-america.html

I'll echo scott.stricker in Message 90, except to say that in addition to anthologies of science fiction, there should also be some volumes dedicated to single SF authors. At present, only Philip K. Dick is represented, which is kind of like representing 19th century American fiction only by the tales of William Howells.

As scott.stricker points out, there are many options for SF authors, but I would suggest that Fredric Brown would be a good place to start. As far as I know, nothing of his has been (re)published for at least 30 years. Though Brown wrote a few SF novels, he is best known for his entertaining SF short-short stories with O. Henry-style twists at the end. A Fredric Brown volume would probably be a good-selling one.

ThomasHarrington wrote:
I would suggest that Fredric Brown would be a good place to start. As far as I know, nothing of his has been (re)published for at least 30 years. Though Brown wrote a few SF novels, he is best known for his entertaining SF short-short stories with O. Henry-style twists at the end. A Fredric Brown volume would probably be a good-selling one.

The NESFA Press published two large volumes of his work a decade ago which are still in print. From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown (2001) contains the complete short fantasy and science fiction of Fredric Brown except for two stories, "Gateway to Darkness," and "Gateway to Glory" which were rewritten to be parts of Rogue in Space. Martians and Madness: The Complete SF Novels of Fredric Brown (2002) contains the complete science fiction and fantasy novels of Fredric Brown as well as, "Gateway to Darkness," and "Gateway to Glory".

How about a Manhattan Project volume? Hopefully, it would contain The Making of the Atomic Bomb and some shorter pieces like Los Alamos From Below. Something from Einstein. Hey, is there a LOA Albert Einstein? If not, maybe there should be one or two.

> 126
I think a Manhattan Project volume would be a great idea. There is a great deal of important writing on that topic (as well as a superb opera -- John Adams' "Doctor Atomic").

As for Einstein, David Cloyce Smith included him in his personal list of writers he'd like to see earlier in this thread (Message 32). In a companion thread entitled "Thomas Paine" (see http://www.librarything.com/topic/99718), David mentioned (in Message 8) that the LOA is looking to add more scientists, historians, etc. I responded (Message 10 of that thread) with a list of authors I'd like to see in those categories, including Einstein. In David's response (Message 13), he said that virtually every author in my list was under consideration. Of course, "under consideration" covers a lot of ground, from "kind of thinking about" all the way to "under preparation and about to appear." At least we can surmise that Einstein is at least a possible.

euphorb, thanks for the link to that thread. For some reason I missed it along the way. There are some interesting bubblings going on at LOA. I'm glad these subjects are being mulled over.

I like your list euphorb. Here's my list:

Rachel Carson: Nature Writings
Ameen Rihani: The Book of Khalid & Other Writings
Anzia Yezierska: Novels & Stories

James Purdy: Novels 1959-1974
James Purdy: Novels 1976-1988
James Purdy: Novels 1989-1996
James Purdy: Plays, Stories & Other Writings

John O’Hara: Novels 1934-1955
John O’Hara: Collected Stories
Toni Cade Bambara: Novels & Stories

Mary Austin: Writings
American Western Literature: Penny Dreadfuls and Dime Novels
American Western Literature: Novels 1900s-1950s
Bernard Malamud: Early Novels & Stories
Bernard Malamud: Later Novels & Stories
Susan Sontag: Essays & Reviews

18th Century American Novels

Walker Percy: Novels
Hunter S. Thompson: Early Journalism
Hunter S. Thompson: Later Journalism
Wendy Wasserstein: Plays
Betty Friedan: The Feminine Mystique & Other Writings

James Welch: Novels

Nelson Algren: Novels

Kenneth Burke: Writings
Harold Brodkey: Collected Stories
Jerzy Kosinski: Collected Novels
John Neihardt: Black Elk Speaks & Other Works
Octavia Bulter: Sci-Fi Novels & Stories
Upton Sinclair: Lanly Budd Series, 1940-1945
William Kennedy: Albany Cycle
Edward Abbey: Collected Non-Fiction & Journals
Lois Auchincloss: Novels
Allan David Bloom: Writings
Frederick Manfred: Western Novels
Erskine Caldwell: Novels

I started a new thread in which I mentioned I would like to see the works of William Goldman published by LOA. So far I have only read his non-fiction memoirs, as I finished Which Lie Did I Tell? on Wednesday and I started Hype and Glory Thursday. However, I bought the 35th anniversary edition of The Princess Bride as an ebook and will be reading that once I finish Hype and Glory. I really enjoy his writing style and hope that I enjoy The Princess Bride as much as his memoirs. I also really like Year of the Comet/ and The Ghost and the Darkness among the movies he wrote that I have seen.

>129 Asher1: Cool list. Lot of interesting stuff.

Here's another list:

William Eastlake - Novels
Native American Autobiographies
Thomas Disch – Stories, Poems, & Other Writings
Thomas Disch – Novels 1965 – 1969
Thomas Disch – Novels 1972 - 1979
Thomas Disch – Novels 1984 - 2008
Theodore Sturgeon – Sci-Fi Novels & Stories
Wright Morris – Novels
Wright Morris – Essays
Donald Barthelme – Stories & Essays
Donald Barthelme – Novels
Sherwood Anderson - Stories
Walter M. Miller – Novels & Stories
Kay Boyle – Novels
Kay Boyle – Stories & Poetry
Lorraine Hansberry – Plays & Other Writings
Walter Van Tilburg Clark – Four Novels

Any other dead playwrights? August Wilson, definitely. More volumes of Arthur Miller's plays please!

> 129, 132 You've given us a wonderful list of additional authors and titles to hope for!

I'm currently reading through the Jack London volumes. I hadn't realized that he'd been so prolific and after reading up on him realized there were more than enough novels for another volume. Two that particularly sparked my interest are Before Adam (a boy dreaming about life as an early hominid Australopithecine) and The Scarlet Plague (a post-apocalyptic novel set in 2073). A few others that seemed like possible candidates are A Son of the Sun, The Valley of the Moon, and The Star Rover.

C-SPAN is featuring a documentary on the Library of Congress.

http://www.c-span.org/loc/

>134 scott.stricker:

I'm very partial to "The Road," in the Novels and Social Writings volume. This portrait of railroad bumming about the country is rich with detail and keen observation. It could have easily been turned into a novel, and was tthe direct inspiration for a very entertaining movie, "The Emperor of the North Pole."

Hard to believe that LOA has published no London since 1982, but they may have done the best of it then. I'm reading The People of the Abyss right now and it is quite sharp. I think Martin Eden the best of those novels of his I have read (read it for class once), though I haven't read everything in the LOA volumes. I'm not sure how well London's later fiction holds up. His health problems began to get the better of him as I understand it. And there is a curious note in the Chronology that says he paid Sinclair Lewis for some plots in the late going. But sure, why not more London? The State of California is closing his home--a state park--so he could use the attention.

This is asher1 under a new name.

More suggestions for future volumes

S.J. Perelman - Writings
Djuna Barnes - Nightwood, Poetry, & Other Writings
John Gardner - Criticism & Instruction on Writing
John Gardner - Novels
Thom Gunn - Collected Poetry & Essays
Albert Einstein - Scientific Writings: A Sampler
American Sports Writing
Christopher Isherwood - Writings 1945-2007: A Selection
Zane Grey - Westerns: A Selection, with Writings on Fishing & Baseball
Ole Edvart Rolvaag - A Trilogy & Other Writings
Stephen Vincent Benet - Poetry, Stories, & Other Writings
Audre Lorde - Zami, Poetry, & Other Writings
Anita Loos - Novels, Plays, & Other Writings
Vladimir Nabokov - Stories, Plays, Poetry
Vladimir Nabokov - Criticism, Opinion, Scientific Writings, Letters
Paul Monnette - Borrowed Time, Becoming a Man, & Other Writings
Susan Glaspell - The Road to the Temple, Plays, & Other Writings
Horatio Alger Jr. - Writings
Gilbert Sorrentino - Mulligan Stew, Poetry, & Other Writings
Chaim Potok - Novels 1967-1985
George Washington Cable - Collected Works
Edith Wharton - Travel Books & Other Writings
Booth Tarkington - Novels (two volumes+)
David Foster Wallace - Collected Non-Fiction
Anne Petry - The Street & Other Writings
Paul Zindel - Novels & Plays
Harriet Doerr - Novels, Stories, Essays
Oliver La Farge - Laughing Boy, Stories, & Other Writings
Stanley Elkin - Novels & Stories 1964-1979
Stanley Elkin - Novels & Essays 1992-1995
Marilyn French - The Women's Room, Beyond Power, & Other Writings

What do you think???

Good list. Would love Perelman and Thom Gunn especially.

Here's another list:

Dwight Eisenhower - Memoirs & Speeches
Zitkala-Sa - Legends, Stories, & Other Writings
Ellen Glasgow - Novels & Stories (2+ volumes)
Louisa May Alcott - Collected Stories, Poetry, & Letters
Jean Stafford - Novels & Stories
Arthur Laurents - Collected Musicals & Plays
American Writing on Music
John P. Marquand - Novels & Stories
Terry Southern - Essays, Novels, Stories, Screenplays
Richard Brautigan - Novels & Poetry (2+ volumes)
John Fante - Novels, Stories, & Letters 1933-1940
Langston Hughes - Collected Poetry
Langston Hughes - I Wonder As I Wander & Other Non-Fiction
D'Arcy McKnickle - The Surrounded & Other Works
Daniel Fuchs - Novels, Stories, & Other Writings
Louis Bromfield - Novels & Other Writings
Lanford Wilson - Plays (2+ volumes)

Here are a few...

----------------------------------------------------------

James Branch Cabell (1879-1958)

Volume I (The 'Jurgen Trilogy')
- Figures of Earth
- Silver Stallion
- Jurgen
An argument could be made for placing Jurgen first. Although it comes last chronologically (or almost -- it occurs shortly before the last chapter of Silver Stallion), Jurgen was written before the other two, and our enjoyment of the appearances Jurgen makes in Figures and Stallion is predicated on our already knowing who he is, the rogue...

Volume II (The 'Horvendile Trilogy' )
- Domnei
- Cream of the Jest
- The Witch-Woman Trilogy

Volume III
- The High Place
- Something About Eve
- Selected Short Fiction

Volume IV (The Nightmare Has Triplets)
- Smirt
- Smith
- Smire

Volume V
Selected non-fiction

---------------------------------

Edgar Saltus (1855-1921)

Selected Novels
- Mrs Incoul's Misadvenure
- Tristrem Varick
- (another couple)

Selected Non-Fiction
- Imperial Purple
- (selected essays)

-------------------------

Joseph Hergesheimer (1880- 1954)

Selected novels
- Three Black Pennies
- Java Head
- (another couple)

Crypto, I have never heard of those writers. I will certainly check them out. Cabell sounds interesting.

>142 A_B:

Jurgen is a classic. The Limited Editions Club did a wonderful edition of this book with superb illustrations back in 1976/

If there is one writer I hope LOA eventually publishes (the sooner the better!) is Wallace Stegner, both his complete fiction and non-fiction.

>144 brother_salvatore: Brother Salvatore, I'll join you and repeat my call for Stegner. I mentioned him in the first entry in this thread (and again in 31), as have others.

> 142
Cabell and Hergesheimer were very big during the 1920s, Cabell was a close associate of Ellen Glasgow, whom you list. HL Mencken was a champion of both. When Sinclair Lewis received his Nobel Prize he suggested that Cabell might deserve one too. In 1922 Alfred Knopf, the budding super-publisher, called Hergesheimer the best writer in the country. Sadly, they fell into neglect during the 30s and after. Hergesheimer has never recovered (though, oddly, Samuel Becket rated Java Head as his favorite American novel); Cabell was 'rediscovered' by Edmund Wilson in the 1950s, and had a kind of resurgence in the post-Tolkien climate of the 60s and 70s due to fantastical elements in some of his books. But he's not really an elf-monger -- more in the line of Apuleius, Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, or Carroll.

>143 Django6924:
That is indeed a very nice Jurgen from the Ltd Eds Club. And for collectors of fine illustrated editions, back in the day a half dozen or so of Cabell's key books were done in large paper, with illustrations by the legendary Frank C. Pape.

Further up, I see that Ursula K. Le Guin has scored a few mentions, including by our "inside man" David. Le Guin is known as much for her children's/YA efforts as her adult-audience fantasy; keeping that in mind, I would like to suggest Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary, and Lois Lowry. Rights would probably be a major issue, but could that be worked out, I think these three ladies have given a lot to the world of American literature, and are worth consideration.

>147 beatlemoon: I agree with Le Guin!
Blume and Lowry...never thought of them before, but it makes me wonder, Why not a volume devoted to classics of American children's lit - early and contemporary?
Maybe a volume that collects several works by several authors like Samuel Goodrich or Jacob Abbott?
(Definitely, the Alcott volume and some tales from Hawthorne is children's lit. There are probably other works in the series that can be considered "children's lit." Can't think of others...)
What about a volume devoted to children's catechism or primers or spelling books or juvenile magazines?
What about Laura Ingalls Wilder or L. Frank Baum? Maybe copyright is an issue.

What about a volume or two devoted to early American novels?
Maybe the volume can include works by

Susanna Rowson
William Hill Brown
Royall Tyler
Catherine Sedgewick
Harriet Beecher Stowe & James Fenimore Cooper (there are several other novels)
Hugh Brackenbridge
William Gilmore Simms
any others?

>148 A_B:

I love the idea of a children's anthology. And I can't believe I forgot Ingalls Wilder! She's my all time favorite! Copyright most likely is an issue, but it's nice to dream.

>149 A_B: and >150 beatlemoon::

Regarding Laura Ingalls Wilder:

We actually have a deal to add her works to the LOA series and "quietly" announced progress on our blog several months back. See the last paragraph:
http://blog.loa.org/2010/11/timelessness-and-laura-ingalls-wilder.html

To be published in Fall 2012.

--David

Thanks David! You should advertise that on Facebook, if you haven't! Thanks for letting us know about the 2012 volumes. Thanks for reading our wishlists. Keep up good work.

Do you know what will be in next year's volumes devoted to sci-fi novels?

Asher:

We have finished the selection process for next year's sci-fi novels collection, but we are unable to publicize the contents until we have all the signed contracts in hand. Rights holders often get a little tetchy if we publicize that we are publishing something before everyone has agreed on the terms.

I probably won't be able to release the list of novels until late this year. I can tell you that Gary K. Wolfe is the editor of the collection.

David

David, I hope you noticed the groundswell of support for William Gilmore Simms. (I still want a good copy of The Yemassee, and I have read that his much later novel The Cassique of Kiawah is even better.

Django: I can't speak for our editors, but I've added Simms to my own list of authors to read. I do pass along the "new" or "unexpected" ideas to our advisors, some of whom have been reading the threads on LibraryThing ever since I pointed them out {waves hello}.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, dozens of the names mentioned here are in some stage of development or production, so it's gratifying to see that the tastes of LOA readers line up with the advisors' choices so closely. And there have been some good ideas that hadn't been considered. Now that we're publishing as many as 10-11 series volumes a year, you should see more "new" authors appearing sooner rather than later.

--David

RE: WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS

If I remember correctly Simms supported slavery. Would that hurt his chance in being included in LOA?

Would LOA publish any works by authors that modern readers would label "racist"?

If included, would LOA include his PRO-slavery writings alongside his then-popular novels? I have no problem with that.

If published, could LOA receive backlash from scholars and/or readers, especially Black readers?

I know that Simms was celebrated and lauded by Poe...but the questions above I think are important.

Was Simms racist...?

Speaking of minorities...consider the work by Arab-Americans (*Ameen Rihani*) in the 1910s and 20s, esp. those who belonged to Al-Rabitah al-Qalamiyah (or the Pen League).

(I've noticed Rihani was included in a volume edited by Bloom. Nice.)

>151 DCloyceSmith:

A deluxe edition of all eight Little House books? Be still my heart!

David, where can I pre-order? (Kidding - I know, it's a year off, but still. You can let the relevant parties know that you have already sold a set!)

>153 DCloyceSmith:. Wow, an SF volume (volumes?) edited by Gary K. Wolfe! You've made my year.

Asher Bowles I'm Black and support the publication of Gilmore Simms (whom by the way I've never heard of). That being said I still hope to one day see individual volumes of writings by abolitionists Charles Sumners and Thaddeus Stevens.

>156 A_B: "was Simms racist?"

Given the broadest definition of the term, he undoubtedly was, and his pro-slavery novel, The Sword and the Distaff was the most famous and successful (in pro-slavery circles) of the books written in opposition to Uncle Tom's Cabin.

As to the virulence of his views on the matter, it's hard to say as his books have been out of print so long. I've only read The Yemassee, a novel dealing with the war between the colonists and that tribe, and it is remarkable for its sympathetic and understanding portrayal of the lives of native Americans. I find it a much better novel than most of Cooper's novels to which it is most often compared. But even this book has strains of Simms' attitude toward the slaves, who he viewed as basically savages, who needed to be constrained by their masters.

An author is a product of his time... Just because we cannot agree with someone's way of thinking judged by today's standards does not mean that their writing should be suppressed... A lot of the authors from times past would be called racists (and worse) if they lived today.

History (and the literature that was created as a result) should be remembered and learned from; not swiped under the carpet in an attempt to forget that it existed.

>AnnieMod

I totally agree with everything you said! I wasn't suggesting racist writing should be supressed. I, along with other readers, are rooting for Simms, even though he was probably a racist. Just brought up the questions because I thought they were interesting.

I'm a huge Grace King fan and would love an LOA volume, but while her writings were racist, they weren't very different from most of her contemporaries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_King

Richard Yates.

As Davis has pointed out, EL have an edition already.

It would be nice though. Green Cloth.

Here's another list:

Andy Warhol & Company: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol & Other Writings

George Santayana: Philosophical Writings & Letters

George Santayana: Last Puritan, Poetry & Other Writings

Grace Paley: Stories, Poems, & Other Writings

Elinor Wylie: Novels & Poems

Edward Bellamy: Looking Backwards & Other Writings

Bret Harte: Writings

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Novels, Stories, Poems, Plays

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Feminist Lectures, Letters, Diary Selections, Autobiography

Shakespeare in America: Writings on the Playwright & His Plays

William Brewster: Concord Diaries and Journals

Ed Wood: Pulp & Adult Novels

Billy Graham: Sermons & Other Evangelical Writings

John Burroughs: Writings

Owen Wister: Western Novels, Stories, & Other Writings

James Jones: Novels & Stories

Ann Bannon: Lesbian Pulp Novels, including The Beebo Brinker Chronicles

Edith Hamilton: The Greek Way, The Roman Way, & Other Writings

A.B. Guthrie, Jr.: Western Novels

Catherine Sedgewick: Novels, Letters, & Other Writings

American Feminist Writing: Early Years

American Writing on Art (multi-volume, covering different periods and/or forms of art (painting, sculpture, architecture))

John Dewey: Writings (multi-volume)

American Writing on Animals

Elmer Kelton: Western Novels (multi-volume)

Tennessee Williams: Novels, Stories, Poems

Laura Riding Jackson: Poems, Novels, Stories

Laura Riding Jackson: Criticism & Essays

John William DeForest: Novels & Other Writings

American Writers & Travelers Abroad: Mexico

American Writers & Travelers Abroad: Central America & The Carribean

American Writers & Travelers Abroad: South America

American Writers & Travelers Abroad: Europe

American Writers & Travelers Abroad: Asia

American Writers & Travelers Abroad: Africa

American Writers & Travelers Abroad: Australia & Oceania

American Writers & Travelers Abroad: Russia

American Writers & Travelers Abroad: Canada

James Gould Cozzens - Novels & Stories

Rebecca Harding Davis: Novels, Stories, Essays

O. Henry: Complete Stories

Tillie Olsen: Stories & Non-Fiction

It's fun to read all these lists and hope for the future volumes of our favorites. My own hopes are mostly centered on deeper explorations of the American novel:

Catherine Maria Sedgewick
William Gilmore Simms
more James Fenimore Cooper (there's so much Cooper unavailable)
Hawthorne and Melville's nonfiction
later Dos Passos novels (very hard to find novels like Mid-Century or Century's Ebb)

and all those 20th-Century novelists whose rights aren't available yet, of course.

I'd also like to see Will Durant and Hunter S. Thompson--has anyone ever put those two names in the same sentence before?

DCLOYCESMITH: Three questions.

1) Regarding the Kurt Vonnegut volumes: Has anyone approaced John Irving about doing an introduction, or to use one of his essays, for one of the remaining Library of America volumes?

2) Is there any chance that the contents of those forthcoming science fiction novel collections (edited by Gary K. Wolfe) are available for dissemination here on Library Thing?

3) Have the works of Booth Tarkington ever been considered for inclusion?

>DTS59

Here are a few answers to your questions:

1) LOA editions collecting an author's works only include writings by the author (or, at the very least, collaborations with the author). The only exception to this rule has been the introduction in the volumes of Lynd Ward's graphic novels (which themselves are wordless). So we hadn't considered an introduction or other essay by John Irving (or any other author).

2) Still awaiting the arrival of two contracts for the sci-fi anthologies. Hope to have word soon, but it's been a far more painful process than we had hoped. The rights to some of these works are a bit of a quagmire.

3) Tarkington's works have been considered perennially, but our advisors haven't yet decided to add him to the series.

I, for one, haven't read him yet and have been meaning to read The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams for some time now.

--David

Booth Tarkington wrote some great stories about children: Penrod and Penrod and Sam as well as an interesting tale of disguise, Monsieur Beaucaire. His works would make a great addition to LOA.

One of the things I really like about LOA is its lack of front matter, notes, introductions and so forth. To paraphrase a famous detective of the mid 20th century, "The words, ma'am, just the words".

In my opinion, The Magnificent Ambersons fully deserved its Pulitzer Prize. A wonderful portrait of the fall of an "old money" family who failed to recognize how the world was changing during the Industrial Revolution, and of the impact of the automobile on American society. I would rate it at least as highly as Mann's similar novel Buddenbrooks--and it's much more enjoyable to read (which may partially be due to the clumsiness of the translation of Buddenbrooks I read in college.

And I totally agree with geneg about the merits of Monsieur Beaucaire. I enjoyed the Penrod books when I read them as an adolescent, but I haven't revisited them since. I never read Alice Adams--but loved the George Stevens film version.

Definitely deserving of a volume of his own.

David, Many thanks for answering the questions. And, yes,
GENG & DJANGO6924 (and DAVID): THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (Orson Welles' film version was one of the better adaptations of novel-to-screenplay) and ALICE ADAMS are, in my opinion, his finest novels (with the former bleeding over into poetry territory at times). But as GENEG pointed out, his many other works are quite good, and would round out a collection or two (or three) quite nicely. Here's hoping the the advisory committee will reconsider soon. Or that they'll be introduced to his works if they aren't familiar -- a good possibility, since his books have never gotten the acclaim (in academic circles) that they deserve. Much like a modern writer with similar sensibilities: Craig Nova (if you've never read his works, THE GOOD SON, THE CONGRESS MAN'S DAUGHTER and TORNADO ALLEY are highly recommended -- in fact, Nova reminds me, in many ways, of Tarkington, in his literary sensibilities).

Amazing! I just wanted to raise the question of Booth Tarkington, and here it is! David, I do hope his work will be in LOA in the very near future. After all, he's only the third author to have two Pulitzer-winning novels, the others being Faulkner and Updike. I'm not too familiar with this whole body of work, though, would it be unfeasible to have his complete works published by LOA?

I was just wondering about Erskine Caldwell. David, do you know if LOA has considered his stuff at all? I know during the fifties and sixties his stuff was considered lurid and cheap, but after actually reading Tobacco Road I discovered that was because the publishers didn't know what to do with Southern Literature, not because it was cheap. I really enjoyed Tobacco Road and am looking forward to reading God's Little Acre when I have the chance.

None of these are original suggestions, but I would sure second or third them:
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr
Wallace Stegner
George Santayana
Bernard De Voto
Charles Sanders Peirce

More philosophy, in general

Prolly asking too much here, but it would be nice to have a second volume of Sarah Orne Jewett to complete her novels, include more of her stories, and also include her poems. Meanwhile, Coe College (Iowa) seems to have a comprehensive on-line text project of Jewett. Essentially, I guess I'm asking that Jewett be treated on a level with the LoA of Willa Cather.

And now, along the lines of Jewett but I know I'm asking for too much, it would be nice to have an anthology of Maine literature, which is really quite different from New England regional literature in general, so much so as to constitute a subregional literature.

>geneg

As with many of the suggestions in this thread, Erskine Caldwell has been under consideration, but his major works are all still in print and the rights have to be negotiated.

Often the existence of current editions can complicate things and make rights negotiations tricky since our titles are sold in bookstores and can be viewed as competitive with the current edition.

Isaac Asimov was mentioned earlier, and I just watched a great documentary about him on the Science channel, so started wondering if somewhere down the road LOA might come out with his works. I see, for instance, his multitude of short stories have never been all collected in full. That might make a few volumes.

If I had income right now, I would be all over the Gilman and especially the Riding volumes Asher proposes above. The only reason I have read Though Gently is because it was reprinted in a magazine (Delmar) and LOA editions of her work would be a complete bargain. I bet I can get the money before you can get it worked out and to the front of the publishing queue. (;

Regarding playwrights and screenwriters....

What playwrights do you think should be added to the LOA library? What about Wendy Wasserstein? Lanford Wilson? Romulus Linney? Philip Barry? August Wilson? Langston Hughes?

Do you think the Tennessee Williams' volumes are complete? He wrote dozens of one-acts and full-lengths (the later ones are considered not-so-good). Why publish O'Neill's early one-acts but not Williams' apprentice plays? Why not publish DuBois' plays?

DCloyceSmith...any talk about a volume or two devoted to screenplays?

179> "Why not publish DuBois' plays?"

Why not really publish DuBois? That one-volume edition is pitifully scant. It doesn't even include "The Philadelphia Negro."

In fairness, though, the DuBois volume was probably the first LoA edition of an African-American writer. (I definitely remember that it predated Richard Wright.) There may have been a fear at the time that a multi-volume edition wouldn't sell. Maybe the DuBois volume was a trial balloon of sorts and LoA learned its lesson by the time of the two-volume Richard Wright set.

>179 A_B:

We do have volumes of plays simmering on the back burner; each is held up pending rights negotiations. (Even a Clifford Odets volume is held up due to copyright--and most of his plays are public domain!)

The situation is even worse for screenplays: with few exceptions, the ownership of screenplays remains with the studios that produced them. Need I say more?

Edit: I should also add that what constitutes the "screenplay" for any movie is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. For most movies, there are many versions: the story treatment, the continuity script and/or shooting script, a transcription of the final filmed and edited version, etc. The studio might own all the versions, or the copyright for the original might reside with a big-name author while the "final" version resides with the producers, or other combinations.

>181 DCloyceSmith:

The situation is even more Byzantine than you might imagine David. When I was at USC, I had to organize a donation of the entire 20th Century-Fox story department archives. Boxes loaded with a jumble of story ideas, treatments, multitudes of drafts (Zanuck was obsessed with script development), and continuity taken from the screen. I remember spending weeks wondering when the studio was ever going to make a delightful comedy from a play set in Budapest called "The Birthday Gift," by Hungarian Ladislas Fodor, only to find, after virtually every screenwriter who ever worked for Fox did a screenplay draft, that it was transmogrified a quarter century later as the John Wayne movie "North to Alaska!"

Also, the studios sometimes sold or bargained off rights in deals that gave them a particular advantage--or cash--when they needed it. Thus a producer for whom I worked in the 1980s had the rights to remake "For Whom the Bell Tolls" but the picture could not be released in the US. Paramount had sold off the European rights (perhaps thinking the story was too controversial, and the production costs too prohibitive, for any European production company to tackle), perhaps in an effort to recoup some of the huge cost of their 1943 movie which, of course, did not have a European release as the only country not at war in Europe was Spain--and Franco was hardly likely to want to exhibit a film that was obviously anti-Fascist.

A film which I reviewed on another blog, "A Walk in the Sun," had a screenplay by Robert Rossen adapted (almost literally transcribed) from Harry Brown's novella, but Brown after the film fell into public domain, you would see credits on re-issues of the movie "Motion Picture Copyright Secured by the Novel 'A Walk in the Sun' copyright 1943, renewed 1971, Harry McNab Brown."

Clearly untangling the Gordian knot of rights binding most screenplays is a problem which, sad to say, is rarely worth the effort it would entail.

As was promised (see my post 90 above from over a year ago and post 91, a response from DCloyceSmith), two science fiction anthologies are forthcoming on Sep 27, edited by Gary K. Wolfe:

American Science Fiction: Four Novels 1953-56 (09/27/2012) - 1598531581
American Science Fiction: Five Novels 1956-58 (09/27/2012) - 159853159X

The Space Merchants (Frederik Pohl & C. M. Kornbluth)
More Than Human (Theodore Sturgeon)
The Long Tomorrow (Leigh Brackett)
The Shrinking Man (Richard Matheson)
Double Star (Robert Heinlein)
The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester)
A Case of Conscience (James Blish)
Who? (Algis Budrys)
The Big Time (Fritz Leiber)

Only problem is, these come out 9/27 and my birthday is 9/25. I'm sure this was just an oversight?

Does LOA have room for science writing? I'm thinking of Richard Feynman, Stephen Jay Gould, and Edward O. Wilson for starters.

> 184

To crib from my message in item 127, above:

In a companion thread entitled "Thomas Paine" (see http://www.librarything.com/topic/99718), David Cloyce Smith mentioned (in Message 8) that the LOA is looking to add more scientists, historians, etc. I responded (Message 10 of that thread) with a list of authors I'd like to see in those categories, including Gould and Wilson. In David's response (Message 13), he said that virtually every author in my list was under consideration. Of course, "under consideration" covers a lot of ground, from "kind of thinking about" all the way to "under preparation and about to appear." At least we can surmise that Gould and Wilson are at least possibles. I'd also love to see Feynman, another favorite of mine that I inexplicably left off of that prior list.

We are still working on several proposals and/or rights negotiations for several authors in the sciences. Copyright has stymied the volume I thought sure would be first up (I can't say who it is because we're still pursuing it), while textual challenges have delayed another.

By the way, in that thread, I'd also mentioned an upcoming F. L. Olmsted volume--which has been delayed again. It's currently slated for Fall 2013.

The volume I'd (personally) like to see is Einstein, but I think the rights might be an insurmountable challenge.

Can Einstein be considered an American scientist?

He was naturalized in 1940, so he was a citizen for the last 15 years of his life.

LOA has included other authors whose claim to be American writers is as tenuous as Einstein's or more so. Both Vladimir Nabokov and Lafcadio Hearn were born abroad, spent their middle years in the US, then left to live out the rest of their lives abroad. Then there is de Tocqueville, who was a Frenchman his entire life, only made one relatively short visit to America, and wrote entirely in French. But then he is a special case, because his book is the quintessential book ABOUT America. Similarly with Thomas Paine, an Englishman who spent only a few years in America and did much of his most important writing outside the US -- but, like de Tocqueville, he is a reasonable exception, in his case because some of his works (though not all that are in the LOA volume) contributed importantly to the revolutionary cause. Then there are the American expatriates, such as Baldwin and Bowles, and even more so, T.S. Eliot, who became a British subject while still a young man (he is not yet in LOA, presumably only because the rights are so hard to obtain, but I understand he is prominently under consideration).

All in all, what constitutes an "American writer," for purposes of eligibility to be included in LOA, would be a fascinating topic. David???

In addition to those listed by euphorb, there are also Isaac Singer, Alexander Hamilton, Capt. John Smith, John James Audubon, and even Saul Bellow (although, granted, he moved here when he was nine). And I'm sure I'm forgetting one or two.

Here are some "off the top of my head" notes about the "American" issue, as it's been discussed within my hearing over the last decade:

When considering a particular author, our advisors and editors don't simply consider the author's citizenship or residency status but whether the body of work, or a group of works, or a single work can be considered "American." Of course, there have been countless disputes among our consultants over what this means exactly, but I think most of the choices made so far are fairly straightforward.

For example, Nabokov's English-language, American-published novels--well, nobody would claim "Lolita" and "Pale Fires" or "Pnin" are Russian novels. Or, to use the example of an author we haven't done: Isherwood's "Berlin Stories" (definitely not American) versus "A Single Man" (100% American).

Even Singer's stories: except for the first few stories (translated by Bellow and others), the LOA collection doesn't contain "strict" translations of the Yiddish originals, but Singer's own "translations," heavily revised for American publication, for which he changed language, plots, scenes, and even endings for mainstream American audiences. Most of Singer's "translators" didn't even know Yiddish; they mostly performed transcription and copyediting tasks and he generously chose to credit them as translators. The resulting stories are quite different from their originals. And, of course, many of his later stories are set in New York and Miami.

As a contrary example: I don't think many readers would make the argument that Thomas Mann's post-1939 writings are "American" in any meaningful sense of the word.

On a slightly different note: Emerson's translation of Dante and Pound's translations of various Greek classics are so idiosyncratically transformed by their authors that they were included in their respective volumes as distinctively "American" works.

As for Einstein: he moved here in 1933 and wrote, revised, and published for his adopted home audience a number of scientific and popular works and lectures, including "The Evolution of Physics" (which he coauthored) and four revised editions of "The Meaning of Relativity" (which were based on lectures he first gave at Princeton in 1921, before he emigrated). There are also a number of essays and articles on political, religious, and other topics written during these years. Not including his articles for scientific publications (those would be too specialized for an LOA volume), there's almost certainly enough to make up a nice-sized tome.

The 2012–2013 Subscription Customization Form is available in the new Customer Service Center on the LOA website:

NEW TITLES FOR 2012-2013
American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation
American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1953–1956
American Science Fiction : Five Classic Novels 1956–1958
Sherwood Anderson: Collected Stories
The Civil War: The Third Year Told by Those Who Lived It
David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of 1940s & 50s
Jack Kerouac: Collected Poems
Philip Roth: Novels 2001–2007
Philip Roth: Nemeses
Kurt Vonnegut: Novels & Stories 1950–1962
The War of 1812: Writings from America's Second War of Independence
Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Little House Books, vol. 1
Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Little House Books, vol. 2

REPRINTS FOR 2012-2013
Saul Bellow: Novels 1944–1953
Charles Brockden Brown: Three Gothic Novels
Willa Cather: Later Novels
John Cheever: Collected Stories & Other Writings
Stephen Crane: Prose & Poetry
Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s
John Dos Passos: U.S.A.
Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography, Poor Richard, & Later Writings
Henry James: Novels 1871–1880
Henry James: Novels 1881–1886
Herman Melville: Typee, Omoo, Mardi
John Steinbeck: Novels & Stories 1932–1837
Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, & Essays 1852–1890
Mark Twain: Historical Romances
Eudora Welty: Stories, Essays, & Memoir

Philip Roth: Novels 2001–2007
Philip Roth: Nemeses

Can't wait! But why the second volume is undated? Maybe there's another Roth novel coming in 2012 or 2013?

And I'm guessing Philip Roth: Novels 2001–2007 is missing Shop Talk?

For 2011-12 LOA only published 9 volumes in the series, while for 2012-13 they have increased it to 13. I only subscribed last year and I'm interested in how many volumes LOA normally publishes in the series in a year.

They have averaged just over 7 per year. I got my first in 1982 and have up through Bierce #219. Not aware that I'm missing any.

>192 Pablum::

Nemeses includes the quartet of novels published between 2006 and 2010. To avoid confusion from the overlap in dates, the dates were omitted from this final volume.

>195 DCloyceSmith: Doesn't that make 9 Roth volumes? Is that the most for any LOA author?

Oh, okay, so:

Volume 8: The Dying Animal (2001), The Plot Against America (2004), Exit Ghost (2007)
Volume 9: Everyman (2006), Indignation (2008), The Humbling (2009), Nemesis (2010)

Makes sense, but you could've went with 2006-2010 anyway, it's not confusing and keeps it orderly with the rest of the volumes. Or maybe another reason is that having such recent dates would look weird?

Are there any uncollected short stories? And I still have to wonder that Mr. Roth publishes more novels. I was just listening to a recent interview with him where he says he's constantly writing, every day, and he hopes to continue writing until he no longer can. With him turning 80 next year that can't be too far off, sadly, but I'm hoping we will see more works published and thus maybe a Volume 10.

>196 kdweber:

Henry James, at 15 (so far!), is the clear winner.

>197 Pablum:

If Roth has another book in the works, he hasn't told us about it. And there is a small scattering of uncollected short stories--but we've basically been told that we can't reprint those (yet).

198> Darn you, David, you took the words out of my mouth. Compared to James, Roth's a piker.

What I'm wondering, though, is whether you're ever going to complete the James series. As far as I can see, you're still missing the autobiographies and the plays. Or am I wrong on this? What's the hold-up? I can't imagine it's copyright at this point, although considering the Dickinson problem that's not completely unimaginable. Is there a fear those extra volumes, especially the plays, just don't have a market? Or is it just six (well, not really that many) volumes in search of an editor?

Not that I should complain, because thus far I've only got the novels and stories so I still have to acquire the criticism and travel volumes. For portability, in fact, I use the excellent Delphi edition on Kindle, and that even includes the autobiographies and plays (along with some supplementary critical essays by writers like Conrad and Woolf).

>199 CurrerBell:

The next volume of James will almost certainly be the autobiographies, along with the two unfinished novels, all of which require some serious textual work and supplementary material (the third volume of the memoirs was never finished and there are, in fact, related fragments).

It's also possible that we might collect the art criticism as we did the travel writing and literary criticism.

And then there are the letters. . . .

As for the plays: to be frank, the reaction from many James scholars, as well as our other consultants, has been underwhelming. While no decision has been made to exclude the plays, there's no sense of urgency to publish them.

Ultimately, we have nearly 150 volumes in various stages of planning and production and, since we are publishing only 10-13 volumes per year, the editorial advisors feel that we may as well (to put in crassly) space out James's "B-sides" and try to mix things up a bit.

>200 DCloyceSmith:

One thinks of Ben Jonson's comment on someone's praise of Shakespeare--"He never blotted a line!": "Would he had blotted a thousand."

One hopes James plays won't be printed until we get at least one volume of William Gilmore Simms containing The Yemassee and The Cassique of Kiawah.

>200 DCloyceSmith:

Wow!! 150 more volumes. I know you can't reveal what they are, but still it's fun to guess or imagine. And that's just in "planning and production." I have to suppose that there are many more "under consideration," a term you have often used ion these threads.

I've always figured that an LOA volume is equivalent to 3 or 4 regular volumes, so the approximately 225 already published equates to a library of close to 800 volumes. The additional 150 LOA volumes will add about 525 to that total, for a library of some 1300+ regular volumes -- it boggles the mind!

>202 euphorb:

Basically, the schedule for the next three years is already filled, with a few titles that may to move back or forward a season as things slip. But our planning extends almost ten years in advance since most volumes take several years to put together.

DCloyceSmith,

There is precedent for overlapping dates on LoA volumes:

The recently published (2010) Emerson Journals do have a date overlap....

Selected Journals 1820–1842
Selected Journals 1841–1877

Was this a one-off? What explains the circumstance where the date overlap is OK in this case, but not for the Roth volumes?

The Emerson volumes caused no end of confusion in the end. Librarians in particular thought there was an error in one of the titles and didn't understand why there was overlap.

(We also overlapped dates for the Steinbeck, with only marginally less confusion since the titles themselves were quite different. But we still find ourselves explaining it to people.)

We try to learn from our mistakes. Plus, as I understand it, Roth himself wasn't keen on the idea, and he sees "Nemeses" as a bookend of his career.

Nemesis was originally published in 2010. I would assume that nothing else published in the main series was written that close to its LOA release, right?

Anyway, it makes me kind of sad to think that when I read Nemesis, I might have been reading the last new work by Philip Roth. What an amazing career.

>206 mattsya:. I couldn't agree more. I hope Nemesis is not the last Roth novel. If so, it's not a bad way to end a career, but I'm really hoping that Roth will finish off with a larger than life novel that will end his career with a bang and not a whimper. Since he probably writes everyday, I would surprised if we really don't see at least one more, maybe even two more books before the dying light robs us of his titanic talent.

Would it be possible to start a project concerning all 50 states? An anthology on writing about certain states (or groups of states if one cannot fill a single volume), their histories and defining moments? Something in the vein of chronological first-source volumes like the Civil War project? Something like that would be huge, but having a volume on my own state's history, defining moments, and writings would I think be really cool. I don't know if such a thing fits within the scope of the LoA.

There was a WPA history project along those lines for the lower 48. I think Steinbeck mentions owning an entire set in Travels with Charley

I've always expected there would be more volumes in the Writing New York and Writing Los Angeles vein, which were among LOA's earliest anthology titles. There are so many cities that have equally rich literary histories -- Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, San Francisco, and many more. David, are there any plans along these lines?

New Orleans.

THIS is for DCloyce Smith: HERE's a suggestion for an author for future inclusion in the LOA volumes!

Thomas Berger.
LITTLE BIG MAN, ARTHUR REX, NEIGHBORS, THE FEUD, MEETING EVIL and, of course, the Rheinhart books (CRAZY IN BERLIN, RHEINHART IN LOVE, VITAL PARTS, RHEINHART'S WOMEN), to begin with.

A most EXCELLENT writer, and one whose oeuvre spans many genres.

Don't know if he would be one of those you would have trouble with when it comes to obtaining copyright permisions, but, if not, then you should definitely make the suggestion to those who take such things under consideration!

All this shouting is making me nervous.

Hey, Geneg: no need to go all Casper Milquetoast on us. The first two capitalized words were accidents. And the capitalized book titles are generally accepted ways of getting around the lack of _underlines_ in forums like this.

Thomas Berger. Many great novels, lots of great writing.
Enough said.

>214 DTS59:

No but we have touchstones: Crazy in Berlin and so on. So if you are going to blame the forum for using all capital letters, you can as well use what the forum gives you... Not to mention that "" are available as well to separate titles.

Just saying. Plus, some html is supported. :)

Will there be another Dreiser volume?

> 214

If you want this enter this <u>this<\u>

Hey AnnMod (and Civitas): I honestly had no idea that some folks on this forum were so pedantic (actually, I prefer anal, but the locals in my new homeland are more polite). Since I wasn't attacking anyone, or "blaming" anyone or anything -- merely trying to make another suggestion for the Library of America regarding an absolutely fantastic author, I didn't worry so much over the format of how I presented the notion as much as I did the actual fact of getting the suggstion out here. (As for quotation marks, when" " I learned english, they were reserved for short story, film and play titles.

In any case, here's hoping the suggestion to consider Thomas Berger for inclusion in LOA hasn't gotten -- or won't get - buried in all of this nonsense.

To reiterate:
Thomas Berger -- LITTLE BIG, MAN, ARTHUR REX, NEIGHBORS, etc., etc. -- a worthy author for consideration. Here's hoping.

>218 DTS59:

Sorry DTS59. I took your statement mentioning a "lack of _underlines_ in forums like this", as evidence of a small benign ignorance, easily remedied. I was wrong.

Citivas: No sweat. Could be worse. Imagine suffering from a large, malignant sense of self-righteousness.

Oh, waitaminute...my bad.

There is simply no reason to shout in this forum.

>222 jju:. I like all of those suggestions. I hope one day that both Stegner and McCarthy will get several volumes - two of the most important and great American writers of the last 40 years.

Ayn Rand? No, I don't think so unless they publish her in a volume with other people who have trouble stringing two words together. Politics aside, her writing is atrocious. Atlas Shrugged is a series of poorly written, poorly argued, polemics tied together by a railroad, a robber baron, and a pirate, not to mention a spoiled brat who took his ball and went home when others insisted on playing by the rules.

Besides, are any of her works out of print? My guess is the Objectivist Society, or whatever they call themselves, would probably tie the thing up for years.

What does being out of print have to do with inclusion in the LOA?

As for your opinion that Ayn Rand's writing is atrocious, there are those who disagree with you, me included. I think she fits the LOA eligibility standards and would make a good choice.

If I were to establish a library, I would start by leaving Ayn Rand out (with apologies to Mark Twain -- whose similar comment with respect to Jane Austen I profoundly disagree with).

Iceberg Slim

My point about her works being in print is one of copyright issues. LOA can't publish other authors because of copyright and licensing issues and I am assuming she, since she has a whole institute dedicated to her trash and making a fortune off of her ravings, might not get the LOA treatment because of copyright and other licensing issues.

As to the quality of her writing, when was the last time you read Atlas Shrugged? It reads better if you are just graduating from comic books, than after a round of Conrad or Dostoyevsky.

Now, you can take one more shot at me, but I will not respond. Discussions of Ayn Rand have a way of destroying commity in these groups.

geneg, I took no shot at you.

As for when I read Atlas Shrugged it was five or so years ago in my forties. As for Dostoyevsky, I read him in my early twenties and found myself bored and uninterested in his writing.

Regardless how one feels about Ayn Rand, her writing has had an important influence in American culture (for good or bad, depending on your point of view.) Her novels tend towards popular entertainment, but they are entertaining, and would be an interesting choice in the LOA canon. They aren't any less poorly written than the recent Burroughs editions - which are fun and good, despite being above average pulp fiction.

I've only read Anthem, which I must say I found as entertaining as some of the SF by highly respected writers in that field, so on the basis of such limited exposure and can't enter into a discussion of her writing ability. I do agree with brother_salvatore that she was (and perhaps still is) an important cultural influence in America, and for that reason alone deserves consideration.

Going back to jju's post, I fervently second his list of "Western" books. How in the world could the Library of America be so underrepresented in this genre?

>231 Django6924:. I too would love a collection of Western novels and really like the list that jju put together. Maybe with the Little House on the Prarie volume forthcoming, maybe the discussion of Westerns have come up at the LOA offices.

She has had an influence on the lunatic fringe. Whether or not that is an inherent part of American culture is an entirely different matter.

>233 DanMat:

Without making any comment on Rand's influence, I'd say the lunatic fringe has always played an extremely important part in the culture of America. Thank heavens the Founding Fathers recognized the importance of Free Speech.

For Langston Hughes, please see this thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/137558 .

After starting out on a mission to read most of the "Travis McGee" books by John D. Macdonald and most of the Archer novels by Ross Macdonald, I'd like to humbly submit that the latter should be considered for inclusion in future LOA collections -- or, better yet, a three volume collection of his own.

Since Ross Macdonald (like John D.) wrote quite a few stand-alone books, a three volume collection could focus on the Lew Archer books. Have to admit, his writing is some of the finest I've run across. Right up there with the _very_ under-rated work of Martin Cruz Smith -- who also very much deserves consideration (if only for stand-alone books like STALLION GATE, ROSE and DECEMBER 6), but will likely have to wait quite a few more years before even being considered.

I'd like to suggest the often neglected Frederic Prokosch as a candidate for an LOA volume, especially if it included The Asiatics and The Seven Who Fled. The trek of The Asiatics was a special favorite of mine during a period of travel and transition.

My first introduction to Prokosch was Gore Vidal's NYRB article, one of those essays where he attempted to rescue a writer from oblivion (sometimes successfully, as in the case of Dawn Powell). It's helpfully reprinted in both his collections At Home: Essays 1982-1988 and the doorstop-sized United States: Essays 1952-1992. Vidal makes a most eloquent case for Prokosch that I wouldn't attempt to improve on. But Prokosch does seem a natural for the pantheon of the LOA. Perhaps A Tale for Midnight and The Missolonghi Manuscript might fill out the volume.

Any interest/plans to include the husband and wife team of Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore in any of your SF releases? I'm a particular fan of the Hobgood family, the strange hillbillies with super powers. I think their name is Hobgood. Anyway, they did a lot of classic SF.

I like the suggestion of Frederic Prokosch. All I've read by him is The Asiatics but that book alone is enough to warrant his inclusion in the LoA.

The Kuttner/Moore family are the Hogbens, and I also agree that Prokosch would be a good choice.

Thanks for the correction. I couldn't remember the name right of and couldn't find any reference to them so I just took a swag. I coulda been right.

Would love to see the complete works series for Patricia Highsmith.

Do we have any further information on the likes of Dickinson as regards to publication rights?

Dickinson would be a wonderful project for the Library of America and would be a best seller, I'm sure.

>243 LesMiserables:

Dickinson has been on our short list for duration of The Library of America’s existence—but we have been prevented from adding her writings because of copyright restrictions. Most of Dickinson’s poems and virtually all the letters were published after 1922, the usual cut-off for public domain material. (Copyright is determined by publication date—not by date of composition.)

Harvard, which possesses Dickinson’s papers, has declined to allow us to publish anything resembling a collected or complete Dickinson edition. Selections from Dickinson are included in the LOA’s five-volume American Poetry anthology, but we still hope to give her a volume of her own and have not ceased in our efforts to convince Harvard to allow us to do so.

>244 DCloyceSmith:

Rather droll of Harvard to be so possessive when they would have never permitted Miss Dickinson to enroll as a student, don't you think?

>245 Django6924:

When it comes to the copyright ownership of unpublished material by long-dead authors, possession is ten-tenths of the law, I'm afraid.

There's actually another problem, though, with Dickinson (and it's the same with the poetry of the other Emily -- Emily Jane Bronte, that is). You need a good edition, one that takes account of Dickinson's oddities of punctuation and line-indentation that very much resemble Bronte's same oddities. In the case of Bronte, I have the Hatfield edition; and in the case of Dickinson I have the older Johnson edition rather than the more recent Franklin edition, but both are good and Helen Vendler cross-cites to both Johnson and Franklin in Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries.

Bless LoA, but it's not the only publisher on Earth so why re-invent the wheel? As to Dickinson, there are already two excellent scholarly texts -- Franklin's apparently the better, but Johnson's perfectly acceptable. Is LoA going to go to the effort of creating yet a third? Or is LoA simply going to adapt from Johnson and/or Franklin? And if the latter -- an adaptation from Johnson, Franklin, or both -- then a whole other issue of intellectual property arises.

There's plenty else out there that needs to be published. Leave Dickinson to the existing Johnson and Franklin editions.

>247 CurrerBell:

You are correct, of course.

The rights to Johnson and Franklin editions are both controlled by Harvard. If we ever cleared the rights to Dickinson's writings, the LOA would surely follow the more definitive (and truly "complete") Franklin edition.

The Johnson texts have been licensed to Hachette, which prints the Johnson edition (without the Variorum-style annotations) as a paperback under their Back Bay imprint.

The Franklin version are published by Harvard University Press, which also publishes a "readers" edition of all 1,789 poems, selecting one version of each poem when there are differing versions and omitting all the annotations and variant texts.

What's lacking at the present time is a decent reader's edition of her letters, although Johnson published a edition of selected letters in 1986. The letters are essential reading on their own.

> 248

If my status as Emily Dickinson's sixth cousin three times removed gave me the authority to grant you the permissions you need, I would gladly do so, but, unfortunately, I'm quite certain you could not rely on that. :-)

Speaking of "essential on their own" Sylvia Plath's journals are pretty great. They probably came out too recently though...

> 65

RE: Parkman France and England in North America

I cannot for the life of me, see how I had missed these volumes. Really, it's like they had dipped beneath my radar on historical works in the Library of America canon.

I will add these to my wishlist in anticipation of my next order.

I'd like to see some love for the late Ray Bradbury. He wrote plenty of novels and hundreds of short stories. He was a true giant of science fiction/ fantasy literature.

I would also like to see the works of Ayn Rand, particularly Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. I know she has plenty of detractors and a nutty private life, but the fact is her works are still relevant today. She became a US citizen in the '30s, so I'm guessing she's eligible for the LoA.

> 252

I don't think citizenship is a prerequisite for inclusion. (Alexis de Tocqueville)
I keep changing my mind on Rand. I have only read Atlas Shrugged and as a work of fiction it is ok. The political undercurrent of the book will always make it controversial, no doubt.

I probably know less than all of the regulars in this group about American literature and it would be unfair for me to say her works are less worthy than someone elses.

If I was pressed on it, I would vote no for inclusion, but I am a socialist and find little in her philosophy that appeals to me: hence the problems other have of making objective decisions on it.

The best outcome for all would be that her works are hopelessly bogged down in a quagmire of familial legal wranglings and copyright issues :-)

Ayn Rand can't string two words together without turning them into two hundred words of bloat. While I think her politics is totally doofus, she can't write worth a damn. I hope LOA has some style requirements. I saw someone refer to The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged as the same book writ twice. I've never read The Fountainhead, but I have read Atlas Shrugged and unless you really have a reason to read it, don't.

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged "the same book writ twice"? Absolutely not! No way! Atlas Shrugged is LOTS worse!

> 255
Well I had already convinced myself that I would never read Rand again and you
have well and truly underpinned my decision.

I don't know what it is about people in this group, but we can't go start any threads without it turning into an Ayn Rand pile on. It just ends up going political and its killing this group.

> 257

Really? I have never perceived this group as anything other than well functioning and tolerant. Killing the group? I seriously doubt discussing Rand has made any difference whatsoever and is this not intrinsic to what LT is about? Anyway, I"ll bear in mind your reservations, but as you said in #11 above, people do want to put their two cents in and as long as no one is being disrespectful to any other poster, I would be happy enough with those state of affairs.

I am looking forward to the upcoming Elmore Leonard volumes.

Just read the blog interview with the editor of the 50s sci fi set, and he gives a sign of approval to Ray Bradbury's inclusion in the LoA. That would be really great to see. The Martian Chronicles is one of my all time favorites and one of the few books I've read more than once.

>258 LesMiserables:

This group has a number of posters that are quite intolerant, especially when it comes to Ayn Rand or any other author the poster considers 'unworthy' of inclusion in the LOA. Instead of just stating they don't like the writer's works, they almost invariably trash the author and their works (see post 254 by geneg).

> 261

I'm perfectly fine about slamming or praising authors: that is what we do on LT. As long as we tolerate the views of each other and respect our right to be different, the wheel continues to turn.

I agree with Halicarnassus, and I have no problem with comments such as those by geneg in post 254. I've never read Ayn Rand, so I have no basis on which to agree or disagree with those comments, though based on what I hear second-hand of her politics (it's hard to avoid that these days), I would have no interest in reading her, regardless of her literary merit or lack thereof. More to the point, though, merely stating that one does or doesn't like an author's work is mere opinion and of little use to others. Stating WHY one doesn't like an author's work, even if expressed in colorful language, as geneg's in post 254, is much more valuable (even though some might consider such language to be "trashing").

This is from Paul Krugman, admittedly not known for his literary criticism. I don't know if this is original with him or not.

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

Smarter people than I hold pretty much the same view. I just don't think she is a good writer. She's prone to fifty page set pieces in which she builds strawmen from whole cloth and then slays them with glee. Her characters are all types who always act consistently. Dialogue often is stilted verging on tortured. As I said earlier she tends toward bloat. Just not a good writer.

264

C'mon, really, convince me! It's difficult to be swayed by the example of the outlandish comparison between LOTR and AS possibly proposed by an admitted non expert. Sounds more like a set piece from which to launch... a repetition.

True, I was given Atlas Shrugged as a 7th birthday gift, by which time I had reread LOTR twice.

But seriously, at fourteen I had read The Fountainhead, once, and LOTR, twice, and enjoyed both as heroic fiction.

I personally cannot stand Rand but I had built my opinion on reading a few of her books. But there are people with different tastes - that like Rand. The funny part is that the bloated narrative is not the case of mu dislike - I like Victorian novels and some of them are even worse in that respect. It is just the unreadable style and her inability to keep my attention.

Which does not mean that I sorry for reading Anthem, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead in my late teens - every book teach you something, even if it is to dislike it :)

geneg, thank you for your more reasoned post why you don't like Rand. I agree with you that she's prone to fifty page set pieces in which she builds strawmen from whole cloth and then slays them with glee and I find it quite boring. Still, I enjoyed the underlying stories in Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead and Anthem (and I read them in my forties). I also like that her characters are all types who always act consistently, but then I have always enjoyed superhero comics (or at least DC's heroes of the 30s through the 90s. Not so much for the Marvel heroes or the later re-visioned DC heroes). As for her writing, I already said I like superhero comics, and I also enjoy pulp S-F from the 30s through the 60s, so I don't mind what many consider inferior writing.

It might be worth a study (Ph.D thesis?) on how knowledge of an author's personal life affects our opinion of his or her work. I once had a friend who said she "hated" Hemingway--that he was a simplistic macho bore. I didn't argue the point, such arguments are never really productive of any light, just heat, but a few months later I happened across a xerox copy of a story of Hemingway's, which I had always thought was one of his best, but was not one of the very well-known ones. Being the jerk that I am, I gave it to her without mentioning who the author was, and asked her if she thought it was publishable in a magazine like Playboy. She loved it and said it was too good for Playboy, that it should be submitted to a high-quality magazine like The New Yorker. I demurred, but she insisted it was brilliant. A year later she married one of the most highly-respected scholars of American literature, and if she ever described the story to him, I'm sure he would have recognized it as Hemingway's work. Maybe she did--I haven't heard from her in 30 years....

The point of this, aside from suggesting that this debate isn't going to change Rand-despisers to Rand-fans, or vice versa, is that important cultural documents, that have had major impacts on social history, are often written by people whose personal lives arouse antipathy, and though it's difficult to not let that color our opinions, our opinions aren't necessarily the best guide for others.

Re 264 above

It isn't original with Krugman, but Rogers http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/366635-there-are-two-novels-that-can-change-a-bo...

How about Edith Wharton's Italian Writings? A combination of nonfiction and longer fictional works not in LOA yet:

The Valley of Decision (1902) her first novel set in 18th century Italy
Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1904) with Maxfield Parrish illustrations
Italian Backgrounds (1905) Travel essays
Glimpses of the Moon (1922) honeymooners sponge their way across Italy

I didn't go back and read all the preceding posts so I'll just ask my question and take my lumps. Any plans for a Lew Wallace volume?

> 271

CTRL F works wonders for me :-)

Thanks for the tip. I'll try to use it enough to remember it. Is the correct way to terminate it?

I wonder if we might see a further Muir volume in the future?
There seems to be enough stuff left to produce another volume?

Gore Vidal

I just became aware that Sir P. G. Wodehouse spent most of his life living in America and became an American citizen in 1955. He seems a quintessentially English writer, just as Henry James is quintessentially an American writer (who just happened to live and write mostly in England). If the British can see James as one of their own, can we claim Wodehouse to be American enough for some his writings to be published by LOA? Perhaps a sampling of the best of his best?

> 276 That would be fantastic! I second this. Never knew that Wodehouse became an American citizen.

Then we should also start lobbying for a volume of Auden's poetry! He too became an American.

If we can have Lafcadio Hearn and Audubon in the LoA, why not these?

Speaking of foreign-born authors writing in America, Okakura Kakuzo, a Japanese art expert, wrote The Book of Tea. It was a landmark influencing such as Georgia O'Keeffe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ezra Pound, and others. If nothing else of it is reprinted by LOA, the first chapter, The Cup of Humanity, is IMHO definitely worthy of inclusion in an anthology of short philosophical essays from authors who aren't otherwise represented in their own LOA volumes. (Hint, hint, hint, ... ;-). He wrote other works in English, too, but I don't know anything about them or if they were written in America.

This note is for DCloyce Smith: Do you know if any of Wilbur Daniel Steele's stories have been included in any Library of American anthologies?

Also: any chance of a collection of his stories being included in future volumes? I ran across one of his stories in a volume of 50 Best American Short Stories (there were a few such volumes, at least two of them including his stories) and was so intrigued I tracked down an old collection of Steele's which was entitled best stories, or somesuch. Along with the two Best American Short story awards (that I know of -- there may have been more), he had at least 11 different tales which won the O.Henry Award, two of theme 1st place/prize winners). The depth and breadth of his writing was/is astonishing! There are stories which qualify as crime fiction/mystery, stories that skirt the edges of dark fantasy/horror, stories that could be considered reigonalism (in a Faulkneresque way, such as "Conjuh"), and stories that would fit well within the O. Henry cannon ("Bubbles", one of the first place O. Henry award winners). And, of course, stories, which are "simply" mainstream.

Sadly, Steele -- publication-wise -- seems to have gone the route of Clarance Buddington Kellan. Except Steele was -- and is -- one of America's best short story writers!

I second Gore Vidal

Maya Angelou

I've just finished reading the fourth and last of the The Civil War volumes--LOA has reached a new pinnacle of excellence with this set--and am wondering what else should be published vis-à-vis that war.
-- Civil War history(s) that meet LOA's criteria for writing excellence. (Bruce Catton?)
-- A volume of Civil War commentary such as The Lincoln Anthology, American Earth, etc.
-- More literature, and I specifically suggest Stephen Vincent Benét's John Brown's Body (I know Benét has been mentioned before).

An anthology of 150 years of articles published by The Atlantic Monthly, The American Idea (2007), contains an amazing piece by Helen Keller, Three Days to See. If this is a representative sample of the quality of her writing, then I enthusiastically second her for inclusion in LOA's main series.

>283 Podras.:

It's striking to see how much of what Ms. Keller had to say is still relevant today. For example:

The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands—the ownership and control of their livelihoods—are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.

- from Helen Keller: Rebel Lives

That was written over 100 years ago. The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?

>284 artturnerjr:

For someone who was both blind and deaf since childhood, she was amazingly perceptive.

>282 Podras.:

LOA's Reader's Almanac has just provided a partial answer to the question by posting their Winter/Spring 2015 releases. The special publication, President Lincoln Assassinated!! looks to be an absolute must-have for me. Good Show!

>286 Podras.: It has just been pointed out to me that the link provided in my earlier entry doesn't work. (Just goes to show what can happen when one doesn't check ones own work.) I've now fixed it. Here it is again, a link to LOA's Reader's Almanac. Of specific interest is their July 24th posting for the new Winter/Spring 2014-2015 releases. jju has made another entry for the news, too, in an appropriately titled thread.

John Barth
e. e. cummings
James Dickey
John Gardner
Joseph Heller
Ernest Hemingway (I know, I know)
John Irving
Norman Mailer
Robert M. Pirsig
Hunter S. Thompson
William Carlos Williams
Thomas Wolfe

Has anyone mentioned the work of Annie Dillard yet? Her many gorgeously written essays certainly deserve a place in posterity.

I would also nominate William Kennedy and his Albany Cycle for inclusion. And if he hasn't already been mentioned, the collected stories of Andre Dubus would look great with the LOA stamp.

Henry Roth (Call it Sleep, Mercy of a Rude Stream
Marilynne Robinson (Home, Gilead, Lila, When I Was a Child I Read Books

I would love to see Archbishop Fulton Sheen given the LOA treatment. Thomas Merton too.

> 293

Thomas Merton, yes. I don't know Bishop Sheen's writings well enough to comment.

It seems like LOA has shied away from Christian writers. Jonathan Edwards is the only one I can think of.

> 295

Well, Christian writers who write on religious topics, anyway. After all, the majority of the authors in LOA are at least nominally Christian. But that is true of other religions as well. There is little at all in teh LOA of writer writing on religious topics (at least filling a volume, as opposed to occasional essays and such). Another exception will be Neibuhr, who is scheduled appear next year. There is also a volume of American Sermons in the main series, and a volume of religious poetry among the special publications.

Fulton Sheen?!?!?!? Seriously, Fulton Sheen???

That is flat out hilarious. Thanks, I needed a laugh today.

On second thought, I shouldn't laugh. After all, LOA gave us Virgil Thomson, so Fulton Sheen can't be far behind.

As a classical music lover (we prefer "art music" but whatever), I'm giving the Thomson volume a try, but it's a pretty tedious never-ending stream of two-page concert reviews. There are nuggets every now and then, there was a good one about Thomas Beecham, whom many including myself consider the greatest conductor of the 20th-century, but on the whole the volume is heavy going. Not as witty or informative as I'd been led to believe.

I can't help but think that an anthology of writings on music would have been a better way to go, like the volumes they just did for the visual arts. I'm really not convinced Thomson's columns merit an entire volume. LOA should've included Copland's "What to Listen For in Music" and writings by other American composers and performing artists, not sure what exactly without doing some research.

I admit to not having read all of these posts so my suggestion may have already been mentioned, but how about Norman Mailer?

If memory serves, Mailer has been mentioned before, but hey, the more the merrier. I, too, think he would make a fine addition to LOA's line up.

Has Richard Ford been mentioned?

>301 Pablum: Funny you should mention Richard Ford. I'm almost done with Independence Day. What a fantastic, and often extremely funny, book.

I'd read The Sportswriter and liked it--but not as much as I am enjoying this one.

PS -- As you probably know, he co-edited our Welty collections, just before she turned 90.

Elsewhere, the possibility of combining the works of "one-shot" novel writers into single volumes in LOA's main series was discussed so that the size of the volume would be in LOA's standard range. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole were mentioned as candidates. Works by Reynolds Price and Percy Walker were also suggested.

I don't know enough about Ralph Ellison's other writings to know if LOA would be interested in a single author collection of his works, but if they're not, then I suggest The Invisible Man for inclusion in a volume of "one-shots." In fact, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Invisible Man would make a killer combination.

I've mentioned Reynolds Price before (though I think on a different thread). He has enough high quality works to fill at least one LOA volume himself, and perhaps several.

>302 DCloyceSmith:
Hopefully that bodes well for an eventual volume or two :)

>301 Pablum: >302 DCloyceSmith:

I'd order an LoA set of Richard Ford immediately! he is one of my favourite writers - some excellent short stories, as well.

Yes, he knew Eudora Welty - they both hail from Jackson, Mississippi - and he did the LoA editions with her blessing.

>303 Podras.:

I heartily concur with your suggestion: Ellison's masterpiece belongs in the LoA and it would indeed make an intriguing coupling. But I really hope we can see A Confederacy of Dunces in LoA garb as well!

William Saroyan.

Some earlier posts suggested Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, but a potential barrier is it's short length for a single author volume from LOA. It now seems that Lee has another book coming soon, Go Set a Watchman, that may change things. There is an article about it here.

I appreciate that it is far too early to begin talking about potential LOA publication, but is there anyone who knows anything about its literary merit beyond what the article says?

As documented in his obituary, M. H. Abrams, the founder of The Norton Anthology of English Literature has passed away. His book, The Mirror and the Lamp, is said to have been "a groundbreaking book of literary theory" and one of the "greatest English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century."

Aside from familiarity with the Anthology, I personally know nothing about Abrams or his writings, but The Mirror and the Lamp sounds interesting. Is a possible volume of his writings on LOA's radar?

Richard Yates please!

Everyman's Library has a three-in-one Richard Yates volume: Revolutionary Road, Easter Parade, and Eleven Kinds of Loneliness.

Has anyone heard if and when the next Ross Macdonald volume will be arriving, or which novels it will include?

The next Ross Macdonald volume (tentatively titled "Three Novels of the Early 1960s") will be published in Summer 2016. It will included The Zebra-Striped Hearse, The Chill, and The Far Side of the Dollar.

--David

Mr. Smith! Thrilled about the news of Summer '16 publication, and enjoyed knowing which titles will be included. But I gotta admit, I'm hoping that "tentatively titled" means another book might be included in the 1960s collection -- only three novels seems kinda slim, even if a few stories and/or other writings are collected as a bonus, as was the case with volume one. And since THE WYCHERLY WOMAN, BLACK MONEY (a Gold Dagger Winner) and THE INSTANT ENEMY are ALL very good books, LOA and Tom Nolan have plenty from which to choose. (Although THE GOODBYE LOOK was published in the '60s, too -- 1969 -- I kinda figured they'd include it in the last volume. Later novels or something).

Either way, as a fan who only recently discovered Ross MacDonald, I'll be buying the second volume, too. And hoping that another title will be squeezed in with the above three that were announced.

P.S.
Looks like the first volume is selling well on Amazon (and elsewhere, I presume), which is nice to see.

Thank you for the reply. This is excitng news!

James Salter maybe sometime in the future?

I agree with adding James Salter. Great writer.

Its been said before, but I would love to see DeLillo in the series as well.

The diaries of George Templeton Strong

James Salter for sure (looks like DUSk & Other Stories is the only title published by Modern Lib. at the moment -- they used publish A Sport & a Pasttime. I think they have a limited deal on how long they keep rights, since at least one book by John Irving -- whose backlist surely still sells -- has dropped off their list).

Bringing this thread to the top again, in light of the new thread started by Asher_Bowles with a list of suggested authors for LOA. This thread contains numerous suggestions by very many participants in this group.

Sorry for creating the new thread, I should've known better; I've replied to this thread many many times.
Here are some suggestions divided by subject:

PHILOSOPHY:
--John Dewey
--Richard Rorty
--George Santayana

THEATRE
--Lorrainne Hansberry
--Lanford Wilson
--Lillian Hellman
--Maria Irene Fornes

POLITICAL
--Women's Rights Movement (Various writers, their essays, speeches, etc)

NATIVE-AMERICAN:
--Classic Native-American Novels
--James Welch - Several volumes covering his novels and other works

AFRICAN-AMERICAN
--Toni Cade Bambara
--Gloria Naylor
--Amiri Baraka
--Langston Hughes
--Richard Wright -- the LOA volumes seems like an injustice. There is a wealth of work left unpublished.

GAY
--Paul Monette - Novels & Non-Fiction

OTHER LITERATURE
--William Dean Howells -- there's a lot more to be published!
--Dime Novels
--Kathy Acker. Some of her work is considered pornographic. Would LOA shy away from that?
--Early American Novels (Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple, Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette, Hugh Brackenbridge's Modern Chivalry, Catherine Maria Sedgwick's Hope Leslie, to name a few)
--Elmore Leonard -- Westerns Novels & Stories
--Classic Western Novels (The Virginian, Riders of the Purple Sage, The Ox-Bow Incident, among others)
--Pearl S Buck -- didn't she win the Nobel Prize for Literature???
--Classic Works for Youth
--Gore Vidal - Non-Fiction, Novels
--Philip K Dick -- Collected or (I hope!) Complete Stories

SCIENCE
--Albert Einstein
--Carl Sagan

BUSINESS
--Any classic/major works on business?

TRAVEL
American Writers on Eygpt and the Middle East
..Africa
...Europe
...Australia and Oceania
...Latin America
...Asia

ANIMALS
American Writers on Birds, Fish, Animals and other Creatures (Pets, Bugs, Wildlife, etc)

Some great suggestions. I would love to see Gore Vidal's fiction and Philip K. Dick's short stories. Regarding his short stories, the complete collection is available through Citadel Press, and there are a bunch of them. The complete collection covers 5 volumes that run roughly 400 pages each. I would love to see them in an LOA volume however!

Many of the suggestions above have been recommended before, but it certainly doesn't hurt to repeat them.

I agree that Gore Vidal's works and Philip K. Dick's short works are well worth considering.

Other SF authors recommended for dedicated volumes (after finishing Le Guin) are Gene Wolfe, Harlan Ellison, and Ray Bradbury. I have a special weakness for Jack Vance, but I'm not sure of his literary merit. The pleasure of reading his works gets in the way of objectivity. More SF anthology volumes, especially of shorter works, are recommended. I'm eagerly awaiting further news of the forthcoming volumes of 1960s SF novels.

For playwrights, Edward Albee, William Inge, Stephen Sondheim, Neil Simon, and August Wilson.

Among 19th Century writers, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

For scientists, Stephen Jay Gould.

There is a plethora of fine historical and biographical works that LOA has barely tapped.

In the F&SF genre don't forget two of my favorites, they wrote seperately and together as husband and wife, Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore.

Are there any writers that have literary merit, that are studied in academia, read by many, that will never be published by LOA for any reason? Or any works of a writer that would not be included in a volume for any reason? What about Kathy Acker, an experimental punk writer that plagiarized classic texts and whose writing can be considered pornographic? Would LOA ever publish Blood and Guts in High School? What about Samuel R Delaney, one of our great writers, whose work includes depiction of graphic sex in such works as Hogg? What about writers who wrote some racist writings? Doesn't Lovecraft have some racist writings? Would they ever be included in a volume of his non fiction work? What about the titans of literature Allen Ginsberg and William S Burroughs? Yes, of course, some of their work must be published, but what about their sexually graphic work? Would LOA refrain from publishing Ginsberg's pornographic poems and his non fiction work that includes support of a questionable political group? Would LOA shy away from publishing Burroughs' sci fi trilogy and Western trilogy that has plenty of graphic erotica? I'm not saying don't publish the above writers; I'd like LOA to publish works by all the above. Just wondering if there any limits for LOA...

>326 A_B:
Some on your list have literary merit, but LOA has to be careful because they depend on donations from large foundations as well as smaller donations from readers like us. They wouldn't want to become controversial.

D. H. Lawrence was not an American writer so this is entirely hypothetical. Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned in the U.S. until 1959 because of some the steamiest sex scenes imaginable in print, but I suspect that it would almost certainly be acceptable for publication by LOA today.

Literary merit has to be the predominant criterion in deciding what LOA should publish, but that isn't easily quantifiable. And standards change over time.

I agree with you, Podras, on Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr, and would add a companion volume of his son's writings: "The Common Law", selected court opinions, etc.

I also agree with you that many great histories, especially those written in the mid-20th Century, are worthy. DeVoto comes to mind first, along with Bruce Catton. The Schlesingers, father and son.

Biographers such a Douglas Southall Freeman.

How about a collection of writings per decade? Like the 20s? 70s? 80s?

How about volume of sports writing? Or a volume of writings on Hollywood and celebrities?

>332 A_B:

There have been several volumes on sports writing:

Baseball
Hub Fans Bid Adieu
American Pastimes
The Top of His Game
String Theory by David Foster Wallace
At the Fights

There is even a a sports writing page on the LOA website.

I think they have that angle covered.

>333 kcshankd: and >332 A_B: All of the volumes of sports writing listed above are in special editions, not the main series. One volume that is in the main series is A. J. Liebling's The Sweet Science & Other Writings.

I meant a volume in the main series

I meant a volume of sports writing in the main series

>334 Podras.:
>336 A_B:

That makes sense. The distinction doesn't really matter to me, but is understandable.

>334 Podras.: Podras:
One distinction that is important to some people is that main series volumes are meant to be kept in print permanently, whereas the special editions are not. In fact, some of the earlier special editions (such as American Sea Writing) are now out of print and no longer available. Others have been reprinted in paperback, but the hardback originals are no longer available.

A couple of additional main series recommendations vis-à-vis historical writing are:

1) Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., especially The Age of Jackson
2) Writings of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, especially the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Has anyone suggested Katherine Dunn, novelist, author of Geek Love about circus freaks, poet, writer on boxing and homicide photography?

She's still in the too young crowd. I'm all set to suggest/nominate John Irving -- I know, I know: many people consider him too sentimental, etc. -- in another eight to 10 years, or so. :) He was a 1942 delivery. Dunn came three years after.

DCloyce Smith:
Forgot to ask. Since you have some advance word on 2018 titles (Leonard-- the westerns, to which I'm also looking forward), have you and the board and editors had any word, yet, on the next set of American Science Fiction novels? (As I recall, the rights were still being wrangled about a half year ago, or more).

Would love to see an attempt to seriously address western genre fiction. I would have to imagine that is on the radar given the serious way other genre fiction is being treated, the historical importance and uniquely American character of western genre fiction and also seeing that there is now a volume of Elmore Leonard's westerns planned.

I would also like to see more in the way of philosophy. Of course philosophy is tricky. Maybe lower sales volume, can be technical, not always as accessible. But on the other hand it has been very influential as a subject and is the sort of thing one might expect in a collection like LOA and it would add to the collections prestige. It would be hard to imagine a definitive collection of English, German or French literature that did not seriously treat philosophy.
But what authors? When people think of 'American' philosophy, the first thing thought of is pragmatism, which is justified. Obviously William James is already in. If James is in, then a volume or two of Charles Sanders Pierce and several of John Dewey would make sense and would complete the triumvirate of classical pragmatism. However it would almost certainly be nice to have a little more depth than this. Santayana is an obvious choice for both his literary qualities and connection to pragmatism. A volume of Josiah Royce might be justified as well. Other classic pragmatist writers might be C.I. Lewis, Sidney Hook and Mead.
But pragmatism is not the only major theme in American philosophy, others might be realism and naturalism which both also intersect with pragmatism in interesting ways. Roy Wood Sellars and Ernst Nagel are naturalist pre-war philosophers who could be considered. In no one do all these themes come together more than in W.V.O Quine, one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century and the dominant figure of the 'high' period of post-war American philosophy. Of course his work is also fairly technical (but probably at least as readable as say any of the German idealists, maybe more so). Others of this 'high' period (where as in so many other things America came to dominate the world) that might be treated include Wilfred Sellars (son of Roy), Nelson Goodman, Thomas Kuhn, David Lewis, Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, John Rawls. These are all writers who despite their often technicality constitute an important piece of the intellectual heritage of the country.

What about Joanna Russ, the feminist and sci fi writer? Her major sci fi novel is The Female Man. How about a volume with selected novels, stories and writings on science fiction?

>343 davex: You've raised some interesting questions and not just about westerns (The Virginian, The Ox Bow Incident, Zane Grey, et. al.).

Regarding philosophers, many of the names you've listed are unknown to me, but I am familiar with some. To pick one from among the list at the end of your post, Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (first published in 1962 but since revised) is a seminal work that has radically changed perceptions about how scientists work and how scientific discoveries are really made--they are not the simple aha! epiphanies of solitary individuals working in isolation that one imagines, regardless of how science has been taught in grade schools. It is influential as a work of both science history and science philosophy.

Structure could be an interesting test case for LOA's criteria for selecting philosophical works to adopt. It marks a turning point in the history of science (or the narrative of how that history has progressed), and it is important enough that it seems safe to say that it will likely be in print and read by specialists for many more decades at least. Furthermore, IMHO it is quite accessible and informative to educated but non-specialized readers. Kuhn's writing style isn't "literate" in the way that Loren Eiseley's writing is, but it is an exemplar of pragmatic (in its everyday usage) thinking and prose.

So what is LOA's thinking about works like Structure? Structure itself isn't the question so much the kind of work that it represents. Has this question been explored?

Anyone -- DC Cloyce Smith? Beuller? -- have a table of contents listing for _SHAKE IT UP: GREAT AMERICAN WRITING ON ROCK AND POP FROM ELVIS TO JAY Z_ just yet?

Here's hoping the editors were wise enough to try and include the work of Peter Guralnick, biographer of music-linked artists and producers nonpareil. He wrote the definitive biography of Elvis: two volumes, LAST TRAIN TO MEMPHIS and CARELESS LOVE. And his books on Sam Phillips and Sam Cooke weren't too shabby, either.

>342 Truett::

We're still working on the rights situation for the 1960s Science Fiction volume.

>346 Truett::

We should have the Shake It Up contents up on the site in a couple of weeks, but Peter Guralnick's "King Solomon: The Throne in Exile," an essay from Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom, is included in the volume.

>342 Truett::

We're still working on the rights situation for the 1960s Science Fiction volume.

>346 Truett::

The "Shake It Up" contents will be posted on the site in a couple of weeks, but Peter Guralnick's "King Solomon: The Throne in Exile," an essay from Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom, is included in the volume.

--David

I have in my hands a paperback copy of Black Reconstruction in America and it seems like a natural LOA volume.

>349 kcshankd: In looking up Black Reconstruction in America and the descriptions and reputation of some of Du Bois' other works (e.g. The Philadelphia Negro), it seems as if there is plenty of opportunity for an additional Du Bois volume or so from LOA. The question is whether LOA is open to more works of his, and especially whether the subject matter is considered to be within LOA's purview. For whatever it is worth, I was very much impressed by The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade, one of the works in LOA's existing Du Bois volume, as well as his other included writings.

> 349
> 350
I've long wondered whether Black Reconstruction in America might be included in a future Du Bois volume, but have also been disappointed that the existing volume is entitled simply "Writings," which would seem to imply that no other volumes were contemplated. I hope that is not the case.

I wonder if more Sinclair Lewis volumes are in the works, especially considering the renewed interest in It Can't Happen Here?

I second the Sinclair Lewis motion.

It Can't Happen Here and Kingsblood Royal, both novels with strong social themes, would be a good two-fer to cover the best of later Lewis.

Yeah, at least ONE more volume would be great: Like others who have mentioned it, I think IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE is not only worthy, it's timely. I'd include KINGSBLOOD ROYAL, for a truly _timely_ couple of books -- and whatever else others thought would be worthy.

DCLOYCE SMITH: Thanks for the update, re. Science Fiction Novels of the 60s. Given the work done in that era, I look forward to learning what made "the cut" when information is available.

A mythical Williams S. Burroughs set:
Early Novels and the Nova Trilogy (Junkie, Queer, Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, Nova Express)
Later Novels and the Red Nights Trilogy (The Wild Boys, Port of Saints, Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads, The Western Lands)
Other Writings

A mythical William Gaddis collection:
The Recognitions, JR
Later Novels (Carpenter's Gothic, A Frolic of His Own, Agape Agape)

A mythical John Barth set:
Novels of the 1950s and 60s (The Floating Opera, The End of the Road, The Sot-Weed Factor, Giles Goat-Boy)

Dalkey Archive is doing a full reprinting (in paper) of Barth. Gaddis's Penguin stuff seems to be in and out of availability.

Would LOA publish all of Burroughs, really? I've read a lot of his work and it's full of pornography. I raised the question of pornography before. Wild Boys is extreme, and I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that. I can see Naked Lunch, Interzone, Junky and other early work published, but the later work is questionable.

I prefaced it with "mythical." I doubt LOA would ever go and actually do it. At least not in today's climate, anyway.

Same goes for Henry Miller.

I'm surprised no JFK writings have been published, or am I missing something? Profiles in Courage and A Nation of Immigrants would be very timely.

>361 Pablum:

Profiles in Courage, despite Kennedy's claiming the Pulitzer Prize, was mostly ghostwritten by Ted Sorenson. If this is a disqualification for an LOA edition, most modern presidents would also not make the cut. I don't know whether the authorship of A Nation of Immigrants is in question.

>361 Pablum:

Actually four of JFK's speeches (all given during his presidency) are included in American Speeches: Political Oratory from Abraham Lincoln to Bill Clinton, the second volume of the American Speeches collection.

I though PT 109 was excellent when I was a boy, no idea if it holds up to further reading.

Edit - I remembered it as a memoir, but it was not PT 109

This New Orleanian (although not a native) is still rooting for a single volume of George Washington Cable. Fiction includes colorful romances of early 19th Century New Orleans, including the novella "Madame Delphine". Non-fiction includes essays and tracts championing the cause of African-Americans, at the very time of the "Bourbon Restoration" and the enactment of Jim Crow laws. Cable (who was white) was way ahead of his time.

Practically run out of town for his portrayal of Creoles (including the white ones . . . it's complicated here), and for his advocacy for people of color, he moved to Hartford, became a neighbor of Mark Twain, and accompanied Twain (who suffered no literary fools) on his reading tours.

A man of letters who should not be overlooked.

Forgive me if this has been mentioned previously, but there are too many posts for me to research: I would vote for the inclusion of Joan Didion in the LOA. She has written a few works of fiction - all of them worth reading - and her essays are unparalleled works of the political/personal essay form popular in the late 20th century.
True, most of her work is still in print (in paperback), but omnibus volumes would be welcomed.

How about a Harry Crews volume or three? Most of his early novels are long out-of-print, not even available in ebook form, going for sky-high prices on Amazon. The first volume TOC:

The Gospel Singer (1968)
Naked In Garden Hills (1969)
This Thing Don't Lead to Heaven (1970)
Karate is a Thing of the Spirit (1971)

I know this is probably a hard no, but I think the books in the Oxford History of the United States series are great historical narratives and maybe some time way way down the road could be added to the Library:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_History_of_the_United_States

I don't know if any have been printed yet by LOA, but I would love to have a collection of U.S. military history books! I only own a few LOA titles and plan to expand my collection since I really love reading material and novels written by American authors and also anything that covers the history of America.

> 369

Grant's and Sherman's memoirs immediately spring to mind. Reporting WW II and Vietnam. The War of 1812 volume. The four civil war year-by-year volumes. I have yet to read the new WW I work but it is in my 'to-read' pile.

That is 12 :)

>370 kcshankd: Thanks for providing titles that I would be very interested in reading! I will have to keep my eyes open for these titles!

>371 Tolkienfan:

Keep in mind that the books listed by kcshankd are not histories, as such. They are compilations of contemporary reportage, diaries, eyewitness accounts, letters, and similar items -- very valuable for all that, but not analytical after the fact histories. LOA has actually published very few histories by historians (professional or amateur) -- ones that come to mind are Francis Parkman (France and England in North America), Barbara Tuchman (The Guns of August about the beginning of WWI in Europe and The Proud Tower - a collection of historical essays covering certain topics of the pre-war decades of late 1800s and early 1900s), and some western histories by Washington Irving. That's about it. To add to kcshankd's list, you might also look at a volume of A. J. Liebling's WWII writings. There is a wealth of good historical writing by American authors, and I'd love to see more of it in LOA.

Which is why I brought up the Oxford series. Very lauded volumes and extremely well-written books. LOA needs more history.

I forget to mention the two volumes of Henry Adams's History of the US during the administrations of Jefferson and Madison.

Great information and advice! I know Easton Press has a nice selection of military history titles that I have on my wish list, but can't afford them right now. If I could I would buy them, but I'm also running out of bookcase space and need to build some large bookcases which cost money for materials.

Second the motion (or is that third or fourth) for more history books in LOA's main series; biographies, too. How about Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s The Age of Jackson as an exemplar?

>372 euphorb:
>373 Pablum:

Good points. Bernard DeVoto and Wallace Stegner would be excellent additions to the series... perhaps Gordon Wood?

>376 Podras.: Podras:
>377kcshankd:

I've long had DeVoto and Stegner near the top of my list of hoped-for LOA additions; and I second a consideration for Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Among others (I'm trying to limit my list to those whose writings have literary quality and not only academic value): Samuel Eliot Morison, Richard Hofstadter, Frederick Jackson Turner, C. Vann Woodward, Donald Worster, George F. Kennan, Allen Nevins, Bruce Catton, Eric Foner, Tony Judt, Jacques Barzun, William Prescott, and John Hope Franklin.

DCLOYCE SMITH!
Mention -- made by yourownself -- in the "favourite volume" discussion thread, of another Shirley Jackson volume, brings to mind the question:

Are there any updates, or is there any news, to impart, regarding FUTURE VOLUMES past the April 2018 date?
I know about:
The Wendel Berry & Albert Murray volumes -- Jan
The Reconstruction volume -- Jan
Speeches & Writings: Lincoln -- Jan
The Mailer volumes -- Feb
Rachel Carson and the 19th Century American Poets 2 volume set -- March
Elmore Leonard: Westerns -- April

But is there any news, yet, on what releases will be in store for the rest of 2018?

Also: any further word on the next set of American Science Fiction Novels?
Or on the next volume in the ongoing publication of the works of Ursula K. LeGuin?

>379 Truett:

We are still finalizing the Fall 2018 title list and will be able to announce it in January. I can, however, share with you the list of authors who will have forthcoming volumes in the next couple of years, since we will be "announcing" them in a fundraising letter mailing in mid-November:

Frances Hodgson Burnett, James Fenimore Cooper, Madeleine L’Engle, Ann Petry, Booth Tarkington, John Updike

The Cooper volume will be "Novels of the American Revolution" (The Spy, Lionel Lincoln). The Tarkington edition will include The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams, along with other writings. As for the others: Not all of the contents are final for each of the volumes, and not all of them have been assigned to a season--but each is in the editorial/production process. There are several others we hope to publish in the next couple of years, but we are unable to announce them because contracts have yet to be signed.

Speaking of which, the Science Fiction 1960s volume is still hung up in rights negotiations. We are in limbo with a couple of the novels, and are trying to avoid having to replace them. The *soonest* we could release these volumes is Summer/Fall 2019. As for Le Guin: we have begun working with her on a fourth volume, but we're not able to announce it just yet.

--David

Can't wait for the (hopefully first of many) Tarkington volume! It's the 100th anniversary of The Magnificent Ambersons next year.

Wonder what the Updike volume will be, also hopefully the first of many novels volumes.

MR. SMITH: Many thanks for the surfeit of wonderful biblio-news! :)

Like Pablo, I am delighted to learn about Tarkington's inclusion. And now I know I'll be able to replace the
(likely) questionable volumes of ALICE ADAMS and THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS published by "Biblio Bazaar" and "1st World Library" (bought via Amazon or Booktopia somesuch). (That just leaves THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA in pseudo-print form amongst my collection -- but I can live with that, given
the LOA publication of his Pulitzer winners). Like Ross Macdonald, Booth was an unappreciated champion of the environment, too, so it will be interesting to learn if the "other writings" included will concern that aspect of his life (which was reflected in a less overt way in his novels).

And Madeline L'Engle! I actually expected HER work to be included in one or more of the future SF volumes.
Even with it's somewhat heavy-handed use of Christian faith symbolism, her series that grew from the classic,
A WRINKLE IN TIME, is certainly worth preserving. (At least the first three or four books). Great to know "Wrinkle" has found a home in LOA.

I actually dig Cooper's "old-timey" adventure novels, so the new volume will be fun. But I gotta cop to NOT having read the writings of Burnett (I "saw the movie s), or Petry. But that's part of what LOA is all about: introducing classic writing to new readers.

Thanks for the update on the next SF volume: 2019 isn't such a long time to wait. Especially if you and the others involved believe those volumes alluded to are worth inclusion.

And LeGuin! Yes! Looking forward to the next announcement!

Though I love the beautiful prose of John Updike -- especially his short stories -- and appreciate large portions of his "Rabbit" series of novels, as a reader -- hope no one thinks too much less of me for this -- I've always felt Updike's narrative subject range was limited. Other than THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK, and TERRORIST, for me, he didn't stray far from the same narrative "neighborhood," so to speak. (I think that may have been due to his own lack of interest in things like "genre" -- though he once claimed it was due to his inability to write those types of things; odd, because Shakespeare and others never let boundaries hinder them -- and likely a sort of academic disdain, coupled with a lifestyle that kept his narrative interests focused on a fairly field). Doesn't mean I enjoy the beauty of his prose any less. It's just that I don't get as excited about his writing as I do the writing of someone like Booth, or LeGuin, or Macdonald, or Mailer, or Jackson.

(Or Harlan Ellison, or John Irving, Ann Tyler, William Wharton...some personal favs, that I'll keep pushing for). :)

Thanks again, David!
All best!

And thanks for the news, David, about the (in-progress, rights-wise) forthcoming volume of Shirley
Jackson. (I did admire her writing in the past, but, like most, in a limited fashion, "Hill House", "Castle", the short stories: now that I've gained insight into her process (the dogged determination, symbolism, rewriting) -- via the Franklin bio -- I'm an even greater admirer, and actively reading as much of her earlier work as I can.

Considering that my taste in fiction is sometimes as creaky as my joints, I'm really looking forward to Cooper's The Spy. I'm not familiar with Lionel Lincoln. I suppose that this will be LOA's last Cooper volume--James Fenimore, that is.

Also, hooray for Shirley Jackson, vol. 2. and Science Fiction of the 1960s whenever that finally comes. The rest of the news is great, too.

Podras, I commiserate with your reading tastes. Mine are much more "all over the place" (even dig some "graphic novel" writing now and then), but whenever people complain about MOBY-DICK (because of the "archaic" language) I roll my eyes. They don't know what they are missing. LOTS of great humor (much the same as the humor that is missed in Shakespeare's plays, until they performed live or "adapted" to film) and even topical bits of writing can be found in that one Melville tome, alone. I remember mentioning a small bit of writing in the beginning of MOBY-DICK to an online discussion group, back in the early 2000s. Because Ishmael mentions the ongoing war in Afghanistan and a disputed Presidential election. Creaky fiction? I think not! :)

I am always excited to hear about which authors or volumes that we can look forward to seeing in the near future. I have been planning to crack open the volumes dedicated to James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales for some time. They have been on my shelf gathering dust for too long. Maybe the promise of a new Cooper volume will be the kick in the pants I need to finally try out some of Cooper's writing.

I was surprised and delighted to see Mr. Smith mention Madeline L'Engle. I had my first child last year, and I think that experience had me thinking back to my childhood, because I had been shopping around for a collected edition of L'Engle's Wrinkle novels. If the LOA volume focuses on those novels, I will probably hold off and wait for the LOA edition. A Wrinkle in Time was one of those early novels that I can remember reading and really enjoying in grade school. I think it was one of the novels that helped to raise my interest in reading for pleasure, so I am excited that someone at the Library of America feels that her work is worth revisiting and preserving as well.

I am eagerly awaiting news of the next Science Fiction volumes, but I for one am glad that the LOA appears to be more interested in nailing down the agreements to get the right works included in the volume, as opposed to simply finding 4 or 5 works that can be easily negotiated.

It will be good to hear what will be included in the Updike volume. I am not as familiar with some of the other writers, but the LOA has been my introduction to a number of writers that I might never have read, otherwise so I try not to rule out anything.

Overall, it looks like LOA subscribers have a lot to look forward to in the coming months and years.

David, could you say anything about whether LOA has made any progress with Faulkner's stories since you last commented on this, in 2010? I realise Noel Polk passed away in 2012. Did he start working on the corrected texts of the stories before his death, and has anyone continued or taken over this labour?

>386 Dr_Flanders:

September 2018
Madeleine L'Engle
The Kairos Novels (LOA #309 & 310)
Volume One : The Wrinkle in Time Quartet
Volume Two : The Polly O'Keefe Quartet

>387 oulenz:

Sorry for the delay in response; I somehow missed your question.

We had an agreement in principle to publish the restored/unexpurgated versions of the stories, as we did for the novels. The work on the stories was interrupted, however, by a series of deaths: first of Faulkner’s heir, Dean Faulkner Wells, in 2011, then of both Noel Polk and Joseph Blotner in 2012. We are seeking a new editor (or new editors) for this project, but it’s going to be a long haul since those are big shoes to fill, and although we have an outline of a proposal (with notes on the textual issues) from Polk, we need to determine an editorial strategy basically from scratch. There are nearly 130 discrete stories, including a number that were never published or that Faulkner later incorporated into his novels, some of which are different enough that we’ll want to include them.

-- David

Thank you for informing us about the current status of the stories, it is much appreciated!

The only semi-good reason for not including Ayn Rand is that, unlike many of the authors in the LLA series, she is in no danger of being forgotten. Her books have sold over 29 million copies to date, and the rate has accelerated in recent years. She is also the subject of a growing scholarly secondary literature, incl two full biographies (one pub by Oxford and the other by Anchor), (Full disclosure: I am one of the contributors to this secondary literature.)

LesterHunt -- you posted on a kindasorta "dead" thread. Future volumes part 2 is where you wanted to post. :) (Not sure if this will endear Rand to potential board members or not) LOL

>184 bertilak: I just received a fund raising letter from LOA that mentions a forthcoming volume of "E. O. Wilson's groundbreaking observations of the bioversity of the natural world."