May 29: PRINTING HISTORY, Getting Published, Not Publishing

At the front of my copy of The Catcher in the Rye comes this information:

PRINTING HISTORY

One incident appeared in a different form as

a story in COLLIER'S December 1945

One incident appeared in a different form as a story

in THE NEW YORKER December 1946

Little, Brown edition published July 1951

26 printings through 1968

Book-of-the-Month Club selection July 1951

Grosset & Dunlap edition published June 1952

Modern Library edition published September 1958

Franklin Watts edition published February 1967

Bantam edition / April 1964

52 printings through February 1981

It's a little story in and of itself.  J. D. Salinger's book is one of the most famous novels in the world, beloved by angst-ridden teenagers and assassins alike.  I believe Salinger only published a couple other things after Catcher, and then, like Willy Wonka, closed his factory doors forever.  There has been speculation about a vault of unpublished manuscripts since Salinger died in 2010, but no new J. D. Salinger novel has surfaced as of yet.

The publication history of a book says a lot about the book and the author.  I pick up a collection of poems by Sharon Olds, and its history contains the names of some of the most prestigious journals and magazines in the United States:  Poetry, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Slate, Ploughshares, and The American Poetry Review.  That's pretty friggin' impressive.  Sharon Olds could write and teach any where she wanted.  Salinger, regardless of his anemic publishing history, could have also walked into the English Department at Harvard and landed a tenured position with a six-figure salary.  (I can imagine the conversation with the Department Head:  "Oh, yes, Mr. Salinger.  Right away, Mr. Salinger.  Would you like a coffee enema, Mr. Salinger?")

I have a pretty unimpressive publishing history.  I've managed a couple of good print and online journals, but, for the most part, this blog has been my venue for transmitting my prose and poetry to the world.  I recently sent out a chapbook manuscript to a contest.  One of the requirements of submission was including a list of places where the poems in the collection had already appeared (a history).  I had to skip that page.  I could have made something up.  I've always wanted to publish in Paris Review and The New Yorker.  But some people frown upon that kind of thing.  They think of it as academic fraud.  Whatever.

I worry about publication.  I worry because publication is one of my tickets to full-time employment at the university.  If I won the Iowa Prize for poetry or the National Book Award, I would be offered a tenure-track job tomorrow.  I've thought about pulling a J. D. Salinger.  You know, publishing one really successful book and then disappearing from the public eye.  My fame would grow as I avoided photographers and reporters and Jehovah's Witnesses.  Hey, it worked for Salinger and Thomas Pynchon.

Of course, the hitch in that scenario is that I first have to publish something of real note.  Then I can turn into J. D. Salinger.  My worry is that I can't even get an obituary published right now.  So why would anybody want to hire me as a professor?

Saint Marty needs to publish or perish.  Unfortunately, perishing is a lot easier.

I could do this pose