Confederacy of Dunces

The bad news is that the first edition of John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces is rare. Only 2,500 copies of the first printing were produced. By comparison there were approximately 20,000 to 50,000 first printings of The Grapes of Wrath, and between 5,000 and 10,000 printings of Gone With The Wind. So there a very few out there in the wild.

The good news is that most people have no idea what this book looks like, so they wouldn’t know if they tripped over it. That makes it possible to find one at a garage sale, book swap, or used book store, which is how I found mine. It was just sitting there on the top of a book shelf of my local book shop. I bought it for $8, and didn’t realize what I had until I got home and researched it.

To see what a first edition looks like, check out Confederacy of Dunces First Issue Points at www.pprize.com

As you can see, "First Edition" or "First Printing" is not stated. So how do you know it's a first? You know it by the lack of a second, third, forth, etc. statement on the copyright page. And according to pprize.com, the date of 1980 must be present on both the title page and copyright page. The dust jacket has a price of $12.95, and a single blurb by Walker Percy on the back. A first edition of Confederacy of Dunces in very good condition fetches about $2,000.

The story of the book is that John Kennedy Toole wrote the book in 1969, and then committed suicide before it was published. His mother spent years trying to convince someone to publish it. Finally she pressured Walker Percy to read it. Percy was teaching at Louisiana State University. Percy read the first few pages, and was hooked. He could not put it down. He convinced the Louisiana State University Press to publish it. They produced their standard first printing of 2,500 copies. The book took off like a rocket. Soon they made a second printing, then a third. Next thing they knew this little university press had published a Pulitzer Prize novel.

More tomorrow…

Beginning My Collection

I could have gone out and purchased brand new books… and go broke in the process… but I wanted something more. I was interested not only in the story in each book, but also the story about each book. I wanted to collect each book as it appeared when it was originally published. So I made a clear decision that I wanted to populate my library with first edition books.

I started at the book shop near work. Within a few months I was able to find about 10 of them - Beloved, Confessions of Nat Turner, Collected Stories of Jean Stafford, A Death in the Family, Magnificent Ambersons (without dust jacket), The Yearling, The Fixer, The Caine Mutiny, The Optimist's Daughter, and The Mambo Kings.

The hardest part about collecting Pulitzers is making sure it is a first printing of a first edition. A second printing is not good enough for most collectors. For a variety of reasons the most desirable and most valuable is the first printing. Here is a web site that explains why better than I can:

The what and why of first editions

Another pitfall is the dreaded Book Club edition. These are books that look very much like the first, but there are usually one or two minor things that are different. Book Club edition are have very little value. For more information about book club editions, check out this web site:

How to Identify Book Club Editions

Early on, the only way I could figure out if I found a first edition was to check out eBay or abebooks.com and look for similar books. If I was lucky, the descriptions would sometimes give me clues about what to look for. For example, if someone was selling a first edition for a couple hundred dollars and they said “first edition stated” then I knew that if mine didn’t state “first edition” I probably had a later printing or a book club edition.

Recently I found a web site that lists all of the Pulitzer books, shows me pictures of first editions, and tells me things like if first edition is stated or not. For example, here’s an example of first edition points for Confessions of Nat Turner:

First Issue Points

More tomorrow...

Memoirs of a book collector - Part 2

In high school, Literature was far from my best subject. I didn’t pay much attention to what the teachers were trying to pound into my head, and I found myself as a thirty-something who really didn’t know much about Wharton, Hemingway or Steinbeck. I was okay with this until the birth of my first son. I wanted things to be different with him. I wanted to instill in him a passion for books and reading that I never had. I wanted him to grow up in the presence of great works of literature. Whether he read them or not was a different challenge. At that point I merely wanted to create the opportunity.

I read that just having books in the home was a very positive educational influence. (I’m sure it would even be better if the parents actually read the books.) So I got this idea stuck in my mind that I would create a library where I would keep classic books.

Also around this time I started a new job that was two blocks away from a very big and very inexpensive used bookshop. I am a software developer, so the bookshop became my sanctuary. It was a place I could go to after work or during lunch to remove me from technology and give me perspective on what life was all about. Each book represented a unique view point. Some were written 50 years ago, and some were written last month. But each story reminded that there was (and continues to be) a world that exists unplugged from the Internet. That provided comfort for me when I found myself too wired.

It was these two ingredients (desire to inspire my son and the therapeutic effect of discovering old books) that motivated me to build my library. My wife said we didn’t have the room, but I wasn’t going to let a small detail like that get in the way. So I purchased a few books shelves over time and slowly took over my family’s living room. I decided that I would populate my library with classics. So I started researching, and stumbled across a list of all the winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners. I was surprised to learn that the list dates back to 1918. I recognized some of the books - To Kill a Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath, The Old Man and the Sea, and Gone with the Wind. Some I never heard of – Scarlet Sister Mary for example. I was intrigued. I decided then to collect all of these books – there are close to 80 of them! For a complete list check out Pulitzer List and Pulitzer Prize Thumbnails Project

More tomorrow...

Memoirs of a book collector – A journey through American literary history

I started collecting Pulitzer Prize books in 1999, and I completed my collection on January 10th, 2006. The journey in between was quite an education for me. I went into it knowing nothing about books, a came out as an expert in this very narrow field of collectibles. This blog will be about my experiences researching and putting together my Pulitzer Prize library.

If you are not familiar with the Pulitzer Prize books, a good place to reference is PPrize.com. Not only do they list all of the winners, but they show pictures of first editions, list first edition points of issue, and refer you to places where you can find your own books.

More tomorrow...