William T Vollmann Central discussion

Today I got the copies of The Ice Shirt, Fathers & Crows and The Rifles which I ordered. Unfortunately they look like cheap pirate copies. I just had my girlfriend assess it who is educated in printing and she confirmed that the print is halftoned.

Did anyone else encounter this or a similar problem?

Henry wrote: "Did anyone else encounter this or a similar problem? "

Haven't heard of this before. Can you post some pics?

I know what you mean, as some of the PB quality of a good deal of the more obscure Penguin titles (especially have noticed it on my copy of Marina Tsvetaeva's selected poems) looks like a bad photocopy job of the original cover. The binding still holds up fine.

Yea Griffin but I bought the exact same books from Amazon just a few months ago and all three are of high quality. Where did they come from in this case?

I'm sure from Penguin but probably just different print runs of the same title. I have definitely seen some bad looking covers especially of the PBs of the Seven Dreams...one reason I got all of them in hardcover.

My phone camera is rather rubbish, but here is a close up from Ice Shirt:



And here is a close up from a „regular“ Penguin paperback:



I ordered them directly from Amazon because I thought it would be nice to have them as a clean looking, matching series, but Penguin changed the spine design for The Rifles as well (from black/gold to orange). For that reason as well I didn't order from zShops or eBay, because you'll never know which edition you'll really get. Because English books are rather expensive in German these were the most expensive paperbacks I ever bought and considering they are of inferior quality, they are going back.

But what kind of policy is this on the side of Penguin? Obscure books which sell little are inferiorly produced so that they sell even less?
I know tha printing costs money and storing costs money, but that can't be the solution. I was on the point yesterday where I had prefered a decent e-book version, but alas there is none.

Luckily, I have a friend living on the island of England and with his help, I managed to order „used - very good“ Andre Deutsch 1st editions which he will be bringing back to Germany on Christmas. It racks up the bill by 80 %, but I hope I will get some decent books then. Although, you never know what you'll get from zShops.

@James: Do your books have that copy & pasted „By the author of Europe Central - Winner of the National Book Award badge“? It looks to me as this was a rather recent addition.

Henry, yes! I just received paperback copies by Penguin from Amazon of Ice-Shirt, Argall, and Fathers - all very faint-looking text. It's really bothersome. Reading quality of pages is poor.

First of all, I am glad that I didn't imagine this. Second of all, do yourself a favour and get different copies. I finished the Ice-Shirt just recently and at some point near the end thought that I was really glad to have read it in a proper quality (as English isn't my native language, it took me quite some more time than expected to get through the book. And seeing that Fathers & Crows is still lying ahead of me, I am really glad that I got rid of the cheap paperbacks.)

Good advice. I think I will get hardcovers. Really a shame. Penguin quality usually so good. (By the way, their copy of The Dying Grass is better.) Vollmann can be hard enough to read in English, so as a second language it could really be a challenge. Argall probably would be almost impossible.

Henry, by the way my copy of Argall from Penguin says it's their second printing and does not reference Europe Central on the cover or in the list of author's works. However, it feels and smells like a new book, so it's confusing.

My paperback of The Ice-Shirt is the first printing, from back in the early 1990s, and its type looks fine. For the easiest reading, I recommend getting used hardcovers, which are often inexpensive. My Fathers and Crows HC was bought used. It isn't as if Vollmann has revised any of his works anyway, as far as I know.

These must be later printings. In the Fathers hardcover, as an example, in the first page of Part 1 (Kingdom Come), the first letter T is illustrated with two skeletons standing over a fallen figure. In this paperback you literally can't see what that illustration is; it's basically just a grey smudge. Be interesting to know if anyone has a PB Fathers to see if theirs is clearer.