Don DeLillo

[QDRPHNC]

The Library of Congress have started publishing some of DeLillo's backlist in nice hardback editions with essays, notes and a chronology. The first is The Names, White Noise and Libra in one volume. They're expensive and printed on cheap paper but I'm surreptitiously taking photos of the critical stuff in bookshops on my phone to read later, and it looks really good.

Library of America you mean – I have their Philip Roth one, and there's just something I love about their editions, can't put my finger on what though.

[buttgammon]

Library of America you mean – I have their Philip Roth one, and there's just something I love about their editions, can't put my finger on what though.

Yes, that's the one!

They're lovely books but I can never justify the price, and I'm a liability with that kind of thin paper.

It seems they're going to continue with the DeLillo series so we might even get a whole set of his novels in those editions eventually. I kind of know the editor of the DeLillo ones and he's perfect for the job (one of the nicest people around too), so you can be assured that any notes or introductions will be perfect, and he seems to have a good relationship with DeLillo himself too.

[QDRPHNC]

Yes, that's the one!

They're lovely books but I can never justify the price, and I'm a liability with that kind of thin paper.

It seems they're going to continue with the DeLillo series so we might even get a whole set of his novels in those editions eventually. I kind of know the editor of the DeLillo ones and he's perfect for the job (one of the nicest people around too), so you can be assured that any notes or introductions will be perfect, and he seems to have a good relationship with DeLillo himself too.

Great to hear the editor is beyond reproach, DeLillo deserves nothing less. $70 does seems a bit steep, but at the same time I suppose, you're getting three novels in a lovely hardback. They just feel very old-school, they're not trying to be stylish or trendy, and that gives them a kind of heft. I also love how they print their catalogue inside the dust cover.

Looking at my bookshelf again, I see I have their Poe's Selected Works in paperback, which is nice too, but not the same.