Letters to the Editor
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‘Between the Covers With Davis and July’
“Why publish a paperback original?” asks Benjamin Lytal in his otherwise brilliant review of “Varieties of Disturbance” by Lydia Davis [Arts & Letters, “Between the Covers With Davis and July,” May 16 2007]. The short answer is, to help win the author as broad a readership as possible as quickly as possible.
Publishing in paperback is the single best way we’ve found to get certain books into the hands of readers.
In most of Europe, the paperback original is the preferred format for serious literature and has been for decades. It’s begun to work this way in America too.
We agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Lytal’s high estimation of Lydia Davis’s manifold gifts, but his notion that “hardcovers are for grownups, paperbacks are for kids” is a thing of the past.
We’re convinced that bringing “Varieties of Disturbance” out this way is the right move for Ms. Davis at this point in her distinguished career — and the critics seem to agree.
The book has been very favorably reviewed by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, and many other (adult) periodicals.
JONATHAN GALASSI
Editor-in-chief
Farrar, Straus, & Giroux
New York, N.Y.
