magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

I finished Lemprière's Dictionary this evening. Most of the time these days I really only read on the train, but I had gotten to the climax of the book and just couldn't put it back down. It's definitely found a spot in my top ten favourite books. If you're interested in long, difficult novels, historical fiction, magical realism, historical economics, or classical mythology, you should read it. But if you do, track down a copy of the 1999 edition, although it doesn't say it anywhere, it was apparently edited and expanded from the original 1991 edition. I have one of each. When I initially attacked the book, in 2002 after reading Norfolk's second novel, The Pope's Rhinoceros in Rome, I had picked up a used copy of the original (or, rather the Americanised 1993 printing of such). When I moved to New York a few years ago, and had very few of my books, I bought a copy of the newer version, a purchase rationalised because it had a nicer cover, nicer typesetting, nicer paper, and while also an American printing, they had left the original British punctuation (and spelling?) alone, but I assumed it was identical in terms of content.

Upon finished the book tonight, I, for some reason, pulled out the older copy and flipped through it, noticing immediately that it did not contain the 13 page prologue or 19 page epilogue. Further inspection revealed that it was also lacking in a number of other passages, and that other sections had been changed in slight, but important ways. This is something I've often thought about from a writer's point of view, the desire to rework past projects, even ones that have been published to fairly universal critical acclaim. Archetypically of such impulses, Whitman continued to edit (and rewrite) Leaves of Grass throughout his life. It seems that there's a 2004 edition of Lemprière's Dictionary, at least in England, which may be further edited yet.

Now, I just have to make another attempt at Norfolk's third novel, In the Shape of a Boar.