Pierre, or The Ambiguities by Herman Melville. First edition hardback, Harper Collins, 1995. Color illustrations, many blatantly erotic, including the cover, by Maurice Sendak (in the mood of Billy Blake). Design by Cynthia Krupat. The editor Hershel Parker has reconstructed the original, shorter version of Pierre that Melville sabotaged (according to Parker) by adding convoluted subplots (in revenge against the Harper brothers who did not wish to publish the book). This is the so-called “Kraken Edition”; the title comes from a letter Melville sent to Hawthorne. If Moby-Dick was the whale, Pierre was his giant monstrous squid.
My Romance by Gordon Lish. 1993 Norton trade paperback. Cover design by R.D. Scudellari. There are two paragraphs in this 142-page novel; the first starts on page 1 and ends on page 142; the second begins and ends on page 142 and is all of one sentence.
Erotic Poems, an Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets collection. Borzoi/Knopf, tiny hardback 1994. Jacket design by Barbara de Wilde. Happy Valentine’s.
Biblioklept 
God dammit Ed, I was going to post about the Kraken Edition of Pierre/the Sendak illustrations today! Eerie spooky mindcrime Valentines to you too.
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LOL…my bad…I mean, I’m not stopping you! In fact, I encourage you to do so!
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Love Pierre!! By far my favorite Melville. I didn’t know he was in the habit of adding convoluted subplots as revenge… he must have been really REALLY mad when he wrote M-D.
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Pierre’s one of my favorite books. So weird and psychologically intense. And the weirdness of the “Kraken edition,” complete with the overzealous Parker trying to rewrite it, just adds a layer to the weirdness. Best to read the Kraken version, armed with cheap old paperback of un-Parkered version, to fill in the rest.
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I read the unParkered version back in grad school and was utterly bewildered by it.
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Does Biblioklept make my life a little bit better, one day at a time? Yes.
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Cheers!
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