09.28.06 6:00 AM CDT
• Books
• Leopold Froehlich
A recent fad in marketing applies the guerrilla tactics of “street teams” to build “buzz” from the bottom up, thus in theory supplanting the top-down paternalism of Madison Avenue with the reckless energy of skatepunks and soi-disant rebels. Such marketing is contrived to appear artless and therefore authentic. It is supposed to be hip and cool but who over the age of nine is fooled by it? Nevertheless, guerrilla marketing has moved beyond the realms of athletic shoes and sports drinks to embrace more conventional enterprises. We’re not sure it’s at work in the book industry, but we’re beginning to have our suspicions.
Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, Against the Day, is due out in early December. Its publisher, Penguin Press, began spreading the word in early summer. (“We’re not releasing information about the subject matter at this point,” an associate publisher told The Los Angeles Times in June.) We’re big fans of Pynchon’s work and are always excited to see more of his writing. But getting a galley for purposes of review has been about as easy as getting an audience with Kim Jong-il.
We want to review Pynchon’s novel for our January issue. Playboy has a long lead time—meaning it takes us a while to print, bind and distribute copies of the magazine. We have to close our January issue—which hits the newsstands in December—before Halloween. If we get the 1120-page galley this coming week, as promised by the publisher, will we be able to read it in 48 hours? One doubts that even a cranked-out tag team of Edmund Wilson and Evelyn Woods could accomplish that. It takes a normal person months to read Gravity’s Rainbow or Mason & Dixon.
In Hollywood it used to be that studios would expend no energy marketing a film they knew would bomb. It made sense: why throw good money after bad? But lately this practice has extended to all films. Why bother screening films for critics? Who needs lame reviews?
In hip-hop, the practice of offering advance music to critics has pretty much stopped, under the pretence of security. Even though people will tell you that leaks of music come from studios and labels, not from press, advances of the new Jay-Z or DMX are next to impossible to obtain. In place of review copies, the record companies use viral marketing, and leak tracks to DJs for mix tapes. The labels think they are better off building interest at the street level. Again, who needs critics?
Pynchon inspires suspicion. In fact, he thrives on it. Given the passionate nature of his readers, people would line up outside a soup kitchen in the dead of night to buy copies of his work. But why all the mystery? Why all the melodrama? Are we being manipulated by marketers?
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